From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments
On view: August 9, 2024 - February 23, 2025
Public reception: Sunday, September 8, 2024, from 1:00-3:30 PM
Gallery Hours: Fridays, 2:00 to 6:00 pm, Sat/Sun, 1:00 to 5:00 pm
Armory Center for the Arts is pleased to present From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments, the Armory’s contribution to Getty's PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative. Rooted in the idea of the seed as a mechanism for great change, the From the Ground Up exhibition will feature work by 16 contemporary artists and artist teams who explore histories of contested spaces, pre-colonial understandings of nature, and ancient and contemporary technologies as they imagine alternative, sustainable futures. The artists and projects included in the exhibition are: Charmaine Bee; Nikesha Breeze; Carl Cheng; Olivia Chumacero; Beatriz Cortez; Mercedes Dorame; Aroussiak Gabrielian; iris yirei hu; Lez Bats (Sandra de la Loza and Jess Gudiel); Malaqatel Ija, Semillas Viajeras, Seed Travels; Hillary Mushkin; Vick Quezada; Sarah Rosalena; Enid Baxter Ryce; Cielo Saucedo; and Marcus Zúñiga. From the Ground Up is organized by Irene Georgia Tsatsos, guest curator and former Armory Director of Exhibition Programs / Chief Curator.
About the Exhibition
What can seeds tell us about the future? Seeds and the plants that grow from them have provided us with food, clothing, shelter, and medicine for millennia. For just as long, humans have used sciences, technologies, myths, and art to peer into an imagined future. As we stare out toward our own future, one threatened by climate change and complicated by social unrest, the From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments exhibition looks to the seed—such as those seeds that lie at the bottom of the forest floor waiting for the cyclical fire season that promotes new growth and diversity to sprout—for inspiration and guidance on how to navigate current and coming hostile environments.
From the Ground Up presents works by 16 contemporary artists and artist teams who explore diverse technologies, histories of contested spaces, and traditional understandings of nature as they imagine alternative, sustainable futures. The exhibition bridges familiar distinctions between art and science while exploring practices and traditions that predate contemporary understandings of those disciplines. In this exhibition, artworks, knowledge traditions, and histories converge in space and across time.
Presented in the Armory’s Caldwell Gallery, the exhibition features many new works and installations presented to the public for the first time.
The exhibition will extend onto the Armory's front garden, where Malaqatel Ija, Semillas Viajeras, Seed Travels—an expansive collective made up of Indigenous farmers, plantworkers, and artists from Guatemala, the Southwest, and Northern California—will transform the area into a fiery-red and golden field of amaranth, an edible seed and Mesoamerican food staple.
From the Ground Up offers information, beauty, a sense of urgency, and tools for action. The exhibition functions as a site for learning, contemplation, and social space informed by contemporary art practices that involve the reclamation of plants for ritual, performance, and object-making; speculative futurisms, storytelling, and direct-action movements; and botanical science.
Education and Public Programs
The themes and ideas explored in the From the Ground Up exhibition will be expanded on through a series of programs for diverse audiences that will take place at the Armory and partner sites during the exhibition's run. These programs include those listed below and more to be announced at a later date.
Communal Amaranth Planting
Saturday, August 10, 2024
10:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Join us at the Armory and help plant an amaranth garden guided by friends from Indigenous Permaculture and gardeners from Milagro Allegro Community Garden. Qachuu Aloom gifted seeds to gardeners at Milagro Allegro Community Garden a decade ago, with the farmers returning each year to plant and harvest amaranth. We're looking forward to continuing connecting over the seed today.
Armory Zine Fest!
Sunday, August 25, 2024, 11 AM - 4:00 PM
Expect a zine filled event with vendors from across the region. Enjoy a free zine-making workshop led by Teaching Artist Rachel Curry using our Risograph printer and collage. Bring seeds to share and swap with Urban Soul Farmer's Zine & Seed Library. This all-ages event is free and open to everyone.
Opening reception walkthrough of the exhibition with curator Irene Georgia Tsatsos
Sunday, September 8, 2024 ~ 1:00 PM
Free all-ages art workshop with an Armory teaching artist
Sunday, September 8, 2024 ~ 2:00 PM
Tarot Readings with Enid Baxter Ryce
Sunday, September 8, 2024, 2:00 PM
Exhibiting artist Enid Baxter Ryce and her family will be doing free tarot readings for visitors using Ryce’s Devil’s Half Acre Tarot (2024), a bilingual tarot deck created by Ryce in collaboration with Luis Camara. The deck, which features hand-painted illustrations of flora and fauna made using natural pigments, is a follow-up to Ryce and Camara’s The Borderlands Tarot, which will be released this fall.
Amaranth Seed Sharing
Sunday, September 8, 2024 ~ 3:00 PM
The Armory invites you to experience and share in the amaranth garden planted by Malaqatel Ija, Semillas Viajeras, Seed Travels, a collective of individuals and organizations that come together around the sharing of amaranth seed and knowledge, in front of the Armory. Together, we’ll harvest amaranth and practice a Campesino a Campesino (Farmer to Farmer) philosophy of reciprocal action with Cristóbal Osorio Sánchez, founder of Qachuu Aloom Asociación Madre Tierra; Maria Aurelia Xitumul Ivoy; Vasquez Chun; and Sabrina Sosof from Guatemala, along with Indigenous Permaculture and the Garden's Edge.
Collective Visualization with Hillary Mushkin
Saturday, October 5, 2024 ~ 1:00-2:30 PM
The Armory presents Collective Visualization with Hillary Mushkin, a conversation delving into the artist’s practice that offers paths in which artists and scientists can work together in impactful ways. Mushkin is joined by Heather Williams and Olivia Chumacero, collaborators in her recent project, Groundwater (2024). Groundwater is an artist’s book and installation that seeks to analyze and represent the intricate web of water rights legislation and discriminatory cartography and its effects on Central Valley communities.
