A pattern, a trace, a portrait:

A pattern, a trace, a portrait: Four Artists from CALA Alliance’s Residency Program showcases new and existing work by Carolina Aranibar-Fernández, Diana Calderón, Estrella Esquilín, and Sam Frésquez. These regional Latinx artists each present discrete installations that weaves together universal themes of memory, loss, and grief while highlighting issues related to place and the destruction of our natural environment. Taken as a whole, A pattern, a trace, a portrait highlights the dichotomy between the most intimate histories and the most global concerns. 

Frésquez and Calderón present installations that unearth personal histories of loss and memory. Frésquez has created an archive of familial records by pairing image and sound. Employing photographic slides and negatives with tender voicemails—portraits of loved ones no longer with us—Frésquez’s installation asks us to recall our own family archives, elevating the quotidian aspects of our lives. Calderón’s project, too, turns to family history, reflecting on loss and grief related to the passing of a family member. With incomplete portraits of the artist’s grandmother pinned to a large-scale mylar book, Calderón’s project is as personal as it is meditative. Each mylar sheet, a blank page, is punctured with a sewing needle, perhaps referencing unsaid words or forgotten thoughts, a trace that the passing of a loved one leaves on us as individuals. 

Aranibar-Fernández and Esquilín’s installations both underscore the destruction of our environment, through natural disasters or manufactured devastation. Aranibar-Fernández weaves together themes of labor, extractivism, feminism, capitalism, and colonialism through a large-scale map that features floral patterned textiles that reference Indigenous women from the artist’s native Bolivia. Esquilín’s accordion-folded cyanotype print reproduces headlines relating to the devastation in Puerto Rico caused by Hurricane María in September 2017. The mass chaos and damage to the island that preceded and followed the Hurricane—including the island’s crumbling infrastructure due to earthquakes, U.S. imperialism, and the debt crisis—manifested in the costliest and most devastating disaster in recorded history. 

CALA Alliance (Celebración Artística de las Américas) is a Latinx arts organization based in Phoenix. CALA Alliance collaborates with artists and arts organizations to nurture artistic talent, focusing on artists from the Latin American diaspora. The organization advances its mission through innovative artist residencies, artist commissions, community workshops, and public programming that position the Metro Phoenix region as a fruitful site that acknowledges and contributes to the promotion of Latinx art throughout the United States.

CALA Alliance and ASU Art Museum work in partnership to achieve their common mission of incubating and accelerating the presence of Latinx art in the United States. Together CALA Alliance and ASUAM promote the exchange of new ideas, perspectives, and experiences among artists, students, and the public through various programs, especially those that educate and inspire the public about the richness of the Latinx cultural heritage.

A pattern, a trace, a portrait: Four artists from CALA Alliance’s Residency Program is organized by Alana Hernandez, Executive Director & Curator of CALA Alliance and made possible by gifts to CALA Alliance’s general operating fund and a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. This exhibition is also generously supported by members of ASU Art Museum’s Board and Councils.