Contemporary Indigenous Voices of California’s South Coast Range

This exhibition of portraits by Kirti Bassendine (b. 1962) features Indigenous community members from the South Coast Range: the San Francisco peninsula through the Santa Cruz mountains, Monterey Bay, and lower Salinan Valley. 

Bassendine’s photographs are accompanied by powerful personal statements from Native community members calling attention to cultural connections to the land, rematriation (restoring the relationship between Indigenous people and their ancestral land), and climate change. 

As an artist, Bassendine has always been intrigued by human relationships — especially how they impact the discovery of identity and belonging within one’s culture and the wider world. By bringing so many Indigenous voices together, she creates a unique experience for audiences to engage with these ideas themselves.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website