From the Curator, Julie Bernadeth Crumb
“Of the Land” grew from my desire to have a deeper understanding of what it means to rematriate.
This exhibition gathers caretakers, land stewards, healers, and culture keepers. Women whose presence feel like medicine to me.
In our conversations, we spoke of matriarchal ways of being, carrying and navigating grief, reaching towards hope, and envisioning a future we want to believe in.
Despite being in different stages of life, we are bound by the shared devotion: of envisioning a world untethered from patriarchy and capitalism. A world rooted in reciprocity, care, and collective healing.
Please join me in my learning, as I seek new ways to build, one that honors the land, our ancestors, and each other.
The Artists
FRANCESKA GAMEZ, an awarded visual artist born in Manila and raised in the Bay Area, is known for her murals, captivating installations, and sculptures that blend abstract and representational forms to tell powerful stories. Her practice spans installation, carpentry, curation, and creative production, with work featured across the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia. As co-owner of 1810 Gallery and a member of Trust Your Struggle Collective, she uplifts underrepresented communities and uses art to inspire transformative change. As a creative producer and curator, Franceska merges art, culture, and social impact. She was honored as a Sacramento Business Journal 40 Under 40 (2023) and Emerging Leader of the Year (2024) by the Sacramento Asian Chamber of Commerce.
Nanay’s Flowers
Nanay’s Flowers is an homage to lineage, memory, and the quiet inheritance of strength. My Nanay was a freedom fighter who, since the People Power Revolution in the Philippines, would always raise her hand in the “L” for Laban—a symbol of resistance and love. I imagined holding her hand again, feeling her strength move through me and reminding me that every act of care, creation, and courage carries the fight forward.
The flowers for these garlands were lovingly grown and shared by Sylvia, and hand-strung with care by both Sylvia and Bernie.
Baon sa Baha
Our country is drowning, not just by rising waters but by the weight of neglect. Those responsible for infrastructure and relief retreat to their towers, built off the backs of our people, while the floods claim streets, homes, and lives below.
This work transforms the anger and grief stirred by corruption into a reflection on our shared humanity and bayanihan, the principle of communal care and mutual aid. The title, which translates to “provisions for the flood,” carries this dual meaning—the food, stories, and love we gather to sustain one another through uncertainty. The piece calls for the courage to resist and demand justice, reminding us that our struggles are intertwined, and our actions today ripple across generations.
Ibalik nyo sa bayan.
The Medicine Wheel is a sacred path of healing, transformation, and spiritual balance. Across many ancient and Indigenous traditions, the Medicine Wheel symbolizes the eternal circle of life, and a journey of truth, harmony, and personal growth. It invites us to release the past, and face our fears, in order to align with our soul’s purpose. Through this practice, we can become Luminous Warriors who live in harmony with the Earth.
Esme Cabrera is a place-based artist, naturalist and culture keeper. Some of these works are partly a continuation of Califloragami, a series of original origami models designed and inspired by the beauty of California native plants and their pollinators.
The rest of these works are the result of a year-long study of one local Milkweed plant, the Showy Milkweed, both individually and in the company and collaboration of local artists and culture keepers.
Around the world, all the various species of Milkweed plants play integral and often indispensable parts in the lives of pollinators, such as Monarch butterflies, the Blue Milkweed beetle andTarantula Hawk wasps. Some milkweeds have been incredible partners to humans for thousands of years, offering their plant material as formidable partners to our intellect, curiosity, care and industriousness.
In other words, milkweed is a talker, a teller of stories. Milkweed is fluid in the hands of anyone willing to spend some time getting to know it by visiting it in gardens, fields or wide open spaces. It’s a plant family and community member we can all learn from, tend to and love.
Milkweed teaches me that Our resistance persists and our healing happens when we can take some time to be present in our rooted and interdependent relationships.
Jamie Cardenas, a first-generation Filipino-American and Ilocana, is a versatile artist, herbalist, Magpie Alchemy apothecary owner, and cultural worker based in Unceded Nisenan Territory/Sacramento. Drawing from her lineage of land stewards, healers, weavers, and storytellers, they channel her ancestral knowledge into fiber arts, plant medicine, and healing practices to serve her community. Through weaving, natural plant dyes, and film photography, she fosters connections to heritage and promotes healing, encouraging others to stay attuned to their bodies, ancestors, and senses through the magic of plants. Their passion for fiber arts stems from a profound desire for connection, particularly exploring textures and colors, with a special affinity for the color blue. By excavating the art and culture of her ancestors, she uncovers the deeper meanings behind symbols and motifs, realizing the interconnectedness of all people, whether in the archipelago or diaspora. They honor her grandmothers, Maria Asuncion Galinato Cardenas and Victorina Borje Pesquiza, weaving partners and dear friends from Santa, Ilocos Sur. Sharing indigo with Kapwa (shared-self) is integral to Jamie’s life’s work, as reflected in her middle and last names, which translate to “Research” and “Blue” respectively. When not immersed in her creative pursuits, they find joy in cooking for loved ones, dancing, singing, and roller skating with her family.
Ramona Garcia graduated from the Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley in 2012 and currently resides in Sacramento, California where continues to expand her interest
and education in the field of mental health while sharing her passion for this art at cultural community centers and universities across the country. Her mission is to honor these traditions by raising awareness about artisan work, cultural revitalization and bridging together traditional artmaking with practices of art therapy.
“Evil enters like a needle and spreads like an oak tree. El diablo se mete por la rendija más pequeña.”
Casa de Muñecas is a play on the doll work I’ve been doing—this time reimagined through puppetry as a way to tell stories. The piece honors the prayers our abuelitas send us, the quiet protections that keep us safe even in the most arduous environments. It is because of our abuelitas that we have become las que sobrevivieron. Somos las nietas de las brujas que no pudiste quemar.