FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 12, 2023
MEDIA CONTACT: Brian Passey | [email protected] | 480-874-4626
SMoCA to exhibit Christina Fernandez photography
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) will present a landmark exhibition surveying the work of Christina Fernandez from Sept. 16, 2023, through Jan. 7, 2024.
The crucially important Los Angeles-based artist has spent 30 years in a rich exploration of migration, labor, gender, her Mexican American identity and the unique capacities of the photographic medium itself. Selections from her life’s work were brought together by Joanna Szupinska, senior curator at the California Museum of Photography, as the exhibition “Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures.”
“Over the years, and through a variety of photographic genres, Fernandez returns to central concerns like labor, womanhood and what it means to be an artist and teacher,” Szupinska said. “These manifest as both portraits and cityscapes or landscapes and together stand to inspire the viewer to contemplate multiplicities of identity in the context of our daily lives.”
“Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures” brings together the artist’s most important bodies of works for the first time, allowing audiences to discover the threads that connect them, both formal and conceptual. The exhibition draws from the series “Lavanderia,” “Manuela S-T-I-T-C-H-E-D,” “Untitled Multiple Exposures” and “View from Here.”
“My work plays with the conventions of photography and is carefully crafted to express my interest and concern in regard to women’s stories and histories, immigration, labor and motherhood,” Fernandez said.
Through work that spans decades, Fernandez compels her viewers to reconsider history, the border and the real lives that cross and inhabit them. SMoCA’s location in a border state and its own history in exhibiting work that examines life along the border positions the museum as an ideal location for an exhibition of Fernandez’s work.
Keshia Turley, assistant curator at SMoCA, organized the museum’s version of the exhibition. Turley said it is her hope that visitors will find various ways to connect with the stories — often untold and unseen — that Fernandez has brought forward in her work.
“There are multiple ways to engage with the artwork in the exhibition, and I hope that allows people the opportunity to find the connecting lines in her work that should speak to us all,” Turley said.
SMoCA — named “Best Museum” by the Phoenix New Times in the 2022 Best of Phoenix awards — is located at 7374 E. Second St., Scottsdale, Arizona 85251. It is open Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Visit SMoCA.org for information.
Admission is $10–$12 for non-members; $7–$9 for students, seniors (65+) and veterans; and free for Scottsdale Arts ONE Members, healthcare workers, first responders, and patrons 18 and younger. Admission to the museum is pay-what-you-wish every Thursday and every second Saturday of the month. Timed-entry tickets are required. Save time and money by booking online at SMoCA.org.
“Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures” is organized by UCR ARTS and curated by Joanna Szupinska, senior curator at the California Museum of Photography. The SMoCA presentation of the exhibition is organized by Keshia Turley, curatorial assistant. Chon Noriega, Distinguished Professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media at University of California, Los Angeles was curatorial advisor. Major support provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional publication support provided by AltaMed Health Services and Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.