Hugo Crosthwaite: Tijuacolor

Live Mural Performance

April 28 - May 10, 2025 (Free and open to the public)

Lecture and Reception

May 12, 2025, 5:30-6:30 pm (Wilson Hall’s Concert Hall)

Photo Courtesy of Hugo Crosthwaite Studio and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

About the Exhibition

Over two weeks, Hugo Crosthwaite will engage in the spontaneous and improvisational creation of a mural with a visual narrative that explores themes of borders and immigration. Tijuacolor is Crosthwaite’s invented compound word fusing “Tijuana” and “color,” playing with TV and film technological branding concepts such as ‘technicolor” or “in full color.” The performance mural and corresponding work promise a visually exciting and true-to-life narrative that explores complex issues such as immigration, transculturation, gentrification, and gender violence. Throughout the mural-painting performance, the exhibition spaces will be accessible to the public, allowing visitors to observe firsthand as Crosthwaite embarks on his artistic journey, painting directly onto the gallery walls. Upon the conclusion of the exhibition, in accordance with the artist’s instructions, the mural will be painted over, symbolizing the ephemeral nature of border regions. Tijuacolor is curated by Andrea Lepage, Pamela H. Simpson Professor of Art History.

Born in Tijuana in 1971, Crosthwaite grew up in Rosarito, Baja California, 10 miles south of the international border. A 1997 graduate of San Diego State University with a BA in Applied Arts and Sciences, Crosthwaite works in a linear and improvisational fashion. He combines portraiture, comic book references, urban signage, commercial facades, and mythology in dense, layered compositions. Crosthwaite brings characters from allegory and popular media to the stage of the human condition, interacting with the architecture of Tijuana and dreams of the border. The work reflects the character of frenetic urban settings, a border in flux. Fear, hope, pain, and celebration are represented together as Crosthwaite elevates the ordinary person to heroic levels showing the trials they endure while surviving in contemporary society. Hugo Crosthwaite is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

View the artist’s website and a recording of Hugo Crosthwaite’s lecture below.

This exhibition is made possible by the support of the Department of History, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program, and the Class of ’63 Scholars-in-Residence Program administered by the Provost’s Office.

Where borders blur, color speaks.

Tijuacolor is a short documentary that follows renowned Tijuana-born artist Hugo Crosthwaite as he creates a live, evolving mural that marks a bold shift from his signature black-and-white style into the vivid world of color at the Staniar Gallery at Washington and Lee University. Blending improvisation with intention, Crosthwaite fills the wall with provocative, surreal imagery drawn from the complexities of life along the U.S./Mexico border-figures that are at once humorous, haunting, and deeply human. Created in collaboration with the Spring 2025 Intercultural Documentary Filmmaking class, the film captures a moment of artistic transformation and cultural reflection in real time.

Directed By Nich L. Perez
Produced by Andrea Lepage
Art by Hugo Crosthwaite
May 2025