Mar y Monarcas

UG students Natalia Hernandez & James-Keith Chiswell exhibition

Reception: April 14, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
April 15 - April 18, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Adam D. Kamil Gallery, UC San Diego

Mar y Monarcas is an interdisciplinary joint exhibition of works by Natalia Hernandez and James-Keith Chiswell, including video installation, sculpture, painting, photography, and more. Though we have very separate stories and experiences, we connect through the depth of our emotion, the way we love ourselves and those around us, and how we channel all of that into the art we create.

Natalia Hernandez (They/She/Elle/Ella) is a socially engaged artist born in Mexicali, Baja California and currently based in San Diego/Tijuana Southern California. Hernandez works mainly with Textiles and stretching the limits of the material through burning, bleaching and deconstruction. Their individual works tackle concepts of immigration, education, sexuality, reproductive rights and civil rights. Their work is heavily researched while also deeply involving personal narrative in stories from their youth and present day experiences.

James-Keith Chiswell (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist working in San Diego who works mostly in personal narrative photography and self-reflexive filmmaking. They focus on interpretation and examination of themselves and their navigation of the world, probing their identity, emotions, curiosities, passions, and struggles, as well as their relationship with themselves, religion, and queerness, among other things.

Having collaborated and discussed individual works together, the idea of showing our work together presented a wonderful opportunity to recognize the friendship we have built, the love we hold for each other, and the art we have made as a result. This joint exhibition provides a space for exploration of our separate stories and identities as they intersect and sharing how we see the world around us and each other. The works feature stories of immigration, gender, sexuality and queerness, family, time, control, religion, race, ethnicity, relationships to the body, love, education, language barriers and ourselves, as well as intersections between them all. We will never shy away from a difficult question or conversation, whether it be in or out of our work. It is not our way. Mar y Monarcas will be a celebration of love foremost. Love found in ourselves, our communities, each other, in our friends, in our resilience, in our pain, in the ocean and in the trees, in our creativity and emotions, in collaboration, and in our work.