Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice 2025
August 7, 2025–December 1, 2025
Manetti Shrem Art Museum, UC Davis, Davis, CA
On view:
Sandy Rodriguez (Chicana, b. 1975)
Pronostico—No 5, 97 x 97 inches
Hand-processed watercolor on amate paper
Collection of the artist
© Sandy Rodriguez
Photo courtesy of Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. © Muzi Li Rowe
The series Pronosticos (“prophecies” or “foretellings”) is inspired by Book 12 of the Florentine Codex, a Spanish colonial text about Mexica culture and history. Book 12 begins with the “omens” that occurred in Mexico before the Spanish invasion. The first omen is described as a tongue of fire in the sky that showered sparks and persisted for a year. I am visually connecting the ominous fire of the past with the annual wildfires that rage across the US Southwest. Recent fires evoke the violent imposition of Colonial and Settler land perceptions and exploitations over Indigenous knowledge of ecosystems and land stewardship. The burning landscapes are painted in a range of hand-processed pigments (see colors displayed in gallery 13 ), connecting the cycles of colonial aggression and climate change.
—Sandy Rodriguez, Artist
Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice is organized by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and guest curated by Glenn Kaino and Mika Yoshitake with Jennifer Buonocore-Nedrelow, PST Fellow.