SAN DIEGO/TIJUANA.-inSite/ Art Practices in the public Domain, the binational network of contemporary arts events and actions, together with the San Diego Museum of Art and the Centro Cultural Tijuana, presents Farsites: Urban Crisis and Domestic Symptoms in Recent Contemporary Art. On view through Nov. 13, 2005, the two-city exhibition marks the first time inSite has included a museum-based exhibition in its programming, as well as the first time the two largest visual arts institutions in the binational region have collaborated.

Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, who is based in São Paulo, Farsites brings together more than 50 artists from the Americas, as well as Europe and Africa who work in a range of media, from photography to installation. Although a few works present the urban site as a map or overall network, many focus on the moments when these systems fail or fall short. In any city there are conditions that resist the collective desire for a clean, efficient appearance or modernization. These moments are symptoms of neglect and abandonment, and sometimes citizens construct alternatives to cope with this uneven development.

"The San Diego Museum of Art is privileged to participate in this global survey of cutting-edge contemporary art practice. The goals of inSite_05 mesh neatly with our own collaborative ambitions for San Diego to serve as a center for museum-generated knowledge. Drawing upon the combined talents of the inSite team, our colleagues at CECUT, and the staff here at SDMA, we are aiming to present something memorable for a broad audience. San Diego and Tijuana will be exciting destinations this fall as a result of both unique teamwork and creative curatorship," says the San Diego Museum of Art's executive director, Derrick Cartwright.

Several artists in particular delve into the visual texture of cities through photography by focusing on the urban landscape (Geraldine Lanteri, Catherine Opie, Dean Sameshima, Gabriele Basilico, Thomas Struth, Eduardo Consuegra, Sean Snyder, and Armando Andrade Tudela). Others, including Rita McBride, Pedro Cabrita Reis, and Adriana Varejao, create works that operate as interpretations of architecture as fragments or ruins.

Another group of artists, including Rochelle Costi, Robert Gober, and Félix González-Torres, address the second part of the exhibition's title where the tensions and conflicts of a city are shifted to the domestic space. Visitors to Farsites will find themselves in a new relationship to functional domestic objects in works such as Damian Ortega's sculpture of chairs, Doris Salcedo's attached furniture, or Carlos Garaicoa's paper and light structure. Ultimately, traces of the human body surface through evidence of use, in the streets, buildings, and furnishings that make up the public and private aspects of the city.

There are also several artists who engage with the city through direct action, as participants in the ever-changing and shifting culture of urban life. At Eloisa Cartonera, an alternative publishing house, artists and writers collaborate with cartoneros (collectors and vendors of used cardboard) to create original books, and Taller Popular de Serigrafia installs a printing press on the street during popular protests and creates specific images for each event. Both groups are based in Buenos Aires and emerged out of the economic collapse that took place in Argentina in late 2001.

In addition to presenting a broad assortment of engaging artworks, each of five adjunct curators—Santiago García Navarro, Julieta González, Betti-Sue Hertz, Ana Elena Mallet, and Carla Zaccagnini—have created a documentary project about a crisis in the urban infrastructure of a particular city. Subjects include the Palermo Viejo Assembly, a popular people's organization in Buenos Aires; architect Mario Pani's Tlatelolco Housing Project of 1961 and its importance in the history of Mexico City from 1968 to 1985; the tunnels, bridges, and viaducts of São Paulo; the changing face of the Avenida Libertador in Caracas; and the New York City blackouts of 1965, 1977, and 2003.