As the global city has become the primary site of economic consumption and display in the last years of economic boom, marginal neighborhoods of these power centers have remained sites for cultural production through the adaptation and retrofit of sites whose configuration is due to discriminatory zoning and economic development practices. Noting the need in such praxis for artistic interpretation and political representation, Teddy Cruz engages this space of intervention at the US-Mexico border to produce a specific political language for new interpretations of housing, infrastructure, property, and citizenship.
Teddy Cruz has exhibited nationally and internationally, including the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale and “Small Scale, Big Change,” at MoMA in New York. A professor in public culture and urbanism at UC San Diego, Cruz is founding co-director of the Center for Urban Ecologies and Blum Cross-Border Initiative, and leads the Civic Innovation Lab for the City of San Diego.
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