The Future Is Collective, 2024
Ancient Reflections Other Worldly, 2023
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.
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.
Body As Environment, 2023
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.
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.
Long Future Ecology, 2023
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.
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.
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.
Performance Panels of Solidarity, 2025, from the exhibition “And, Then What?” at the Citadel Art Studios Gallery in San Jose, CA.
Climate Interrelations Imaginative Exhibition
works/san josé community art and performance center
38 S Second St, San Jose, CA 95113
works/san josé community art and performance center
38 S Second St, San Jose, CA 95113
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
art practice