Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, June 9, 2008

(06-08) 16:11 PDT -- The opening this week of a major San Francisco exhibit of the work of Frida Kahlo is a reminder that Mexican artists have found a home and inspiration in the Bay Area at least as far back as 1930, when Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera, spent a year working here.

At the same time, a crop of young Mexican artists is creating new work in the Bay Area, bringing a fresh lens to issues such as border walls and the fragility of urban landscapes. Many are forging a hybrid identity, moving back and forth between the United States and Mexico, and contributing to the cultures of both places.

"These are people living in a globalized world," said René de Guzman, senior curator of art at the Oakland Museum of California, who mounted a show of Mexican art when he was curator of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in the 1990s. "It enriches the cultural conversation that's happening here."

Some of these emerging artists grew up in Mexico, others in California. Some have ties to an older generation of Latino artists in the Bay Area, while others are striking out on their own. Many have been through art school. Several are teaching art to young people.

"They still have a lot of connection with Mexico, especially the urban areas," said Jonathan Chait, cultural attache at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco, who is exhibiting and promoting the work of these young artists. "But all of them are somehow involved with their communities, giving something back. ... It's amazing the amount of creativity coming from this group."

Many of the artists are playing with performance, video, costume design and computer-manipulated images, often incorporating those techniques with more traditional media, such as painting, photography and sculpture.

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