Origins & Displacements, Vols. 1 & 2
CSUF Grand Central Art Center and MUZEO Museum and Cultural Center, October 3, 2020–January 10, 2021
Curated by Jennifer Frias with support from John Spiak and Katie Adams Farrell.
Project Advisor and Essayist: Joseph Daniel Valencia
Origins and Displacements, Vols. 1 & 2 is an ongoing body of work examining Orange County’s history through contemporary photographs, videos, and performance produced by artist William Camargo. This two-part exhibition, organized by the CSUF Begovich Gallery, is on view from the storefront windows at CSUF Grand Central Art Center (GCAC) & MUZEO Museum & Cultural Center.
The suite of images on view examines two cities in Orange County with the highest population of Chicanx/Latinx citizens— Santa Ana and Anaheim. Respectively, they are also where Camargo was born and raised, as well as the locations of the host sites of the exhibition. These regions are pivotal to Camargo’s work and artistic process— tracing the narratives left out from historical photographs and news archives while recounting Orange County’s notorious golden days and not-too-distant past related to gentrification, systematic racism, and police brutality.
Conceptualized toward the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, both presentations are viewable anytime for free at each venue’s pedestrian plaza, where safe social distancing can be practiced. A performance piece is scheduled to take place at GCAC on November 7, 2020, and can be seen virtually and in real-time.
A curatorial essay accompanying the exhibition is written by Joseph Daniel Valencia, Curator, Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM). A social media version of the exhibition will be temporarily reproduced on the MUZEO Instagram account with an introduction by writer and producer francisco aviles pino.
Support for the exhibition and its programming is made possible through the Art Alliance, Associated Students, Inc. Instructional Related Activities, the College of the Arts, and the Department of Visual Arts. Special thanks to Manny Escamilla, Commissioner of Arts and Culture, Santa Ana, CA.
About the artist
William Camargo is a photo-based artist, educator, and arts advocate. He received his MFA at Claremont Graduate University and his BFA at the California State University, Fullerton. His work has been featured at venues such as Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago, IL), Loisaida Center (New York, NY), University of Indianapolis (Indianapolis, IN), Mexican Cultural Center and Cinematic Arts (Los Angeles, CA), and The Ethelber Cooper Gallery of African and African American Arts at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA). His work has been published in The Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, The New York Times, OC Weekly, TIME, and others. He was awarded residencies at the Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions (ACRE), the Chicago Artist Coalition, the Project Art, and at Otis School of Art and Design’s LA Summer. He is one of the selected recipients of the 2020 Lenscratch Student Prize, and the Leo Freedman Foundation Grant. He currently serves as Commissioner of Heritage and Culture for the City of Anaheim and is the founder/curator of Latinx Diaspora Archives. He works and lives in Anaheim, CA.
Artist’s website: www.williamcamargo.com
Instagram: @billythecamera