On Photography: Patssi Valdez & Christina Fernandez

Patssi Valdez, a founding member of the art collective Asco, works in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, photography and fashion design. Featured in the exhibition Every Minute Is History: Five Views of Los Angeles, her photographs from the early 1980s are a little-known but important part of Chicana and Latina artistic expression. In this conversation, Valdez is joined by friend and artist Christina Fernandez to discuss their shared interests in self-expression through the camera’s lens. Patssi Valdez Artist Patssi Valdez is best known for her vibrant paintings, installations and early performance work with the avant-garde art group Asco, of which she is a founding member. Born and raised in East Los Angeles, Valdez received her BFA from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and was named outstanding alumni in the 1980s. In 2005, she was named the “Latina of Excellence in the Cultural Arts” by the U.S. Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Valdez's art has been featured at the Alma Awards and the Latin Grammys. She is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Brody Arts Fellowship in Visual Arts. Her work is included in major collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Tucson Museum of Art. Christina Fernandez Artist Christina Fernandez, a Los Angeles-based artist, has spent over three decades conducting rich explorations of migration, labor, gender, her Mexican American identity, and the capacities of photography itself. She is associate professor at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California, where she has been on faculty since 2001. Fernandez’s projects have been featured at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City; the Cheech Museum of Art, LACMA, MoCA, and Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and MoMA, Whitney Museum of Art, and El Museo del Barrio, New York, among other venues. In 2021, Fernandez was one of the first artists honored with the prestigious Latinx Artist Fellowship. In 2022, a landmark survey exhibition of her work spanning 30 years, traveled to six museums nationwide.