El Paso Matters – Border Biennial 2026 invited regional artists to imagine the border

Regional artists are showcasing their creativity and love of the area during the Border Biennial 2026 that opened this weekend at the El Paso Museum of Art and the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. This year’s theme is “Imagining the Border.”

“We can read the border, we can drive the border, we can walk the border, we can paint the border, but to imagine the border is something different,” said Edward Hayes Jr., director of the El Paso museum. “It’s very open-ended.”

Hayes sat down to talk about the exhibition after a walk-through of the 7,000-square-foot Woody and Gayle Hunt Family Gallery, the temporary home to more than 70 paintings, sculptures, ceramics, tapestries, jewelry and photography and other pieces of art.

He said some of the selected artists focused on everyday life while others took a more dramatic view and submitted immigration-centered works. Similar art will be part of the exhibit at the Juárez museum, where the exhibit is called Bienal Fronteriza.  

“At the end of the day, this is a celebration of incredible creativity that exists along the border,” Hayes said. The opening weekend included special celebrations at both museums.

Christian Diego Diego, director of the Juárez art museum, said the exhibition serves as a benchmark for collaborative effort and exposure for border artists and their creative community.

He said his museum, located in the ProNaF zone, would present 60 pieces of art in its Sala Circular, or Circular Gallery. It would have the same types of art from most of the same artists featured in the El Paso museum.

Diego said these activities keep regional art production popular and relevant, and gives artists the space and support they need to grow. The fact that this event, which started in 2008, continues is deeply meaningful to him.

“It allows us to build upon the legacy of everyone who launched this project while continuing to open our museum’s doors to the region’s vibrant artistic community,” Diego said in an email to El Paso Matters.

These kinds of events create a special opportunity to ground the larger “frontera” region as a critically important center of art production of the highest level, said Eduardo Diaz, retired director of the Smithsonian Latino Center in Washington, D.C.

Diaz said that this exhibit along with two other significant art showcases in November, Latino Art Now! and SUTURA, will reinforce the notion that El Paso-Juárez is a core art area.

“El Paso and Cd. Juárez are about to send a powerful message to the larger art world that will resonate for years to come,” Diaz said in an email response to El Paso Matters.”

Hayes said he expects more than 25,000 visitors will see the Border Biennial on the El Paso side before it closes May 2, 2027. He added that the museum, located at 1 Arts Festival Plaza, might extend the run as it did with the 2024 Border Biennial if there is interest. The Juárez part of the exhibition will close in early February 2027.     

The call for artists generated more than 130 applications. Organizers, who asked that the artists be from within a 300 mile radius of El Paso-Juárez, whittled that down to 31 artists and two artists collectives from Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Chihuahua, Mexico. For many of them, this will be their first big exhibit.

The lead Border Biennial curators were Adriana Miramontes Olivas and Alejandro Morales. In a prepared statement, Morales said the selection process allowed them to encounter emerging artists whose proposals addressed contemporary concerns and questions about the desert borderlands “across political, affective, communal and personal registers.”

Among the selected artists is Angel Cabrales, an associate professor of art at the University of Texas at El Paso. His focus is on sculpture. He previously participated in the 2013 and 2019 Border Biennials when he worked for other institutions in Texas and Illinois.

His entries are “The Rosary of Eagle Pass,” which he made in 2025, and “Five Lights” from 2024.

The 26-foot-long rosary uses metal-encased orange “beads” that represent the orange buoys that the Texas government placed in the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass, Texas, to deter migrants from entering the state.

“Five Lights” is an American flag made from steel to simulate the border wall. The portion with the stars is replaced with the Department of Homeland Security emblem. Beneath it are 12 2-inch acrylic cubes filled with discarded personal belongings of migrants. Above the flag are four very bright lights shining down into a visitors’ sightline.

It is called “Five Lights” as a reference to a psychological torture technique used in “Chain of Command: Part II,” a sixth-season episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

In it, an interrogator shows a prisoner four lights, asks for the number of lights, and punishes the prisoner when he answers correctly. The interrogator insists there are five lights as he tries to force the prisoner to surrender mentally and emotionally. A similar technique was used in the George Orwell novel “1984,” but fingers were used instead of lights.

He said the exhibit’s art pieces show the level of love artists have for the area and how much they want to share that love with others.

“I think that’s the greatest thing,” Cabrales said.

Michael Reyes, senior curator at the El Paso Museum of Art, said he was amazed by how the artists had different visions of the border. He said some common threads included laborers, surveillance and the border wall.

In spite of the more confrontational pieces, Reyes said artists still found beauty in the natural landscape. In general, he believes the exhibit lifts up and showcases regional art.

Hayes, the El Paso museum director, said the pandemic and regional challenges of shipping art between the two countries led to the cancellations of the event starting in 2018. The program resumed in 2024.

He said the event generated interest from the New York Times, which published a story about the Border Biennial in April 2024 as part of the newspaper’s museums special section.

For those who choose not to cross the border, Hayes said exhibit organizers are thinking about possible virtual activities in 2027 that would allow patrons to see Border Biennial pieces at the others’ museum.    

The city of El Paso Museums and Cultural Affairs Department, the Secretaría de Cultura de México (Ministry of Culture of Mexico) and the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature) helped organize the Border Biennial.  

The exhibition’s supporters include the Mellon Foundation, the Texas Commission on the Arts, the El Paso Museum of Art Foundation, and the city of El Paso Museums and Cultural Affairs Department.

The post Border Biennial 2026 invited regional artists to imagine the border appeared first on El Paso Matters.

 Read: Read More