UCR ARTS has an approved $50,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support “Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures,” an upcoming exhibition featuring the work of Los Angeles-based photographer Christina Fernandez. 

This is among 1,248 projects across the United States totaling more than $28.8 million selected to receive this first round of fiscal year 2022 funding in the Grants for Arts Projects category. Recipients were announced by the National Endowment for the Arts, or NEA, on Jan. 11.

In her work Fernandez often captures scenes of Mexican American life, labor, gender, migration, and identity. Her photography also carries social and political connotations. The exhibition will span over three decades of the artist’s practice. “Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures” is organized by UCR ARTS and curated by Joanna Szupinska, senior curator at the California Museum of Photography at UCR ARTS. It will be on view at the California Museum of Photography Sept. 10, 2022-Feb. 5, 2023. 

“Christina’s work is deeply informed by postmodernism in art and her political formation in the Chicano Movement,” said Szupinska, who is working with curatorial and editorial advisor Chon Noriega, distinguished professor of Film, Television, and Digital Media at UCLA. “The exhibition examines how these forces come together in her practice. This award from the NEA is a wonderful imprimatur for the exhibition. Christina’s work is so deserving of the recognition, and the award will greatly contribute to the success of our exhibition and publication.”

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of the first monograph devoted to Fernandez’s work. Featuring six essays by art historians and scholars of Latinx Studies, as well as an extensive interview with the artist, the book will trace the development of Fernandez’s work over the last three decades. This heavily illustrated volume will be co-published by the California Museum of Photography at UCR ARTS and the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA in fall 2022.

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects like this one from UCR ARTS that help support the community’s creative economy,” NEA Acting Chair Ann Eilers said. “UCR ARTS is among the arts organizations nationwide that are using the arts as a source of strength, a path to well-being, and providing access and opportunity for people to connect and find joy through the arts.”

“We are honored that another one of our original curatorial projects is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts,” said UCR ARTS director Sheila Bergman. 

“Christina Fernandez: Multiple Exposures” will feature several major bodies of the artist’s work, including “María’s Great Expedition” (1995-96) and “Lavanderia” (2002), alongside projects that will become better known including “Untitled Multiple Exposures” (1999) and “Sereno” (2006-10). Following its run at the California Museum of Photography, the exhibition will travel to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Texas; the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona; the Princeton University Art Museum in New Jersey; the San José Museum of Art in California; and the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago.

“Christina’s photography has been well-known throughout her career, especially through its inclusion in major group exhibitions such as LACMA’s 'Phantom Sightings' and the Smithsonian’s 'Our America,'" Szupinska said. “However, her work has yet to be the subject of a major solo exhibition. I’m honored that she agreed to embark on organizing this survey together for the California Museum of Photography.” 

Find more information about UCR ARTS at ucrarts.ucr.edu.