CalArts alumni and faculty are among the artists featured in Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966–2026, now on view at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, California.
Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966–2026 is described as the first major survey to explore the evolution of Chicana/o/x lens-based practices across six decades. Curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, the exhibition features 150 works by nearly 50 U.S. Chicana/o/x artists and traces photography’s role from its activist roots in the 1960s to contemporary expressions today.
Among the artists featured are: Christina Fernández (Art MFA 96), Rubén Ortiz-Torres (Art MFA 92), Christopher A. Velasco (Art BFA 11), and CalArts faculty member Harry Gamboa Jr.
Christina Fernández (Art MFA 96)
Working with distinct approaches to the photographic medium, Christina Fernandez has examined such themes as migration, labor, urban space, and personal history. Her projects weave family narratives with social and spatial dynamics, cementing her role in shaping contemporary Chicana/o/x image making. Her survey Multiple Exposures, organized by the California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside, traveled nationally. She is a graduate of UCLA and CalArts.
Rubén Ortiz-Torres (Art MFA 92)
Rubén Ortiz-Torres is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans photography, video, sculpture, and customized objects. His cross-border practice reframes globalization, hybridity, and subcultures, making him a key voice in contemporary conceptual art. He has had more than 25 solo exhibitions, including recent presentations at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, and the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City. He is a professor in the Department of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego.
Christopher A. Velasco (Art BFA 11)
Christopher Anthony Velasco is a photographer and performance artist whose work explores the queer and brown body. Using staged self-portraiture, horror, and camp aesthetics, he interrogates identity and representation. A graduate of CalArts and University of California Santa Barbara, he has exhibited at venues including the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. Velasco’s work is in the J. Paul Getty Museum and AltaMed Art Collection.
Harry Gamboa Jr.
Harry Gamboa Jr. is an artist, essayist, and performance artist who blends activism and conceptual practices in work that has included staged photographs and collaborative performances. He cofounded the artists’ group Asco (1972–1987) and founded and directed the performance troupe Virtual Vérité (2005–2017). Gamboa’s portrait series Chicano Male Unbonded, begun in 1991, focuses on the experience of Chicano men in Los Angeles. Gamboa has exhibited widely, including at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Autry Museum of the American West, all in Los Angeles, and in the Biennial of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He is a longtime faculty member at CalArts.
Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966–2026 is on view at The Cheech through Sept. 6. The Archive, a corresponding exhibition, is also open in the Members Gallery at the Riverside Art Museum’s historic Julia Morgan Building through July 5. Following its Riverside debut, the exhibition will embark on a national tour and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog distributed by University of Washington Press.
To learn more, go to the Riverside Art Museum’s website.
By Orianna Reid and Tim Hammill
