Adapta Project

“Saturday Morning Sign-off” by Robert L. Nelson

Adapta Project presents Marking Territory: The Imaginary Lines that Limit Us

The show: At its core, Marking Territory: The Imaginary Lines that Limit Us, is about San Diego and Tijuana artists telling stories about leaving comfort zones and exploring both personal and political territories. As a binational collective that works within and around the literal confines of the San Diego/Tijuana border fence, Adapta Project knows about barriers and how to exploit and work around them.

For the show, though, we’re not just talking about physical borders. We’re more interested in the invisible walls of social, economic, cultural, gender, sexual and familial boundaries. Our artists’ works are a visual trip around and through lines, either real or drawn in the sand.

Robert Nelson’s work, for example, looks at the duality between good and evil, innocence and corruption. His striking images may haunt some while others will simply chuckle. Children’s toys are a reoccurring image in Nelson’s work and it will make you question which side of the good/evil line you stand, or whether there’s a clear line between the two at all.

“Children’s toys are usually seen as possessing innocence,” says Nelson, “It intrigues me that a toy can, at once, be innocent and menacing.”

Ben Darby’s work, too, uses children’s toys to play with your perception. Toy guns and teddy bears look cute from afar, but get up-close and you’ll see something more. While using childhood as a starting point and inspiration, Darby manages to deal with the very adult subjects of sex and war in some of his work.

In Vero Glezqui’s short film, passports and visas are eaten by a machine then recycled into thread that reaches out to connect different cultures and countries. And in Inkstain’s chaotic yet balanced and beautiful collages, we’re asked to step outside of ourselves to see the world around us. Ryan Tannascoli’s series of storyboard-like paintings, too, remind us that we can’t spend our entire lives playing with toy trains. We need to step out and jump on the real trains rushing all around us.

The artists:

Ben Darby

Vero Glezqui

INKSTAIN: Janelle Carter and Carla Naden

Robert L. Nelson

Ryan Tannascoli

The curators:

Adapta Project is a curatorial duo that shows art whenever, however and wherever we can. Since 2007, we’ve shown in downtown warehouses, a metal-fabrication workshop, The San Diego Children’s Museum, a hallway in CECUT (the Tijuana museum of art), a mansion outside of Playas de Tijuana and a small gallery in North Park. In short, we take over spaces for the purpose of showing art. We were sick of sitting around complaining about the Tijuana/San Diego art scene, so we did something about it: We started producing the quality shows we wanted to see. One show led to another and now there doesn’t seem to be a foreseeable end in sight. Visit www.adaptaproject.com for updated info, or call 619-436-9034 if you want to support the arts by actually buying art.