Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures

The California Museum of Photography presents the premiere of Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures, the first extensive survey of work by the Los Angeles-based artist who has spent decades in a rich exploration of migration, labor, gender, her Mexican American identity, and the unique capacities of the photographic medium itself. The exhibition will be on view at UCR ARTS’s California Museum of Photography from September 10, 2022–February 5, 2023.

Fernandez is an artist and educator acclaimed for photographs that examine her connections to her native Los Angeles, the intersections between public and private spaces, personal and historical narratives, exurban and urban spaces, and the cultural border and historical relationships between Mexico and the United States. “Christina’s photography has been well-known throughout her long career, especially by its inclusion in major group exhibitions such as LACMA’s Phantom Sightings and the Smithsonian’s Our America,” says exhibition curator Joanna Szupinska. “In this pivotal moment, we’re happy to present this major solo exhibition that firmly centers her work amidst the complex relationship between postmodern art and the Chicano movement.”

The works in this exhibition span thirty years, bringing together Fernandez’s most important series and illuminating the formal and conceptual threads that connect them. In this comprehensive solo exhibition, Fernandez’s images compel viewers to reconsider history, the border, and the real lives that cross and inhabit them. “Christina’s photography powerfully engages that which has been written out of history or rendered invisible in day-to-day life,” says curatorial advisor Chon Noriega. “She does this not by offering a compensatory image, but by returning the viewer to the act of seeing itself. We see domestic spaces and work sites, but no people; or we encounter centuries of silenced histories in the form of the artist’s own body.”

A reception will take place on October 1, 2022 from 6–9pm. An artist-led gallery tour will take place on December 3, 2022 starting at 11am. Visit the museum website to register and for more information. Admission to both events is free and open to the public.

Catalogue
The catalogue Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures (240 pages, 180 black-and-white and color illustrations, 10.25 x 12 inches, hardcover ISBN: 9780895512017, LCCN: 2022002742, 50 USD) is copublished by UCR ARTS and UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), edited by Rebecca Epstein, CSRC assistant director, designed by Henk van Assen, HvADesign, New York, and distributed by University of Washington Press. Contributors include Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, independent art historian and curator; Julian Myers, independent art historian; Chon A. Noriega, distinguished professor of film, television, and digital media at UCLA; Sally Stein, professor emerita, Department of Art History, University of California, Irvine; Joanna Szupinska, senior curator at the California Museum of Photography at UCR ARTS; Roberto Tejada, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen distinguished professor of English at the University of Houston, and Susanna V. Temkin, curator at El Museo del Barrio.

Credits
Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures is curated by Joanna Szupinska, Senior Curator. Chon Noriega, Distinguished Professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media at UCLA, is curatorial advisor. Exhibition and book design by HvADesign, New York. This exhibition was made possible by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Support for the publication was provided by AltaMed Health Services, Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, and Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. KPCC is media sponsor. After the presentation at UCR ARTS, the exhibition will travel to the Amon Carter Center of American Art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Princeton University Art Museum, San José Museum of Art, and DePaul Art Museum.