The inaugural exhibition of the Cerca Series, opening August 1, highlights the work of Tijuana-based artist Tania Candiani. Titled Gordas, Candiani's exhibition features the artist's large, machine-sewn canvases that explore cross-cultural questions of female body image. "Sketching" with stitches, Candiani renders portraits of women in the act of eating, gagging, and looking at their bodies. She augments her canvases with medical suturing, and stretches them with a unique mechanism that resembles the braces and ties of corsets. The aesthetics of women's work, sexual fetishism, and medical illustration also inform these sewn portraits. Tania Candiani's artworks have been included in group exhibitions in Mexico at the Museo de Monterrey and Tijuana's Centro Cultural, and she was recently included in an exhibition in the campus gallery of the California State University, Los Angeles.