Tanya Aguiñiga: Open Studio
Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence
November 1, 12:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Main Gallery, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego
Free & Open to the Public! Light catering will be available.
Tanya Aguiñiga was born in 1978 in San Diego, California, and raised in Tijuana, Mexico. An artist and craftsperson, Aguiñiga works with traditional craft materials like natural fibers and collaborates with other artists and activists to create sculptures, installations, performances, and community-based art projects. Drawing on her upbringing as a binational citizen, who crossed the border daily from Tijuana to San Diego for school, Aguiñiga’s work speaks of the artist’s experience of her divided identity and aspires to tell the larger and often invisible stories of the transnational community. She founded AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides), an ongoing series of projects that provides a platform for binational artists. She was recently awarded the Latinx Art Forum: Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022), Heinz Award (2021), and an Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities (2018). Her work is in the collection of the Hammer Museum, LACMA, Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt and Renwick Museums, and the Museum of Art and Design among others.
The Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence Endowment was established in 2016 to extend Martha Longenecker-Roth's legacy as an artist and educator. In the spirit of her historic impact on the visual arts in both local and global communities, this endowment brings to the Visual Arts Department of UC San Diego artists of national and international stature who will inspire our students to broaden the scope, appeal, and range of art as well as incite exchange with the faculty, the campus community and local artists and audiences.
This program celebrates the life and legacy of Martha Longenecker-Roth, and her historic impact on the visual arts in San Diego and beyond. Martha’s passionate commitment to meaningful cross-cultural exchange, long before it became widely fashionable, led her to found the Mingei Art Museum and established its permanent home in San Diego’s Balboa Park. The stated mission of the museum – to bring the “art of the world, art of the people” to everyone – came from Martha’s own lived experience.
Through the Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence program, the vision of art, culture and the world so dear to Martha will make a lasting impact on interdisciplinary art education in the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego. As a lifelong learner, Martha Longenecker-Roth regularly attended exhibitions and lectures organized by and for UC San Diego faculty and students. She was fascinated by technology new and old, and believed in the importance of interdisciplinary education. Thus, it is our honor to host the residency program which will bring to campus artists whose practices are grounded in an understanding of the power of art to connect diverse peoples. It is toward this commitment to diverse traditions and cultural interconnectedness that the Longenecker-Roth Artist in Residence program is founded and inspired through the impact made to the visual arts through the life of Martha Longenecker-Roth.