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Description
Jaime Ruiz Otis emerged on the Tijuana art scene at the turn of the twenty-first century. A native to the border and entering adulthood with the transition to a post-NAFTA world of globalization and import/exportation, Ruiz Otis "found" his art among the industrial trash and recycling dumpsters in the many maquiladoras scattered throughout the Tijuana border region. Taking this discarded material, Jaime Ruiz Otis turns this "trash" into works of art that highlight and explain an important geographic and cultural region. He creates minimalist installations that address the economic and cultural reality unique to border life with a twist of irony as what was once cast off and discarded is now considered symbolic, artistically significant, and strikingly beautiful. Jaime Ruiz Otis is unique in that his inspiration to use discarded and recycled materials grew from his own employment at a maquiladora along the Tijuana border. Ruiz Otis has been referred to as an environmental artist, a border artist, a minimalist, and a neo-muralist. I am questioning the border through four works of art by Jaime Ruiz Otis because I believe this is an important topic for those of us living on either side, and the answer is so different for the types of people who share this region. In addition, I am exploring the concept of identity for the people who live in Tijuana, primarily those who migrate to the region to seek employment in maquiladoras, with or without the intention of traveling north to the U.S. I am also exploring the ways the arts and culture of Tijuana continue to define an identity of the city, as well as the industrialization of the border region, and the subsequent environmental and social degradation on Tijuana.
