Exhibitions
From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments
Sunday, Feb 23, 2025
Galleries are currently closed and will reopen August 9.
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. Organized for the Armory by curator Irene Georgia Tsatsos, 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.
From the Ground Up is part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide. Southern California’s landmark arts event, PST ART, returns in September 2024 with more than 60 exhibitions from museums and other institutions across the region, all exploring the intersections of art and science, both past and present. Dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will join the latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with exhibitions on subjects ranging from ancient cosmologies to Indigenous sci-fi, and from environmental justice to artificial intelligence. Art & Science Collide will share groundbreaking research, create indelible experiences for the public, and generate new ways of understanding our complex world. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit: pst.art.
Participating Artists
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
Marcus Zúñiga
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. Continue checking this page for more public programs centered around our exhibition, or subscribe to our email list. All exhibition public programs are free, and donations are appreciated. To support our programming, please go to armoryarts.org/support.
Armory Zine Fest!
Sunday, August 25, 2024, 11 AM - 4:00 PM
Zine vendor applications are open through Tuesday, July 22! We're interested in zinesters who are exploring the following themes: relationship to the land/Earth, alternative + traditional knowledges/technologies, environmental justice, colonization, history, storytelling, speculative futurism + world-building, care, cultivation, healing, and more. Best of all, there are zero application fees! Creators from the San Gabriel Valley are highly encouraged to apply!
Opening reception walkthrough of the exhibition with curator Irene Georgia Tsatsos
Sunday, September 8, 2024, 1:00 PM
Free all-ages art workshop with Armory Teaching Artists
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.
Amaranth Cooking Workshop
Sunday, October 6, 2024
10:00 - 2:00 PM
3330 N Lincoln Ave, Altadena, CA 91001
Join the Armory at the Altadena Community Garden where we’ll exchange amaranth recipes and get hands-on experience with cooking this traditional pre-Columbian staple during an all-ages workshop led by members of Malaqatel Ija, Semillas Viajeras, Seed Travels. We invite you to come, share, and eat.
In addition to providing a showcase for contemporary art exhibitions and events, the Armory offers studio art classes and educational outreach programs to schools and the community that explore themes presented in the exhibitions. To arrange a school field trip or artist-led workshop, please contact Corinne Dyson, Education Coordinator, at cdyson@armoryarts.org. For community visits and guided tours of the exhibition, please contact Alheli Tostado, Visitor, and Volunteer Manager, at atostado@armoryarts.org.
Media
With an Additional $12 M., Getty Foundation Announces Science-Focused 2024 PST Shows
(ART NEWS)
From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments is made possible with support from PST ART: Art & Science Collide, presented by Getty. Lead support for all Armory programs comes from the Perenchio Foundation. Major support for this exhibition is provided by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts and the Pasadena Community Foundation. Generous support is provided by Pasadena Art Alliance, with additional support provided by Betsy Greenberg and Steve NyBlom, and Jill Sumiyasu. This exhibition is also supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
