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.

José Hugo Sánchez: Amoxtlis

June 6, 2026 – August 16, 2026

Amoxtlis—the Nahuatl word for “codices”—centers Sánchez’s large-scale printmaking practice, which draws from the visual language of Mesoamerican codices while engaging the cultural and political conditions of the U.S.–Mexico border.

At the heart of the installation is Codex Tonalpohualli, a series of towering printed banners that reference the twenty day signs of the divinatory calendar of the sun. In this calendar, time unfolds through cycles of thirteen days associated with birth and renewal. Sánchez translates this structure into an immersive environment: carved wooden codices are printed in red and black ink on monumental sheets of paper measuring sixteen feet high. Suspended from ceiling to floor, the banners surround the viewer, creating a dense vertical landscape that evokes a forest of signs and symbols.

The exhibition also includes video work, eight large-scale carved wooden sculptures, and a mural created on the gallery wall during the exhibition’s run. These elements extend Sánchez’s exploration of narrative image-making across multiple forms, from print and sculpture to moving image and architectural intervention. Throughout the installation, references to popular culture intersect with mythic imagery and historical forms of knowledge transmission.

Sánchez describes his work as “pop-multiculture,” a hybrid language shaped by the movement of people, images, and ideas across borders. Working across printmaking, sculpture, drawing, performance, and graphic design, he brings together references from pre-Columbian codices, contemporary Chicano visual culture, and mass media. His imagery reflects the layered histories that connect Mexico and the United States, while addressing the political and human realities that define the border today.