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The 'relative distance' exhibition curated by Marcela Quiroz gathered the photography, painting, drawing, video, sculpture, and installation pieces of 14 contemporary artists currently working in Baja California. Derived from astronomical principles the curatorial proposal interrogated the possibilities of relativity and its distances—socioeconomic, cultural, bodily, emotional, spatial, temporal and geographic—as means to understand, relate and construct our habitable environment.Among the participating artists Shinpei Takeda presented the most ‘subtly-invasive’ work of all shown. His hand-painted calligraphic intervention, Nagasaki-Xochimeh (2009), completely covered the floor area of the pavilion inscribing the testimony of an atomic bomb survivor interrelated with ancient Aztec poems in Nahuatl. The pavilion offered an open floor plan of 1721 sq ft. During its brief 3 day existence the pavilion housed over 3,000 visitors.
The pavilion, designed by the architect Gabriel Martinez was structurally supported by a scaffolding system that supported the exhibition body. This first core was covered with a translucent skin made with aluminum residues and internally illuminated eco-resin; the pavilion showed as a box light, lightly elevated over the Tijuana Cultural Center’s leveled area, using ramps to link the expositive interior with the transit space and the exterior exposition.