Fort Worth, TX, June 15, 2022—The Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) announced today the presentation of Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures. The exhibition, organized by the California Museum of Photography at UCR ARTS, Riverside, CA, is 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. On view March 12 through July 9, 2023, the exhibition firmly centers Fernandez’s work within contemporaneous movements including postmodernism and the Chicano movement.

“The Carter is pleased to present the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the work of photographer Christina Fernandez,” stated Andrew J. Walker, Executive Director. “Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures continues the Carter’s commitment to showcasing the work of living artists while providing a more comprehensive view of American creativity.”

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. The artworks showcased in the exhibition span 30 years, 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 lives that cross and inhabit them.

“Although it stretches back decades, Fernandez’s work is ever more urgent and relevant,” said Kristen Gaylord, Associate Curator of Photographs. “Her explorations of the joy and precarity of living a creative life; the interweaving of familial, social, and political histories; and the beauty found in her Los Angeles Latino/a/x neighborhood will be both familiar and revelatory to our audiences.”

The exhibition includes Fernandez’s most important series, including:

• María’s Great Expedition (1995–96): an installation that chronicles key moments in the life of the artist’s maternal great-grandmother, María Gonzales, through Fernandez posing as the subject in photographs that mimic the history of photography
• Manuela S-T-I-T-C-H-E-D (1996–2000): a series of urban views depicting the facades of Los Angeles garment factories
• Untitled Multiple Exposures (1999): a series that combines the artist’s self-portraits with historic images by Mexican photographers and filmmakers
• Lavanderia (2002–03): Fernandez’s most recognizable series, one image of which was recently acquired by the Carter, that comprises carefully composed color night views into laundromats on Los Angeles’s Eastside
• Space Available (2004): photographs of temporary studio spaces Fernandez rented and later vacated when faced with financial or personal hardship
• Sereno (2006–10): a series created during the years when Fernandez, as the mother of a young child, evolved her art making into a peripatetic practice, making photographs during daily walks with her son around their neighborhood
• reflect/project(ion) (2017): a series of studied portraits of Fernandez’s photography students alongside their own camera equipment
• View from Here (2017–19): a series of windows documented in the homes of various creative people, including photographers Laura Aguilar and Tōyō Miyatake, and sculptor Noah Purifoy

Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures is organized by UCR ARTS and is curated by Joanna Szupinska, Senior Curator at the California Museum of Photography at UCR ARTS. Chon A. Noriega, Distinguished Professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media at UCLA, is curatorial advisor. The 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 accompanying publication was provided by AltaMed Health Services, Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, and Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.

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) is copublished by UCR ARTS and UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), edited by Rebecca Epstein, Assistant Director at CSRC, 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 Emeritus of Art History & Film and Media Studies, 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.

About Christina Fernandez

Fernandez was born in Los Angeles in 1965. She earned her BA at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1989 and her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 1996. Since 2000 she has taught at Cerritos College, a majority Latinx community college, where she is an Associate Professor and was chair of the art department in 2017–20.

Fernandez’s projects have been featured in major exhibitions including Home—So Different, So Appealing (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017); Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement (LACMA, 2008); East of the River: Chicano Art Collectors Anonymous (Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2000); Flight Patterns (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2000); and InSite (San Diego and Tijuana, 1997). Her work has also been exhibited at The Getty Center, Los Angeles; Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Bronx Museum, New York; El Paso Museum of Art, Texas; Palm Springs Art Museum; Self Help Graphics & Art, Los Angeles; and Galería de la Raza, San Francisco, among other venues. Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures is the first major monographic museum exhibition of her work.

Image: Christina Fernandez, Lavanderia #1, 2002, archival pigment print, from the series Lavanderia, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Luisotti, Los Angeles © Christina Fernandez

About the Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Located in the heart of Fort Worth’s Cultural District, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) is a dynamic cultural resource that provides unique access and insight into the history and future of American creativity through its expansive exhibitions and programming. The Carter’s preeminent collection includes masterworks by legendary American artists such as Ruth Asawa, Alexander Calder, Frederic Church, Stuart Davis, Robert Duncanson, Thomas Eakins, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, and John Singer Sargent, as well as one of the country’s foremost repositories of American photography. In addition to its innovative exhibition program and engagement with artists working today, the Museum’s premier primary research collection and leading conservation program make it a must-see destination for art lovers and scholars of all ages nationwide. Admission is always free. To learn more about the Carter, visit cartermuseum.org.