AMALIA MESA-BAINS: ARCHAEOLOGY OF MEMORY
El Museo del Barrio presented the exhibition Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory, the first retrospective exhibition by the pioneering artist, curator, and theorist. Born in 1943 to a Mexican immigrant family, Mesa-Bains has been a leading figure in Chicanx art for nearly half a century.
Her practice explores intersectional feminist themes, environmentally centered spirituality, and cultural diversity to counter the racist and gendered erasures of colonial repression. The exhibition features over 40 works including the artist’s large-scale “altar-installations”, as well as prints, artist books, and codices. Anchored by the multi-chapter “Venus Envy” series, Archaeology of Memory is a rare opportunity to view three decades of Mesa-Bains’s genre-defying artworks, many of which are on display together for the first time.
In the mid-’70s, Mesa-Bains’s research in Mexican ancestral traditions led to her groundbreaking reimagination of sacred forms—altares (home altars) and ofrendas (offerings to the dead)—through a contemporary lens as installation art. In the following decades, the artist expanded her altar-based practice, converting domestic furniture such as a desk, table, armoire or vanity into places of devotion and memory. Subsequently, Mesa-Bains began to consider spaces at the intersection of the private and public to explore the lives of female figures from historical and religious contexts, including Mexican nun and intellectual Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and La Virgin de Guadalupe. These sites, which include a library, harem, garden, and laboratory, provide the settings for Mesa-Bains’s archeological inquiry into women’s histories and their colonial erasure.
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Amalia Mesa-Bains, What the River Gave to me, 2002. Mixed media installation including hand-carved and painted sculptural landscape, LED lighting, crushed glass, hand-blown and engraved glass rocks, candles. 40 x 48 x 168 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco. Photo by John Janca.
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Detail, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Queen of the Waters, Mother of the Land of the Dead: Homenaje a Tonatzin/Guadalupe, 1992. Mixed media installation with fabric drape, six jewled clocks, mirror pedestals with grottos, nicho box, found objects, dried flowers, dried pomegranate, potpourri; 120 x 216 x 72 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco.
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Detail, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Queen of the Waters, Mother of the Land of the Dead: Homenaje a Tonatzin/Guadalupe, 1992. Mixed media installation; 120x216x72 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco.
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Amalia Mesa-Bains, Curando in Venus Envy Chapter IV: The Road to Paris and Its Aftermath, The Curandera’s Botanica, 2008/2023. Giclée print; 36 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco.
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Amalia Mesa-Bains, Guadalupe Twins in Venus Envy Chapter III: Cihuatlampa, The Place of the Giant Women, 1997. Giclée print; 24 x 36 inches, Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco.
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Detail, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Venus Envy II: The Virgin's Garden, 1994. Mixed media installation; 180 × 120 x 72 inches. Courtesy of the artist, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Photograph by Daria Lugina.
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Installation view, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Cihuateotl with Mirror in Private Landscapes and Public Territories, 1998-2011. Mixed media installation including mirror, woven rug created by Mallory Zondag, and moss-covered Styrofoam figure; 138 x 144 x 49 inches. Courtesy of the artist, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Photograph by Daria Lugina.
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Detail, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Venus Envy Chapter I: First Holy Communion, Moments Before the End, 1993/2022. Mixed media installation with fabric, photographs, clothing, found objects, mementos, mirrors, found furniture, sand, dried petals, candles, laser prints on wall, pearls, and found images. Courtesy of the artist, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Photograph by Daria Lugina.
About Amalia Mesa-Bains
Amalia Mesa-Bains’s work is in the collections of leading art institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX ; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; and Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; and has been shown at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico; Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogota, Colombia; Contemporary Exhibition Center of Lyon, France; El Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain; and Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm, Sweden.
She has been the recipient of numerous international awards throughout her career, among them, the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Grant in 1992. She is the first and thus far the only Chicana visual artist bestowed the honor.
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