REFRACTIONS
Contemporary Indigenous Art

Beach House parking is available year-round on a first come, first served basis.

Upon arrival, guests must pay for parking at Pay & Display machines located in each section of the lot and display your receipt on the dashboard. The Beach House lot has 2 EV charging spaces.

Guests displaying a valid Disabled Person placard or license plate may park in the Beach House lot at no charge. Senior Beach Parking permits issued by the City of Santa Monica are valid in the Beach House lot. For more information, please visit How to Obtain a Senior Beach Parking Permit.

City of Santa Monica Day Beach Permits and California State Parks Vehicle Day Use Annual Passes are NOT accepted at the Beach House.

If the lot is full, additional parking Lots 8 & 9 (south of the Beach House) and Will Rogers State Beach (North of the Beach House) are within walking distance along the beach footpath. The footpath of the Marvin Braude bike trail connects to the Beach House. Check Santa Monica's city-wide Parking Map for updated information about the Beach House parking lot and other beach lots.

From Los Angeles: Take the 10 West, which will become Pacific Coast Highway when it reaches the beach. At the second traffic light, Beach House Way, turn left into the parking lot.

From Malibu: Take Pacific Coast Highway south. Turn right at Beach House Way, into the parking lot.

From Santa Monica (downtown): Head west towards Ocean Ave. Turn left at Ocean Ave. Turn right at Moomat Ahiko Way (after Colorado/the pier entrance) which will have signs for Pacific Coast Highway. Turn left at Beach House Way into our parking lot.

The Santa Monica Big Blue Bus #9 stops at the intersection of Entrada Dr./Channel Rd. and Pacific Coast Highway, about 1/4 mile north of the Beach House. Use the underground walking path to get across PCH to the beach, and then head south along the bike path toward the Beach House.

LA Metro train and bus lines also run in Santa Monica.

Visit the Big Blue Bus and LA Metro websites for route and schedule information.

Bio @weshoyot
Comic Book Artist, Art Director, Writer and Illustrator Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva/Scottish) uses pop culture and sci-fi alongside archival materials and tribal knowledge to spark conversations and provide fuller representation of her Indigenous community across colonial narratives.

Weshoyot Alvitre is a Tongva & Scottish comic book artist, writer and illustrator. She was born in the Santa Monica Mountains on the property of Satwiwa, a cultural center started by her father Art Alvitre. She grew up close to the land, raised with knowledge that inspires the work she does today. Alvitre has made a conscious choice to work primarily within Native-owned publications and educational avenues, to further support a self-funded narrative on past, present and future Native issues.

About the artwork:
“Tovaangar (A Seal of) is a response to the history of the City of Los Angeles, TOVAANGAR. The Tribe’s story is interwoven with the effects of and intermarriage directly associated with the Mission System and Spanish caste system headed by Franciscan monks, led by Junipero Serra. Serra was not only responsible for the colonization and enslavement of Native communities from Baja to San Francisco but was directly involved in the San Gabriel Mission’s establishment, which paved the path for the City’s formation. The current seal of Los Angeles has been amended over the years to reflect a Tongva/Gabrielino woman. However, she is still dressed in European clothing with an air of westernized female servitude, reinforcing an illusion that the Original people were primitive hunter/gatherers and passive to colonial efforts.

This print depicts a Tongva woman in traditional regalia and ceremonial objects. I seek to reassert the narrative that the Tongva are a sovereign nation and that Native women can also have a place in political power, serve as medicine people and chiefs, and collectively make decisions for the betterment and welfare of their people. Despite colonization by the Franciscans, the Mission System, and the United States Government, WE ARE STILL HERE. This land is unceded Tongva lands.”

Bio @drtjambo
Theresa J. Ambo is the daughter of Lane and Dolores Stewart and sister to Ramona Rodriguez, Kelly Stewart, and Lane “Buddy” Stewart. She is a member of Nohaarxe Miyii Pokuu (Weaving Together as One) and works full-time at UC San Diego as an assistant professor of education studies. She also co-directs the Indigenous Futures Institute and is passionate about research that examines the relationships between Native Nations and settler colonial universities. Her family descends from the villages of Jaibepet and Tobipet.

"These baskets were woven in memory of Ysabel of Tobpet, the first documented matriarch of our lineage after Spanish contact, and the matriarchs and patriarch who followed. They honor the sacrifices of our ancestors enacted through unconditional love so traditional weaving practices could be returned to our family and future generations. Spanning three generations, the baskets have been woven by Ysabel’s 5th great-granddaughter Dolores, her 6th great-granddaughters Ramona, Kelly, and Theresa, and her 8th great-granddaughter Abby. This collection reflects the resilience, survivance, artistry, and cultural knowledge passed down through our family, grounded in a deep connection to our ancestral lands."

Bio @thundr_one
Graffiti Artist Thundr One combines community murals with gang intervention and spiritual healing to guide under-served Black and Brown communities through releasing generational trauma and rebuilding pride and inter-city solidarity.

"Tata Joaquin is a mix of Graffiti art with Californio history and the bravery of standing up to the injustice system to protect the pueblos of California from discrimination. Instead of guns, I added spray cans as a weapon against unjust systems."

Bio @geraldclarkeart
Gerald Clarke is a visual artist, educator, tribal leader, and cultural practitioner whose family has lived in the Anza Valley for time immemorial. As an enrolled citizen of the Cahuilla Band of Indians, Gerald lives in the home his grandfather built (c.1940) on the Cahuilla Indian Reservation and currently oversees the Clarke family cattle ranch. He is currently a Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California Riverside where he teaches classes in Native American art, history, and culture.

As a visual artist, Gerald has exhibited his work extensively and can be seen in numerous exhibitions as well as major museum collections. In 2007, Gerald was awarded an Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship for Native American Fine Art and served as an Artist-in-Residence at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2015. In 2020, the Palm Springs Art Museum hosted Gerald Clarke: Falling Rock, the first major retrospective of the artist’s work.

Clarke is a frequent lecturer on Native art, culture, and social issues. He holds a B.A. in Art from the University of Central Arkansas and an M.A./M.F.A. degree in Painting/Sculpture from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas.

“Since the first European explorers would step foot on these lands, they would plant their flag, which is a way of branding. It’s a way of showing ownership, and most of the time the Native people had no say in what could be claimed.

And so this is me, kind of turning that brand on itself and back onto the dominant society.”

Bio @cruzemilia
Emilia Cruz is an Artist based in Simi Valley and born in San Diego. Her artwork pays homage to her roots through the use of bright and vivid color palettes. Many of her paintings celebrate familiar faces and feel as if they are placed in other-wordly settings. She teaches art classes for youth at Plaza de la Raza’s Cultural Center of the Arts, and recently curated Home Within Yourself in June of 2024, a group show at Plaza de la Raza Boathouse Gallery.

"As a child, I witnessed my Abuelita's love through her various actions. I would see it when she would boil water to bathe me in the evenings. I could see it when she rolled up warm tortillas de harina to give me as a midday snack. It was especially apparent every night that she would recite her protection prayers for me. Years after she passed away, I was braiding my hair and my hands began to look like hers. I continued to braid and soon after I felt her warmth and love. I knew she was with me at that moment so I continued to weave together all the memories I had of her."

Bio @mercedes.dorame
Mercedes Dorame is a multi-disciplinary artist who calls on her Tongva ancestry to engage the problematics of (in)visibility and ideas of cultural construction and ancestral connection to land and sky. Born in Los Angeles, California, she received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her undergraduate degree from UCLA.

Dorame’s work is in the permanent collections of the Getty, the Hammer Museum, LACMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Triton Museum, among others. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from organizations such as Creative Capital, the Montblanc Art Commission, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Loop Artist Residency, the James Phelan Award for California born visual artists, and from the Photography Department at the San Francisco Art Institute for her MFA Studies.

She is currently regular faculty at CalArts in the Photo Media Program, and was commissioned by the Getty for her sculptural installation Woosha’aaxre Yaangaro as the inaugural Rotunda Commission. Her work is also on view in the Borderlands exhibition at the Huntington Library. Her work and story were recently explored in the Los Angeles Times article “How artist Mercedes Dorame shares pieces of her Tongva heritage across L.A.’s public landscapes”, and she was honored by UCLA as part of the centennial initiative “UCLA: Our Stories Our Impact” as an outstanding alumni working in equal justice over the last 100 years. She has shown her work internationally.

Bio @ricardoestrada323
Ricardo Estrada, is a Los Angeles Chicano artist best known for his portraits of street people and others not normally the subject of fine art. He works to portray the pride in humanity in his subjects. He was also commissioned by Oscar De La Hoya to depict the fighter and Pacquiano before their fight in Las Vegas.

Bio @rageone
Joel Garcia (Huichol) is an Indigenous artist, cultural organizer, educator, co-founder, and Director of Meztli Projects, an Indigenous-based arts & culture collaborative centering Indigeneity into the creative practice of Los Angeles. In various artistic roles, he has worked with Indigenous communities across borders to support land, access, and self-determination issues. His art explores healing and reconciliation, as well as memory and place ​​garnering national press in publications such as the LA Times, New Yorker, and Artforum among others.

He’s a current Stanton Fellow and formerly an artist-in-residence or fellow at Monument Lab, Intercultural Leadership Institute, OXY ARTS, and other acclaimed projects.

About the Artwork:
This painting was created using acorn and oak gall dyes centering materials offered by this land, highlighting centuries-old cultural practices, and regenerative practices and modalities for creation. Dyes made from oak trees can be found across basketweaving, regalia making, and other important Indigenous art forms. This painting is a study of water, dyes, gravity, and alchemy as the use of ironized water creates a spectrum of colors from rich golden browns to dark purples and blacks.

Bio @riverg_studio
Interdisciplinary Visual Artist and lifelong member of the Ti’at Society River Garza (Tongva) explores the intersections of Tongva and Chicano identity and culture in Los Angeles across time. Garza’s work draws on traditional Indigenous aesthetics, Southern California Indigenous maritime culture, Chicano culture, Graffiti, skateboarding and low rider art.

Bio @printgonzalez
Daniel González is a Chicano graphic artist from the community of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, California. His artwork is informed by his cultural background as the first generation born in the United States to parents from a rural community in Zacatecas, Mexico. Daniel began exploring artmaking through the creation of murals in community workshops. He started his printmaking practice while studying at the California College of Arts and Crafts, through workshops at the San Francisco Center for the Book and at Mission Gráfica at the Mission Cultural Center. Daniel completed his formal studies at UCLA and his artwork is housed in special collections internationally, on permanent display as public art at Metro’s La Cienega Station and at the LA County Natural History Museum as part of the Becoming L.A. exhibit. Currently, Daniel’s works are part of the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibition, Printing the Revolution: Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now, and teaches printmaking at the Barnsdall Art Center in Los Angeles.

“The piece is a woodcut using birch plywood that was printed with a steam roller at Fullerton College during Pavel Acevedo's residency in 2024. It depicts the female energy of the earth, Tlaltecihuatl, manifested as the devouring earth. In its mouth, it has an obsidian tongue and it is in the pose of birthing and generation expressing the dual nature of the earth as creator and devourer of life. Tlaltecihuatl was depicted on the base of some monumental Mexica sculptures as offerings to the earth, never to be seen by humans and only known to the crafts people who created them and the patrons who commissioned them. Through the act of printing on the ground, I am retracing the steps of the artisan who created these sculptures but in reverse, by revealing an image from the ground to be contemplated rather than hidden.”

Bio @tochtlita
Melissa is a multidisciplinary artist specializing in sign painting, murals, and print making. Observations of the contemporary native diaspora and exploration of tradition and modernity, are used to create visual narratives. Govea received her Sign Painting certification from Los Angeles Trade Tech. She has worked with clients such as The Getty Museum, The Smithsonian Institute and The Los Angeles Women's March.

Bio @native.illustrator
Samantha Johnson Yang (she/her) is an Afro-Indigenous Gabrielino/Tongva multidisciplinary artist, environmental scientist, educator, and learning ethnobotanist. She received her B.A. in marine biology before attending graduate school for her certificate in science illustration. Samantha has worked with institutions like Pitzer College creating illustrated educational material for 4th and 5th-grade environmental science curricula aligning with California science standards and traditional Indigenous environmental knowledge (IEK). She has also created material for and speaks often on the Protect White Sage campaign, a social media initiative bringing awareness to white sage poaching in the wellness industry. Samantha’s work is inspired by resistance against climate change and the colonist roots underneath the environmental distresses we experience today.

“These illustrations reflect the overgrowth of non-native species that I’ve observed at Huhuunga, the recently returned acre of land. Huhuunga is the first parcel of homeland returned to my community in Los Angeles County. Popular drought-tolerant plant species from around the world such as Eucalyptus have taken over a significant portion of this acreage. The same overwhelming dilemma that our Native plants face in urban spaces, we, the Tongva people, also experience as we face challenges in representation even within Indigenous spaces.”

Bio @k.j.lopez_
Kenneth Lopez is a photographer and cultural worker from Los Angeles. He is the Program Manager for Meztli Projects, an Indigenous-led arts collaborative working on the ancestral homelands of the Tongva, Tataviam, and Chumash Tribal Nations. Kenneth’s creative practice has helped document important conversations related to monuments and civic memory in Los Angeles. His work has been published internationally and will be featured in the upcoming Monument Lab book documenting their ReGeneration initiative. His approach has allowed him to build trust with LA’s Tribal communities and support their efforts such as with the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa (pronounced Tar-a-haht pah-hava) Conservancy.

Bio @emmarobbinz
Emma Robbins (Diné) is an artist, activist, and community organizer with a passion for empowering Indigenous women. She is the founder and Executive Director of The Chapter House, an Indigenous community and arts space on Tongvaland. Emma is also Managing Director of Planet Women, an organization collaborating with femme-led conservation and human rights groups.

For seven years Emma served as the Executive Director of the Navajo Water Project at DigDeep Water. While there, she collaborated with communities to expand access to clean, running water to the one in three Navajo families without it.

Emma completed her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied Modern Latin American Art History in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has exhibited both in the U.S. and internationally. Through her artwork, she strives to educate viewers about issues like broken treaties and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis. Emma serves on the Arizona Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and is a senior Aspen Institute Fellow.

"...with a sincere desire to encourage said tribes in acquiring the arts and habits of civilized life...." is one of 18 works from Robbins' series Tseebitsáadah. Eighteen treaties were signed between the U.S. Government and tens of Native Nations of California and promised goods such as needles, thimbles, cloth, and livestock, in exchange for designated reservation lands for these tribes. Immediately following the signing of these treaties, they were "lost" and never ratified, and the Native Nations lost their homelands to the U.S. Government. Robbins explores these broken treaties in hand-stitched and embellished works drawing materials listed in said treaties, in this case 500 needles, and the title is drawn from a line mentioned in all of the treaties.

Bio @kdrslaysthepatriarchy
Kimberly Robertson is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, an Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at California State University, Long Beach, and an artist. Her scholarship and creative practices center Native feminisms, the sexual and gendered violence of settler colonialism, ceremony, storytelling, decolonization, and Indigenous futurities. She has published in journals such as Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society and Wicazo Sa Review, as well as peer-reviewed anthologies such as Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness and Keetsahnak: Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters. Her creative practices currently include screen printing, collage, beadwork, installation art, and zine-making. Her artworks have been exhibited in numerous community, university, public, and private galleries as well as peer-reviewed monographs and anthologies. She is also an active member of the Los Angeles Indian community and facilitates beading circles and art-making workshops both locally and nationally.

About the artwork:
The four Deer Woman pieces are beaded tapestries inspired by Kimberly’s journey as a Native Femme(nist) and a survivor of multiple forms of gender-based violence. The tapestries are composed of pony beads that are held together using a peyote stitch. Each tapestry hangs on a golden clothes hanger and is finished with strands of fringe that end with knives disguised as lipsticks.

These works juxtapose (placing two or more things or ideas side by side) the beauty and the dangers of embracing femme identities under settler colonialism and patriarchy. While the use of harmonious and vibrant colorways, the rose design, and lipstick fringe speaks to femme joy and brilliance, the golden clothes hangers and the hidden knives also hint at the myriad violences that are often inflicted on femme-presenting bodies.

Pony beads are small, barrel or donut-shaped plastic craft beads often used by Native American communities for jewelry making and other crafts. Pony beads get their name from the pony and mule trains that transported them to Western North America in the early 1800s.

From Ysabel’s Hands to Abby’s: Five Baskets Woven by the Great-Granddaughters of Ysabel of Tobpet. Students of Abraham Sanchez, Master Basketweaver (Purépecha)

"These baskets were woven in memory of Ysabel of Tobpet, the first documented matriarch of our lineage after Spanish contact, and the matriarchs and patriarch who followed. They honor the sacrifices of our ancestors enacted through unconditional love so traditional weaving practices could be returned to our family and future generations. Spanning three generations, the baskets have been woven by Ysabel’s 5th great-granddaughter Dolores, her 6th great-granddaughters Ramona, Kelly, and Theresa, and her 8th great-granddaughter Abby. This collection reflects the resilience, survivance, artistry, and cultural knowledge passed down through our family, grounded in a deep connection to our ancestral lands."

"These baskets were woven in memory of Ysabel of Tobpet, the first documented matriarch of our lineage after Spanish contact, and the matriarchs and patriarch who followed. They honor the sacrifices of our ancestors enacted through unconditional love so traditional weaving practices could be returned to our family and future generations. Spanning three generations, the baskets have been woven by Ysabel’s 5th great-granddaughter Dolores, her 6th great-granddaughters Ramona, Kelly, and Theresa, and her 8th great-granddaughter Abby. This collection reflects the resilience, survivance, artistry, and cultural knowledge passed down through our family, grounded in a deep connection to our ancestral lands."

Bio @cararomerophotography
In a photographic practice that blends documentary and commercial aesthetics, Cara Romero, an enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, creates stories that draw from inter-tribal knowledge to expose the fissures and fusions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and futurity. Romero was raised between the rural Chemehuevi reservation in California’s Mojave Desert and the urban sprawl of Houston. She is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

About the artworks:
“Miztla at Puvungna was created for #TONGVALAND—a site-speci!c installation of billboards throughout the Los Angeles area bringing awareness to the original caretakers, the Tongva Peoples, and a testament to their ongoing care for Los Angeles, its mountains, beaches, and sacred sites. The photograph features Miztlayolxochitl Aguilera at sunset at Puvungna—a sacred site for Tongva and surrounding Tribes nestled into the present-day CSU Long Beach campus near the airport. As a visitor from a federally recognized Tribe of California, I learned the stories of our brothers and sisters from the Coast whose treaties remain hidden and unratified. This is a tragic story of not having ceremonial grounds to gather in privacy and without the permission of state and private land owners.

As Native people, we understand that Mother Earth must hear her languages, songs and dance that emerge from place and cultures to be in balance. I hope that Los Angelenos will critically explore what it means to live on someone’s ancestral sacred land, and that these conversations will spark actions beyond a land acknowledgment to #LANDBACK.”

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“As a Chemehuevi Indian woman who was born in Los Angeles, I wanted to pay homage to the people of the city I love, the original caretakers of Tovaangar. I set out to explore themes of invisibility, survivance and belonging to a place, from an Indigenous perspective. I wanted to explore the complexity of urban spaces, where the original caretakers of the land are so often a minority among the displaced urban Indian population. I wanted to convey that Los Angeles is a Native space; that the Tongva People are here, and that it is our responsibility—whether we are Native or not—to educate ourselves about whose land we are on. I wanted to bring critical public awareness to the fact that the First Peoples of the city with the second-largest Native American population in the United States do not have Federal Recognition and therefore lack access to scholarships, land allocated by the federal government, and other resources. (This is also true for the city with the largest Native population, New York City).

This portrait is of Weshoyot Alvitre, an amazing illustrator and Tongva descendant, and was taken underwater in May of 2021 in Long Beach, California. The headpiece is made of shells and the basket is for gathering. The fishing nets remind us of Weshoyot’s grandfather, and the bark skirt, by Leah Mata Fragua, "oated so beautifully in the salt water. I hope you felt weightless in the water with me. Please follow @weshoyot and @tongvaland and support Weshoyot as she takes on the work of her people and land.”

"These baskets were woven in memory of Ysabel of Tobpet, the first documented matriarch of our lineage after Spanish contact, and the matriarchs and patriarch who followed. They honor the sacrifices of our ancestors enacted through unconditional love so traditional weaving practices could be returned to our family and future generations. Spanning three generations, the baskets have been woven by Ysabel’s 5th great-granddaughter Dolores, her 6th great-granddaughters Ramona, Kelly, and Theresa, and her 8th great-granddaughter Abby. This collection reflects the resilience, survivance, artistry, and cultural knowledge passed down through our family, grounded in a deep connection to our ancestral lands."

Bio @drkellylstewart
Dr. Kelly Leah Stewart is an Assistant Professor in the American Indian Studies program and a member of the Committee on Native American Burial Remains and Cultural Patrimony (CNABRCP) at California State University, Puvungna (Long Beach). Her research examines acts of agency and survivance by survivors and descendants of the Catholic-run mission Indian boarding school, St. Boniface. In 2021, she joined the Unmapping UC: Motkoolahooee project as a Graduate Student Researcher and continues to work as a consultant. Kelly is a co-principal investigator for the Remembering, Restorying, Reclaiming: A Community-Based Examination of Land Tenure and Public Education Across California project and coauthor of From Tovaangar to the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds a Doctor of Education from UC San Diego and CSU San Marcos, a Master of Arts in American Indian Studies from UCLA, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Cal Poly, Pomona. In addition to her work in academia, Kelly had nearly a decade of experience working in Indian Country in the social services sector through a Southern California Tribal TANF program. Through her maternal lineage, Kelly is Gabrielino-Tongva and descends from the villages of Jaibepet and Tobpet.

"These baskets were woven in memory of Ysabel of Tobpet, the first documented matriarch of our lineage after Spanish contact, and the matriarchs and patriarch who followed. They honor the sacrifices of our ancestors enacted through unconditional love so traditional weaving practices could be returned to our family and future generations. Spanning three generations, the baskets have been woven by Ysabel’s 5th great-granddaughter Dolores, her 6th great-granddaughters Ramona, Kelly, and Theresa, and her 8th great-granddaughter Abby. This collection reflects the resilience, survivance, artistry, and cultural knowledge passed down through our family, grounded in a deep connection to our ancestral lands."

Bio @ooxono_paar
Isaac Michael, a visual artist and storyteller, is Tongva, Chumash, and Xicano. He utilizes film, photography, and poetry to amplify decolonization narratives and reclaim indigenous pedagogies. He embraces the values of Indigenous Futurism to retell the past and present, envisioning a future guided by his community's stories, visions, and desires. Isaac Michael weaves together diverse mediums, crafting evocative narratives that honor his ancestral homelands and uplift his communities.