BSH: I think that curators of contemporary art are always looking for a hot spot, and this is something that the people of Mexico City are very self conscious about, and very conscious of: "we are the next hotspot and then youíll go onto another hotspot."

As I said before, Mexico has a strong cultural identity. It has a long history of having an identifiable art, whether it be popular art, fine art, craft based art. Everyone has an idea of what Aztec art looks like, of what Colonial art looks like. Even in the case of Axis Mexico, although the work doesnít look like classic modernist Mexican art, it still maintains some of the ideologies of it: popular culture, the everyday, the sort of heroism of the regular person, and a kind of political questioning of the way things are. I think that there is a fear amongst Mexicans that this cultural specificity could become too strong a marker, and that it will be used in order to promote the idea of the exotic, because that is exactly what happened with Mexican modernism. However, I think that this is a double-edged sword. If Mexico didnít have the deep cultural history and the already existing strong cultural identity then it would be more apt to be absorbing what was outside of it, without being able to integrate it into what already exists, which I think is what happens. Since Mexico is basically built on the concept of hybridity, the fact that things are coming in and going out all the time is in fact its nature so to try to fetishize it is problematic. But, if a project is about that hybridity as stated, and recognizes that that hybridity is weighted; that local, international, avant-garde, vernacular influences all come into play on different levels, then I think it becomes too much of a moving target to become fetishized. That is exactly why a show like this can help: to keep the target moving. I think then that this exhibition becomes a dialogue not only between the artists, but also the artists and our audiences. How will our audiences read the work? How are they talking about the work in their own communities? Are artists in this region now thinking a little bit differently or learning something new about Mexican art?

DC: In reference to "audiences" I would be interested to know how Mexican American artists respond to all this attention on art from Mexico?

BSH: There was some criticism that all these projects are being done about Mexican artists, but there arenít that many about Mexican American artists. This is always a tension here in the United States. I think it has a lot to do with local versus international. I mean Mexican-American is still very regional. Itís happened around the US, but it doesnít link as easily to the international art world. Itís too localized, even if it is localized to San Antonio, and in Chicago, and other places. Not to say individual artists havenít been picked up. Itís a general problem that the hyphenated artists in the US are always sort of struggling. They either have to become part of the mainstream art world or they go into a sub-culture, a specific, specialized art world. Some artists can do both.

DC: Finally, Axis Mexico is a reflection of the San Diego Museum of Art's new commitment to and focus on art from Latin America. In what ways in the future do you plan to open up the border between the US and Latin America through your exhibition programming?

BSH: When I first came to San Diego the Director G. Bacigalupi and I decided to focus for the first two years of my tenure on Californian and Mexican art, both in the acquisition and exhibition program. Those two years are now coming to a close. Iím currently doing a show that opens in a few days that is focused on historical material from the 1960s from Los Angeles, and Iím planning an exhibition that is not so culturally derived- its an exhibition about natural science and abstraction. I also have The Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia show coming up. The whole curatorial team is talking about what we are doing in the next several years. My thoughts at this point are that now that we are establishing ourselves as having, in part, a Latin American focus we will be looking past Mexico. I would say into South America, probably more in the Caribbean, but this is all under discussion right now.

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