Art and design students at Cal State San Bernardino will soon have an art piece they helped bring to life displayed at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, thanks to a program called “The Land of Milk and Honey.”

Through the program, CSUSB students have the opportunity this spring semester to work with international artist and selected artist-in-residence Daniel Ruanova.

The Land of Milk and Honey, which is a series of multidisciplinary and multilingual arts and culture programs that examine the history and legacy of migrant workers, is part of the MexiCali Biennial, a nonprofit visual arts organization created in 2006 by Ed Gomez, CSUSB associate professor of art and design, and fellow artist Luis G. Hernandez.

“I believe this project will positively impact our students by giving them hands-on experience working with international artists and a world-class museum,” Gomez said. “These connections and networks are paramount in becoming a successful artist.”

Ruanova, Gomez and CSUSB students will work closely through a series of digital art and fabrication workshops and lectures, resulting in a kinetic sculpture titled “The Mexican Labor Agreement,” which will be exhibited at The Cheech.

Standing, from left, are Daniel Ruanova, international artist and artist-in-residence, and Ed Gomez, CSUSB associate professor of art and design, look over a student’s work.
Standing, from left, are Daniel Ruanova, international artist and artist-in-residence, and Ed Gomez, CSUSB associate professor of art and design, as they look over a student’s work.

“The project at hand, The Mexican Labor Agreement, is a large-scale kinetic sculpture that denotes the strength needed to work the fields of California, an homage to the millions of laborers who’ve made this land a true gem of the U.S., and fed the nation through the hard work, personal sacrifices and the translocation of their lives and their families’ lives in order to strive for better futures for their descendants,” said Ruanova.

The sculpture will be part of Ruanova’s long-term and ongoing collaborative “Bracero Legacy Project,” a multidisciplinary approach for creating a new dialogue about Californian and American history through the generational experience of farm labor migrants and how their struggles have created opportunities for them and their families.

The residency is supported by a Community Based Research and Establishing Community Partnership grant from the Office of Community Engagement at CSUSB. The grant solidifies an ongoing partnership between CSUSB, the MexiCali Biennial, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, and the Garcia Center for the Arts.

“I hope that this is just the beginning of a long and fruitful collaborative partnership with The Cheech, CSUSB students and faculty,” Gomez said.

About Daniel Ruanova 

Ruanova is a self-proclaimed “border-rat” who lives and works between the borderlands of Tijuana and his land in Vallecitos, Baja California. He was co-founder of TJinChina Art Space in Tijuana and is currently a member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. Ruanova has presented his work at, among others, the MOLAA Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, Calif.; the Poliforum Siqueiros in Mexico City; MK2 Artspace by Caochangdi, Beijing; the Vasconcelos Library of Mexico City; the Moscow Biennale of Young Art; the Kunstraum in Cologne, Germany; the Tijuana Cultural Center; the Zacheta National Art Gallery in Warsaw, Poland; the Art Miami 07 fair; the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art; the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; and the Monterrey Center for the Arts. He also received in 2009 and 2007 the scholarship for Young Creators from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts and in 2008 the scholarship for Creators with a Trajectory from the State Fund for Culture and the Arts of Baja California. To learn more about Ruanova, visit the Daniel Ruanova website.

About the MexiCali Biennial

The MexiCali Biennial is a nonprofit contemporary visual arts organization that focuses on the area encompassing California and Mexico as a region of aesthetic production. The organization is migratory in nature and showcases exhibitions on both sides of the California/Mexico border. The MexiCali Biennial was originally started as a project critiquing the proliferation of international and regional art biennials and as a result, may be shown at any time and at any location. To learn more, visit the MexiCali Biennial website.

About The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum

Located in the heart of Riverside, Calif., the “City of Arts & Innovation,” RAM is one museum with two locations: the Riverside Art Museum and The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, slated to open May 8, 2022. RAM integrates art into the lives of people in a way that engages, inspires and builds community by providing high quality exhibits and art education programs that instill a lifelong love of the arts. RAM’s desire to further engage and serve the community was the impetus to create The Cheech, a public-private partnership between RAM, the city of Riverside, and comedian Cheech Marin, one of the world’s foremost collectors of Chicano art. Marin’s gift of approximately 500 works by Chicana/o/x artists – among them Carlos Almaraz, Judithe Hernández, Gilbert “Magú” Luján, Sandy Rodriguez, Frank Romero, and Patssi Valdez – to RAM’s permanent collection makes the collection a repository for one of the largest holdings of Chicana/o/x art by a non-ethnic specific contemporary art museum. The Cheech is dedicated to showcasing Chicana/o/x art and honoring and exploring its continued social, cultural and political impact through a comprehensive exhibitions program of the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions organized at the center, as well as nationally touring exhibitions that align with the center’s vision. The Cheech will work collaboratively with community partners to present thought-provoking educational programming that explores the complexity of Chicana/o/x culture not only through the visual arts, but in both music and film as well, recognizing that this art is evolving and expanding its definitions and parameters in response to current social conditions and in conversation with global artistic movements. For information about The Cheech, visit The Cheech website. Find The Cheech on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For more information about the Riverside Art Museum, visit the RAM website.