francis and anthony almendárez: navigating the archives within, vol. 2
11/21/2026 - 05/22/2027
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, November 22, 2026
In their ongoing film and performance series Navigating the Archives Within, artists Francis and Anthony Almendárez examine how Latinx communities are represented and misrepresented across American film, television, music, and digital media. Developed from their vantage point as brothers whose family roots span Central America and the United States, they use sound and place to illuminate the broader forces that inform individual and collective identity.
This exhibition builds upon the series, focusing on music as a living cultural archive shaped by transnational exchange and commodification across the entertainment industry. As the Almendárez brothers sift through a century of musical forms rooted in Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean rhythms and syncretic practices, they ask: Where does “Latin music” emerge, and how has it influenced understandings of Latinidad around the world?
Through an immersive installation of video and multichannel sound, the artists trace evolving Latin American musical traditions and their adaptation and circulation over generations. Blending original and archival materials, they bring diverse music genres into dialogue with musical improvisation, language hybridization, and sounds of endemic fauna from their homelands to complicate the homogenized forms through which Latinx cultures are often portrayed. Throughout the exhibition, sound and music serve as repositories of cultural memory and resistance, inviting reflection on what gets preserved, altered, and carried forward.
EVENTS
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Francis Almendárez is an artist, filmmaker, and educator from South Central, Los Angeles. Through the merging of history, autoethnography, and cultural production, his works offer ways to navigate and reconcile with intergenerational trauma and reclaim diasporic identities. He has exhibited and performed internationally with recent solo projects at the Aurora Picture Show (2026, 2020), Los Angeles Filmforum (2025), Antenna, New Orleans (2021), and Artpace San Antonio (2019). His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at the Blaffer Art Museum (2026, 2021), FotoFest (2021), San Antonio Museum of Art (2021), El Museo del Barrio (2021), and The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2018), among others. Since 2022, he has served as Assistant Professor of Photography/Video and Studio Art at CSU San Bernardino. He holds an MFA (with Distinction) from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BFA in Sculpture/New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design.
Anthony Almendárez is an artist and composer working with sound, improvisation, performance, video, photography, and writing. Born in Los Angeles and based in Houston, his multimedia practice speaks to issues of labor and the history of labor movements. His work centers sound and free improvisation in collaboration with others to challenge inherited/imposed criteria and value systems. His work has been presented nationally at the Aurora Picture Show (2026, 2020), The Menil Drawing Institute (2025), DiverseWorks (2024), and Blaffer Art Museum (2023), and internationally at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2023), Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta (2022), ECHOFLUXX 19, Prague (2019), and as part of SeenSound: Visual/Music performance series in Melbourne (2018). He is an educator for Houston ISD and serves as Musical Director for TEATRX – a Latinx Theatre Company. He holds an MFA in Music/Sound from Bard College, an MA in Music Theory and Composition from Marshall University, and a BA in Music Education from CSU Dominguez Hills.
Acknowledgements
Francis and Anthony Almendárez: Navigating The Archives Within, Vol. 2 is organized by the Vincent Price Art Museum. It is curated by Joseph Valencia, Curator of Exhibitions, with David Barrios, 2026 Getty Marrow Curatorial and Collections Intern.
The exhibition is presented as part of Media Cycles, a three-year media arts initiative generously supported by Teiger Foundation.
This project is also made possible with the support of the Lightning Fund, a re-granting program administered by LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
All exhibitions at the Vincent Price Art Museum are underwritten by the Vincent Price Art Museum Foundation and East Los Angeles College.