TIJUANA, Mexico — The frontier shapes this metropolis, most obviously in the form of the omnipresent border wall that runs along the edge of downtown and alongside major roadways as it slices westward to the ocean.
Yet if the border is a binary divider — Mexico on one side, the United States on the other — the lived reality to which it gives rise is far more complex. It takes in the maquiladora factories that manufacture goods for the U.S. market; the flow of new arrivals seeking work who have made Tijuana Mexico’s second-largest city; migrants from other countries who, barred from entering the United States, have settled here; cross-border commuters and tourists; families that live on both sides; politicians, tycoons, cartels, cops.
Because sociology can go only so far in accounting for a place, it has fallen to artists to explore and convey Tijuana’s particular spirit, the borderness of it all — which they have done, one creative generation after another, never lacking material.
To deliver the signature survey of American art for the Whitney Museum, in a time of epochal change, David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards, the curators of this year’s Whitney Biennial, were drawn to this border terrain. On a bright Saturday in February, they ascended the outdoor stairs to 206 Arte Contemporáneo, a gallery in a simple bungalow a little away from the city center.
They had come to Tijuana to meet two local artists who are taking part in the Biennial: Mónica Arreola, an architect and photographer, who co-founded and directs 206 with her twin sister, Melisa, also an architect; and Andrew Roberts, who grew up in Tijuana with Mexican and American roots and works in video, animation and performance. They would continue on to Los Angeles, visiting a total of nine of their artists.
But they were also here, entering the homestretch — the Biennial opens April 6, with member previews starting March 31 — to test a hypothesis that inspired the show’s making. To look at…