Field Notes on Memory

June 6 – August 16, 2026

Field Notes on Memory brings together the work of 2025–26 Artists-in-Residence Farshid Bazmandegan, Tony M. Bingham, and Helena Westra in an exhibition exploring memory, land, and its histories through installation, sculpture, photography, and sound. 

Developed through the Museum’s In Studio Artist Residency program, the exhibition approaches landscape as a site where memory takes shape through earth, architecture, domestic objects, sound, and archival research. The artists draw from family histories, overlooked narratives, ancestral practices, and experiences of migration and exile, creating environments where personal memory and collective history remain closely intertwined.

Farshid Bazmandegan’s installation reflects on displacement and collective mourning through sculptural forms, video, and references to Persian cultural traditions informed by memories of Iran and experiences of forced migration. Tony M. Bingham’s work traces overlooked African American histories at the start of the Gold Rush in Julian, California, through pinhole photography, sound, found materials, and sculptural installations informed by local archives and oral histories. Working with clay, soil, and natural materials, Helena Westra draws from ancestral craft traditions and family histories connected to Okinawa.

Together, the works in Field Notes on Memory consider artistic practice as a process of listening, recording, tracing, and foregrounding the ways memory continues to reside within landscapes.