Tijuana…

This is from the "About Me" from the SAGRADA TIJUANA Myspace page…
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Yo soy TIJUANA

Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub, it is on the hole in the center that the use of the hub hinges. Shape clay into a vessel, it is the space within that makes it useful. Carve fine doors and windows, but the room is useful in its emptiness. The usefulness of what is, depends on what is not… Tao Te Ching, verse 11

Tijuana no es Tijuana: "Tijuana explains it all the time: ‘It is easier to reveal what I am not, than what I am’… As Hermes of Greek mythology or any other mythological trickster of anthropology, this ranch-metropolis seems to have chosen the most refined path; not to lie about herself and by that same token, not to reveal THE TRUTH…"
- Fiamma Montezemolo, Italian anthropologist

¡Ahuevo! Hay muchos hoyos en Tijuana… ¿michael?

Yo soy SAGRADA

Tijuana is not "holy", but it is sacred, its of great importance. Is she sacred because full of beautiful homes, efficient and well oiled infrastructure, affluence, tranquil serenity? No, hardly…

She is sacred for reasons that are represented in many points. These points form a picture, a picture that is fading in that great empire to the north, fading point by point. The nick-nacky little things, things that people shrug about, are complacent about. Benjamin Franklin said that any people who would surrender freedom for security are worthy of neither. Americans are a people who want security, to be saved from the rest of the world, from each other and also from themselves. In order to attain this security, they are willing to surrender the points in the pointillistic picture of freedom…

Yo soy LIBRE…

The value of Tijuana is its freedom. It is a beauty that she is blinded to in her self loathing. She hears time and again that the northern empire is free, an idea sold daily in every medium. She is full of people who use her as a jumping off point to reap the advertised benefits of the American Mecca. Many of her artists look to the cultural vacuum of San Diego as something to emulate, since they believe they obviously have nothing to say. She is told time and again that she is unworthy… why? Because she is violent…

But Florence of the Renaissance was violent, a time and place that created perhaps the most prolific and creative environment in human history. What made it a cauldron of creativity? It was open to the world of thoughts and ideas. It wanted to build on the ancient, the abandoned, the hidden. The Medici sought out the cloistered teachings, hidden through the Dark Ages in the monasteries and studied them, sharing them with those artists and thinkers who they commissioned…

I believe that Tijuana’s freedom reflects the ancient governmental teaching of China, the Tao Te Ching. One of the central teachings is stated in the affirmation:

"I fully trust that others know what is best for themselves"

My art is Tijuana, but not only. It is my vision of Tijuana, a Tijuana that abandons the concept that American culture is superior and sees it for the cultural vacuum it is. "Nature hates a vacuum". My vision is a Tijuana of color, for color is Mexican, lack of color is American…

Mohatma Gandhi encouraged the people of India to do small things, make their own cloth and make their own salt. But with these simple things he defeated the British Empire. At the end of World War 2, President Harry Truman believed that the British Empire was the greatest threat to Democracy in the world. But without firing a shot, Gandhi overcame the Empire…

Color is my simple thing…