October 07, 2026
ArtCenter College of Design Presents Torolab Conejo Negro: Tortilleria and Print Shop
A New Exhibition on view October 10, 2026 through March 6, 2027
In the College’s Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery
Los Angeles, CA—ArtCenter Exhibitions is pleased to present Conejo Negro: Tortilleria and Print Shop, a new exhibition by the artist collective TOROLAB, on view at the College’s Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery from October 10, 2026 through March 6, 2027.
Conejo Negro: Tortilleria and Print Shop, explores our personal connections through the culture of food. Both sustenance and an act of care, food and the traditions of regional cuisines are quotidian parts of our lives. Yet they are also expansive in meaning, addressing political and societal conditions. Featuring a purpose-designed, mobile tortilleria, the exhibition space is transformed by Torolab into an evolving, experimental exploration of themes of community, resilience, and resistance.
Conejo Negro: Tortilleria and Print Shop is accompanied by wall text using the phrase Ma ‘P Kuiil Tmamaa? (Have You Eaten?): a greeting that evokes concern and attention in the critically endangered language of the Kiliwa people (an indigenous nation in Northern Baja California, Mexico). This greeting becomes a visual refrain throughout the exhibition: in a video installation regarding the cuisine and spoken word of the indigenous community; an installation comprising a mapping of Kiliwa words, ingredients, territory, seasons, and processes of transformation. The map offers clues to a way of understanding life, the environment, and shared experiences embedded in language and everyday knowledge. It extends into a wall of images drawn from ArtCenter’s archives and the artists’ research, connecting Indigenous food, agriculture, gathering, and territory across different places and moments.f
Founded in 1995 by architect and artist Raúl Cárdenas-Osuna, the Tijuana-based artist and design collective TOROLAB works toward improving quality of life through initiatives and projects that explore social phenomena, urban spaces, and artistic language. This new project Conejo Negro: Tortilleria and Print Shop explores through our shared food culture, the dynamics of life across the political and physical boundaries of the U.S./Mexico border.
ABOUT TOROLAB
TOROLAB centers on people's ideas of "how to live better," developing projects that work in the distance between those ideas and absolute reality. It is a process-based collective practice: one that knows where it starts, but not where it, or its collaborators, will end up. Over three decades of work, this process has come to rest on two interconnected zones: contextual analysis, in the form of critical cartographies that map the landscapes and conditions surrounding ideas of quality of life, and a system for translating that analysis into projects that benefit everyone integrated into a given territory. Rather than approaching design as the production of isolated objects, TOROLAB develops adaptable tools, environments, and forms of social infrastructure in response to specific community needs, with the humility to understand that art and design must constantly negotiate their own boundaries. Previous projects have addressed migration, housing, public health, food access, urban ecology, and cross-border mobility through architecture, mobile structures, clothing, gardens, mapping, workshops, and collective gatherings, opening, ideally, new possibilities through tactics set in motion by aesthetics that actually function.
TOROLAB operates as a transdisciplinary collective, workshop, and laboratory of contextual studies working across art, architecture, design, research, and community practice, grounding its studies in the realm of lifestyles to better grasp the idea of quality of life. Alongside Cárdenas-Osuna is core member Ana Martínez Ortega, who has collaborated closely with Cárdenas on long-term initiatives including La Granja Transfronteriza, or Transborder Farmlab, in Tijuana's Camino Verde neighborhood. TOROLAB's work has been presented at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, and Galería OMR in Mexico City, among others. Beyond the studio, Cárdenas directed the Digital Axis for the Metropolitan Strategic Plan of Tijuana-Rosarito-Tecate from 2011 to 2012 and has advised the Tijuana government on sustainable city development and social innovation. In 2012 he founded the nonprofit organization Sociedad de Agentes de Cambio, which he continues to direct, and he serves as director of the Transborder Farmlab in Tijuana as well as the Applied Social Research and Innovation Lab in Tijuana and Mexico City.
EXHIBITION DATES
Torolab, Conejo Negro: Tortilleria and Print Shop
OCTOBER 10, 2026 THROUGH MARCH 6, 2027
Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery
ArtCenter College of Design, South Campus
1111 S. Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, CA 91105
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday | Noon–5 p.m.
Admission is FREE
Sneak Peek Preview on October 9th during Pasadena ArtNight, 6–10 p.m.
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About ArtCenter Exhibitions
ArtCenter Exhibitions oversees the College’s public-facing curated spaces that serve students, artists, scholars and creative audiences from Southern California and beyond. Made possible through the generosity of individuals and foundations, our exhibitions and related educational programs form deep and varied ties to culturally relevant issues and ideas. Serving as a vital part of the contemporary art and design realms of greater Los Angeles, exhibitions aim to inspire, educate, and resonate. Admission to ArtCenter Exhibitions programming is free and open to the public.
About ArtCenter College of Design
Founded in 1930 and located in Pasadena, California, ArtCenter College of Design is a global leader in art and design education. With a mission to educate, inspire and empower creative and design leadership, the College is renowned for its undergraduate and graduate degree programs spanning industrial design, media and technology, as well as visual and applied arts. With deep industry relationships, state-of-the-art facilities and a strong faculty roster, ArtCenter provides real-world experience aligned with industry needs. Through rigorous, hands-on, practitioner-led instruction, the College prepares students for meaningful creative careers. For nearly 100 years, ArtCenter alumni and faculty have shaped many of the world’s most iconic products, vehicles, campaigns and creative works, leaving a lasting impact across art, design and culture.
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