(Updated May 15, 2024): From June 7 through September 22, 2024, the San José Museum of Art (SJMA) will present Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures. This extensive survey of Fernandez’s work invites audiences to reconsider history, borders, and the lives that cross and inhabit both. The exhibition features Fernandez’s signature bodies of work that trace her conceptual practice over three decades, demonstrating how she has connected aesthetic inquiry with political commitment.

“Fernandez’s early experiences with the Chicano Movement made her more sensitive to her own ancestry as a Mexican American and deeply influenced the development and trajectory of her practice,”said Juan Omar Rodriguez, assistant curator at SJMA. “Her work attends to narratives that are often written out of history. Christina's conceptual approach to storytelling invites us to acknowledge other stories—of laborers, path breakers, and people in precarious conditions—in the spaces we move through."

“We are honored to bring Fernandez’s work to Bay Area audiences. She is a crucially important California artist who takes on timely topics such as migration, labor, and identity that reflect the lived experiences of SJMA’s community and the broader region, said S. Sayre Batton, Oshman Executive Director at SJMA.

A key highlight of the exhibition will be the installation Untitled Farmworkers (1989/1994/2024). This work connects Fernandez’s practice with the agricultural history of Silicon Valley and the role of San José as the training ground for Cesar Chavez's organizing with the United Farm Workers. Fernandez first staged Untitled Farmworkers as a performance in 1989 as an undergraduate at UCLA. The work consisted of manually typed index cards with the names of farmworkers, listing injuries and deaths from machinery accidents, hazardous working conditions, punishment for protests and disputes, police beatings, lack of medical treatment, and pesticide poisoning. The work was iterated into a grid of 54 photographs in 1994, with each photograph featuring the hand of Fernandez’s brother planting each of the index cards from the 1989 performance into soil. The installation from the performance and photographic grid were combined as one installation in 2022 and will be updated again at SJMA to include cards with information that highlights the intersections between labor, climate change, and the pandemic.

The exhibition also includes many of Fernandez’s other highly recognizable works that convey her dedication to her family and boarder community. María’s Great Expedition (1995–96) re-stages key moments in the life of the artist’s maternal great-grandmother, María Gonzales. In this installation Fernandez poses as her ancestor, creating compositions that recall the history of photography: from Hollywood glamour, to American Depression-era documentary, to the color snapshot. In “Sereno” (2006–10) she features photographs produced during daily walks with her young son around their predominantly Latinx neighborhood and considers creative resilience, urban sprawl, leisure, economic mobility, and precarity.

Several works in the exhibition focus on her hometown of Los Angeles. In “Lavanderia” (2002), her most recognizable series, she creates carefully composed color night views into the laundromats of East Los Angeles. Prior to creating “Lavanderia”, she produced “Manuela S-T-I-T-C-H-E-D" (1996–2000), which captures street views of the facades of garment factories. The exhibition also includes “Space Available” (2004) which documents the temporary studio spaces Fernandez rented in Los Angeles and later vacated when she faced hardships.

Fernandez is also interested in portraying the wider artistic community in her work and this is reflected in the exhibition. With “reflect/project(ion)” (2017), she created a series of portraits of her students alongside their own camera equipment, exploring the roles of mentorship and pedagogy in the field of photography. Her series “View from Here” (2017–19) documents the homes of various creatives, including the photographers Laura Aguilar (1959–2018) and Toyo Miyatake (1895–1979).

Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures is organized by UCR ARTS and is curated by Joanna Szupinska, Senior Curator at the California Museum of Photography. Chon Noriega, Distinguished Professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media at UCLA, is curatorial advisor. The presentation of this exhibition at the SJMA is organized by Juan Omar Rodriguez, assistant curator.

 

CHRISTINA FERNANDEZ

Christina Fernandez is a photographer who is widely recognized for staged, black and white self-portraits, as well as her poetic, formally composed, color street scenes. Fernandez was born in 1965 in Los Angeles, where she currently lives and works. She earned a BA at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1989 and an MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 1996. She is an Associate Professor of Photography at Cerritos College, where she has been on faculty since 2000. Her work has been featured in major group exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Self Help Graphics and Art, Los Angeles; and Galería de la Raza, San Francisco; among others. In 2021, Fernandez received the prestigious Latinx Artist Fellowship, an initiative administered by the US Latinx Art Forum and supported by the Mellon Foundation and Ford Foundation. Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures is the first monographic exhibition of her work.

 

PROGRAMS

First Friday: Opening Celebration | Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures
Friday, June 7, 6–9pm • Free 

You’re invited to the opening celebration of Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures, which surveys over three decades of Fernandez’s most important photographic series and installations. Galleries are open late with local musical acts. Stop by El Cafecito by Mezcal Restaurant for a light bite and cash bar. Members are invited to a special reception at 6pm with wine and light bites in the cafe patio. 

 

Spanish Language Led Tours 
Saturday, June 15, 4:30–5:30pm; Saturday, July 20, 12–1pm; and Friday, August 2, 7pm • Free

Experience the dynamic world of Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures on our free Spanish language-led tour! Join SJMA Educator Ruby Morales as she leads you through an immersive experience, weaving together engaging interpretation activities and a hands-on art project inspired by the exhibition. Don't miss out on this wonderful opportunity to explore, learn, and create together 

 

Creative Minds: Christina Fernandez and Rosanna Alvarez 
Friday, August 30, 7pm • Free with museum admission 

For the exhibition Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures, assistant curator Juan Omar Rodriguez will lead a conversation with exhibiting artist Christina Fernandez and writer, educator, and co-founder of Eastside Magazine, Rosanna Alvarez. Fernandez and Alvarez will share their approaches to storytelling and reflect on the politics of attending to our communities, from Los Angeles to the Bay Area. 

SUPPORT

Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures is organized by UCR ARTS and 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, and Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. The San José Museum of Art presentation is made possible in part by lead support from the National Endowment for the Arts and by the SJMA Exhibitions Fund, with generous support from Mr. Cole Harrell and Dr. Tai-Heng Cheng, Brook Hartzell and Tad Freese, and McManis Faulkner. 

Operations and programs at the San José Museum of Art are made possible by principal support from SJMA’s Board of Trustees, a Cultural Affairs Grant from the City of San José, and the Lipman Family Foundation; by lead support from the Adobe Foundation, Toby and Barry Fernald, Brook Hartzell and Tad Freese, the Richard A. Karp Charitable Foundation, Tammy and Tom Kiely, Kimberly and Patrick Lin, Sally Lucas, Yvonne and Mike Nevens, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Skyline Foundation, and the SJMA Director's Council and Council of 100; and with significant endowment support from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and the San José Museum of Art Endowment Fund established by the Knight Foundation at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. 

SAN JOSE MUSEUM OF ART

The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a contemporary art museum dedicated to inclusivity, new thinking, and visionary ideas. Founded in 1969 by artists and community leaders, its dynamic exhibitions, collection, and programs resonate with defining characteristics of San José and the Silicon Valley—from its rich diversity to its hallmark innovative ethos. The Museum offers lifelong learning for school children and their educators, multigenerational families, creative adults, university students and faculty, and community groups. SJMA is committed to being a borderless museum, essential to creative life throughout the diverse communities of San José and beyond. 

SJMA is located on the Plaza de Cesar Chavez at 110 South Market Street in downtown San José, California. The Museum is open Thursday 4–9pm; Friday 11am–9pm; Saturday–Sunday 11am–6pm; and select Monday holidays 11am–6pm. Admission is $15 for adults, $12 for seniors, and free to members, college students, youth and children ages 17 and under, and school teachers (with valid ID). Admission is free from 6–9pm on the first Friday of every month. For up-to-date information, call 408.271.6840 or visit SanJoseMuseumofArt.org.