Lo que me queda de tu amor (What’s left of your love for me) Curated by Francis Almendárez & Mary Montenegro

Lo que me queda de tu amor (What’s Left of Your Love for Me)
Curated by Francis Almendárez and Mary Montenegro
Cecily E. Horton Gallery
September 17 – December 10, 2022

Lo que me queda de tu amor (What’s Left of Your Love for Me) considers how artists from distinct backgrounds carry and pass on personal, familial, cultural, and communal histories from one generation to another. Mainstream American culture traditionally values and presents these stories differently from the community members themselves. Curated by Francis Almendárez and Mary Montenegro, this exhibition highlights how artists use, contest, and rework traditional notions of an archive.

Through movement, text, sound, performance and improvisation, these artists conjure intergenerational and cultural histories. In doing so, they reflect how their respective cultures and histories have been maintained and their communities have thrived, despite the odds against them. Collectively, these works question the accessibility of archives, since those who have historically shared them are rarely from the communities that produced them.

The title of this exhibition is inspired by Selena’s Fotos y Recuerdos (Pictures and Memories), with lyrics that consider memory, loss, and love. While on view, this exhibition will evolve, with artists  activating, modifying, and responding to  their work. Ultimately, Lo que me queda de tu amor reconsiders its own format and function as an exhibition to challenge who and what archives traditionally serve. A written response to the exhibit will be given by Dr. Stalina Villarreal as both object and performance.

Featured Images, left to right:
Brandon Tho Harris, Installation detail of Mẹ Việt Nam ơi, Chúng Con Vẫn Còn đây (Oh Mother Vietnam, We Are Still Here) (2021). Image courtesy of Case and Point Media.
Jessica Carolina Gonzalez, Machete, Pando, Corbo, Cuma, Guarizama (2018), Performance, machete, charcoal, and canvas. Image courtesy of the artist.
Bennie Flores Ansell, Installation view of Manolo Blahnik Collection from Neiman Marcus (2016), Dimensions variable, Hand cut inkjet transparency film, butterfly collection pins, and light. Image courtesy of the artist.
Sindhu Thirumalaisamy, Video still from oon (2019), Digital video, 5:00 Total Running Time, Commissioned by Coaxial Arts Foundation for Current:LA (Food). Image courtesy of the artist.
Sonia Flores, Nebula I, partial panel from “Ascendants from the Future” (2022), Dimensions variable, fibers and wood. Image courtesy of Ronald L. Jones.
Liyen Chong, Note and Objects from a Personal Archive (1982- Present), Dimensions variable, printed photos, books, and paper. Image courtesy of Ronald L. Jones.
Julia Barbosa Landois, Video stills from Star-Crossed II (2013), Digital video, 6:30 Total Running Time. Image courtesy of the artist.
Matt Manalo, Exotification of a Marked Skin (2020), 9×4 inches, Paper, encaustic wax, gel medium, rattan, and found hand drum. Image courtesy of the artist.
Jamie Robertson, video still from Flat Red (2019), Digital video, 4:22 total running time. Image courtesy of the artist.
Exhibition space in Cecily E. Horton Gallery. Image courtesy of Ronald L. Jones.

Anthony Almendárez
Emily Areta
JB Baladad
Julia Barbosa Landois
Liyen Chong
Sonia Flores
Bennie Flores Ansell
Xavier Gilmore
Jessica Carolina González
Brandon Tho Harris
Matt Manalo
Gabriel Martinez
Stephanie Concepcion Ramirez
Jamie Robertson
Andre Samano
Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson
Sindhu Thirumalaisamy
Erick Zambrano

Francis Almendárez is an artist, filmmaker, and educator from Los Angeles, CA. His work takes on many different forms including collaborations, performances, screenings, workshops, and exhibitions that have been presented in museum, university, arts nonprofit, artist-run, virtual, and DIY spaces both nationally and internationally. Through the merging of history, autoethnography, and cultural production, his works offer ways to navigate and reconcile intergenerational trauma and reclaim diasporic identities. Writing on his work has been featured in Moving Image Art London, D Magazine, and The Invisible Archive among many other publications. He has also contributed images, interviews, and texts to publications including Burnaway Magazine, Strange Fire Collective, and La Horchata Zine. Almendárez received his MFA in Fine Art (with Distinction) from Goldsmiths, University of London, and his BFA in Sculpture/New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design.

Mary Montenegro is an art historian and curator whose expertise is on Philippine post-colonial history. Born in the Philippines, raised in Qatar, and now residing in Houston, TX, she explores different ways in which Philippine history is told, fostered, and collected through her fellow Filipino migrant workers. She is a member of the Filipinx Artists of Houston, where she continues to learn about shifting cultural identity formations and document the many untold histories of her people through shared diasporic experiences. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Interior Design at the De La Salle-College of St. Benilde in Manila, Philippines in 2017. Here, she conducted research on Filipino residential spaces and how Filipino diaspora and migration culture has influenced placemaking. In 2019, she earned her MA in Art History at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Specializing in post-colonial and feminist studies. Montenegro is the recipient of SCAD Art History Department’s Outstanding Thesis Award for her formative graduate research, “Recontextualizing the Twentieth Century Photographs of Manila Carnival Queens,” where she identified the first Filipina beauty queens from 1908–1930s and their embodiment of precolonial matriarchal power through the continued activism observed in their portrait photographs.

Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal lives as a rhyming-slogan creative activist. She is a Generation 1.5 poet (mexicanx and Xicanx), an essayist, a translator, a sonic-improv collaborator, and an assistant professor of Creative Writing. Her debut hybrid collection Watcha is forthcoming from Deep Vellum Publishing. Her poetry can be found in the Rio Grande Review, Texas Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Acentos Review, Defunkt Magazine, and elsewhere. She has published translations of poetry, including Enigmas by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Señal: a project of Libros Antena Books, BOMB, and Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015), Photograms of My Conceptual Heart, Absolutely Blind by Minerva Reynosa (Cardboard House Press, 2016), Kilimanjaro by Maricela Guerrero (Cardboard House Press, 2018), and Postcards in Braille by Sergio Pérez Torres (Nueva York Poetry Press, 2021). She is the recipient of the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry.

This project is made possible with the support from The Idea Fund. The Idea Fund is a re-granting program administered by DiverseWorks, Aurora Picture Show, and Project Row Houses and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.