The Visibility of Climate Change
an ongoing examination of the climate crisis
an ongoing examination of the climate crisis
Long Future Ecology is a composite photograph that contemplates sea-level rise through imaginary superimpositions. Flooding overtakes a frontline neighborhood. In this work, specifically, Cooley Landing in East Palo Alto and the San Francisco Bay waters of Ravenswood Preserve.
CLIMATE INTERRELATIONS IMAGINATIVE INSTALLATION PHOTOS
Climate Interrelations Imaginative
Exhibiting Artists
kaory santillan bueno, indigenous (wixarika and na’ayari) scholar and transdisciplinary artist
Sarah Loyola, San Jose based mixed-media artist
Josie Lepe, independent photo-journalist
Linda Gass, Bay Area artist and environmental activist
Guest Curator
Valentino Loyola
Works / San José: community art and performance center: 38 S Second St, San Jose, CA 95113
Opening: September 5, 2025
Closing Reception: October 18, 2025
2. Valentino Loyola observes his work in progress as he prepares to photograph them.
3. A forward view of four mixed media panels that aim to address climate justice, described below:
- a) the history of redlining marginalized communities.
- b) the levee breach at the Pajaro River in Pajaro, CA due to the atmospheric river of March 2023.1
- c) Groundwater contamination due to failed underground petroleum vessels in an East Side San Jose community, between Sunset and Jackson Ave on Alum Rock Ave.2
- d) Solidarity and community organizing victories e.g., Mothers of East Los Angeles consisted of mothers/women with the spirit of motherhood from the Boyle Heights community during the early to mid-eighties who organized to prevent an incinerator plant from being developed in their community.3
1 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/us/california-storm-pajaro-levee.html
2 https://sanjosespotlight.com/east-san-jose-residents-demand-environmental-justice/
3 Pardo, Mary. “Mexican American Women Grassroots Community Activists: ‘Mothers of East Los Angeles.’” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 11, no. 1 (1990): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.2307/3346696.
2 https://sanjosespotlight.com/east-san-jose-residents-demand-environmental-justice/
3 Pardo, Mary. “Mexican American Women Grassroots Community Activists: ‘Mothers of East Los Angeles.’” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 11, no. 1 (1990): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.2307/3346696.
Installation views of Valentino’s mixed media work, Performance Panels of Solidarity, 2025, from the exhibition “And, Then What?” with Sarah Loyola at the Citadel Art Studios Gallery in San Jose, CA.
The Future Is Collective, 2024
This work is contemplative about the current environmental state of our time, the distress our Earth is undergoing due to the outweighing, and insurmountable extraction, and how Indigenous practices are, and can be, prevalent in the fight against climate change as a sustainable approach.
It foregrounds a woman figure as a keeper and bearer of life, against a body of water that is indicative of a source of life, embodying fortitude and fluidity within an open space, unrestrictive.
In the background, traces of extractivism, can be found through the electrical lines and vehicles powered by oil that are present in the image, moving across the roads, emblematic of our human forward values.
Finding the balance in life is underpinning.
An expressive, composite image that attempts to convey how caring for our environment, the way we care for our bodies, with protection, preservation, and good health in mind, can benefit the planet and human conditions.
Showing the parallels between the body as a vessel of life and the planet as the same, the only difference being in form.
Both of which are connected.
Speculative-imaginative photographic composite that considers rising sea levels, how the melting ice caps in Greenland affect the Bay Area, among other critical spaces (the Marshall Islands for example), and wonderment of how humans will adapt/respond.
Valentino Loyola is an interdisciplinary artist. His work comprises photography, mixed and multimedia.
Curiosity-driven, big world questions-motivated, and lived experience when focused on identity. He explores multiple paths to create art objects that embrace tangibility and transformation at the intersection of materials and concepts through research and performance.