About the Event

Artists Christina Fernandez, Ammi Robles Lizarraga, and Amanda Mollindo discuss the role of Chicanx and Latinx photography in contemporary art, its potentiality as a vehicle for storytelling and a means of visualizing the complexities of identity, and its continued importance in the documentation and dialogue of social and cultural issues. This conversation will be preceded by a special performance in the gallery space, organized by artist Yvonne Montoya and responding to themes centered in the exhibition.  

Christina Fernandez 

Christina Fernandez is a Los Angeles–based artist who has spent more than three decades conducting rich explorations of migration, labor, gender, her Mexican American identity, and the capacities of photography itself. Working in a documentary format, her urban and landscape photography conveys social and political commentaries regarding her immediate environment. Fernandez earned a master of fine arts at the California Institute of the Arts and is an associate professor at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California, where she has been on faculty since 2001. The California Museum of Photography in Riverside, California, has organized the exhibition Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures, a 30-year survey of her work, now on view at SMoCA.  

Artist Website: https://galleryluisotti.com/artists/christina-fernandez/

Ammi Robles 

Ammi Robles is a visual artist and language interpreter raised in the border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico. A photographer, independent filmmaker, performer, and organizer, Robles is also a member and co-founder of a group of women artists from Sonora and Arizona called Las Fronterizas. For Robles, the documentation in her projects is done to preserve the history of the border town where she lives. She wants her work to accurately represent the border culture with which she grew up. Robles has been exploring analog photography and introducing film aesthetics into her art by combining it with contemporary situations to evoke feelings of nostalgia, warmth, and border pride.  

Artist Website: https://www.ammirobles.com/

Amanda Mollindo 

Amanda Mollindo is a Mexican American artist who grew up in southern Arizona. She uses photography to connect personal experiences to the social conditions that impact us collectively. Mollindo closely collaborates with community advocates and organizations to uplift voices in the margins through image-making, storytelling, and design. While her creative work currently focuses on reproductive justice, she has explored themes of family, place, and bodily autonomy since she was first introduced to photography as an art form in 2009. Mollindo received a bachelor of fine arts in photography at Arizona State University in 2015 and currently lives in Phoenix.  

Artist Website: https://www.mollindo.com/

Yvonne Montoya 

Yvonne Montoya is a mother, dancemaker, binational artist, thought leader, writer, speaker, and the founding director of Safos Dance Theatre. Based in Tucson and originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, her work is grounded in and inspired by the landscapes, languages, cultures, and aesthetics of the U.S. Southwest. Montoya is a process-based dancemaker who creates low-tech, site-specific, and site-adaptive pieces for nontraditional dance spaces. In addition to being the founding director, Montoya is the lead choreographer for Safos Dance Theatre. She is currently working on Stories from Home, a series of dances based on her family’s oral histories.  

Artist Website: https://www.yvonnemontoya.co/