The Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona is presenting “Chicana Photographers LA!,” an exhibition featuring five Chicana artists from Los Angeles, opening Sept. 28.
The photographers’ work focuses on themes such as families, neighborhoods, sacred spaces, and body and identity politics. Featuring more than 40 photographs created between the early 1980s and 2024, the exhibition explores domestic and environmental changes in the artists’ communities, including cultural, demographic, and diasporic shifts, as well as the impact of gentrification on Chicanx neighborhoods.
The exhibition includes nine prints from Christina Fernandez’s Suburban Nightscapes, Sandra de la Loza’s depictions of neighborhood archaeological ruins, and biographical and autobiographical portraits by Laura Aguilar (1959–2018), Amina Cruz, and Star Montana.
Historical importance of women photographers
“We’re thrilled curator Sybil Venegas accepted our invitation to spotlight Chicanx photography this fall at the Center for Creative Photography,” said Todd J. Tubutis, CCP director. “Chicana Photographers LA!” not only underscores the historical importance of women photographers from Los Angeles’ Eastside communities, it also honors the legacy of Louis Carlos Bernal, a key figure in Chicanx photography.”
“Chicana Photographers LA!”
Opens Saturday, Sept. 28
On view Wednesday-Saturdays
Through Feb. 15, 2025
Artist Panel / Opening Reception
Saturday, Sept. 28
Artist Panel, 2-3p
Reception, 3-5p
Poet Raquel Gutierrez
“Chicana Photographers LA! also features renowned queer Chicanx poet Raquel Gutierrez with a floor-to-ceiling poetry installation inspired by the photographers,” said Denisse Brito, CCP’s learning and engagement manager at the Center for Creative Photography. “Additionally, Sandra de la Loza will present two ‘walking letter’ video works, in which she responds to a friend in Buenos Aires about what makes Los Angeles unique, along with examples of mail art she created in the form of postcards. We hope this will spark conversations among viewers about the possibilities of visual art and how one describes a sense of place through different media.”
Meet the artists of “Chicana Photographers LA!”
Laura Aguilar
Aguilar was an American photographer (1959-2018). Aguilar, of native Californio, Mexican and Irish descent, was born in San Gabriel, California and grew up in the San Gabriel valley. After studying photography at East Los Angeles College, her photographic production was characterized by portraits of diverse communities in the Los Angeles area, self-portraits, and later, nude self-portraits in nature. Ahead of her time, Aguilar’s late 20th century and early millennium photography first expose the visibility of underrepresented and marginalized women and communities, then celebrate them. Artist Website
“Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature” is on view in the CCP Norton Photography Galleries at the Phoenix Art Museum.
Amina Cruz
Cruz was born and lives in Los Angeles. She hitchhiked around the country before deciding to move to New York City, where she earned her BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design. She also holds an MFA from UCLA. Her interests are based in queer culture, film/analog photography, and exploring the space between transformation and identity. Her current work explores the outsider cultures of brown queer punks throughout the Americas. Artist Website
Christina Fernandez
Fernandez, a Los Angeles–based artist, has spent over three decades conducting rich explorations of migration, labor, gender, her Mexican American identity, and the capacities of photography itself. Fernandez’s work has been widely exhibited, published and collected by museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Smithsonian Museum of American Art and others. She has worked on numerous curatorial projects and exhibited her work internationally. In 2021, Fernandez was one of the first artists honored with the prestigious Latinx Artist Fellowship, an initiative of the US Latinx Art Forum. Her book, “Multiple Exposures,” which examines her work since the late 1980s, won the silver medal in ‘Best Art Books’ from the 2023 International Latino Book Awards.
Since 2000, she has taught at Cerritos College, a majority Latinx community college, where she is an associate professor and co-chair of the photography department. Artist Images
Sandra de la Loza
Sandra de la Loza’s artistic practice investigates the underlayers of our present landscape as a means to open portals and envision future worlds through the exercise of collective memory and political imagination. Working as a performative archivist, she moves critically from and in between the institutional and the social, occupying a variety of sites to interrogate underlying power dynamics and knowledge production through history and memory. Producing video/film, photography, socially engaged performances and events, public interventions and immersive installations, her work has been exhibited in major museums, alternative art spaces and community centers within the United States, Latin America and Europe. She has received awards from the Fellows of Contemporary Art, Art Matters, the City of Los Angeles, the Center for Community Innovation, the California Community Foundation, and the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. Artist Website
Star Montana
Star Montana is a photo-based artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She was born and raised in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles, which is predominantly Mexican American and serves as the backdrop to much of her work. Her work has recently been exhibited at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes; Occidental College; The Mexican Center for Culture and Cinematic Arts at the Mexican Consulate General of Mexico; The Main Museum; Ballroom Marfa; and Vincent Price Art Museum. Montana was artist-in-residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in 2020. She holds a MFA in Art from the University of Southern California, a BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, and an AA in Photography from East Los Angeles College. Artist Website.