EXHIBITION DATES	September 25 – October 25, 2025 Gallery Open: Tuesday – Friday
Opening Reception	Thur., September 25, 2025 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. at LAC, K-100
Artists Talk & Closing Reception	Sat, October 25, 2025 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. at LAC, K-100

By The River, I May Destroy You is a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based photographer Star Montana. Through photography and video, she explores constructs of place, cultural heritage, belonging, and familial connections in her work.This body of work—featuring a selection of recently produced photographs—takes water as its central theme and highlights diverse locales including Los Angeles, Texas, New Mexico, Northern California, and Mexico. These sites are not only pertinent to Montana’s personal history, but are also the homes of numerous rivers, bodies of water, and other landmarks, including the Los Angeles River, the Rio Grande, and the pyramids of Teotihuacán—all of which possess cultural significance in their relationship to indigeneity and Mexican-American heritage. These rivers and sites, however, have also transformed over time through forces of colonialism, the construction and designation of borders, and forced migration.

Often placing herself in the settings that she captures, Montana looks to the intersection of personal and collective narratives, and in turn, forms meaningful visual connections between self and place. Spanning themes of displacement, discovery, sovereignty, loss, and memory, these images and the various sites that they depict speak to the juxtaposition of nature and the built environment, the immutable power of water and nature, and intergenerational trauma and healing. 

By The River, I May Destroy You is presented as part of FotoSoCal,  and made possible through the support of the Port of Long Beach, LBCC Foundation, and the LBCC Associated Student Body.

Exhibition Team and Acknowledgements

Exhibition Design: Karla Aguíñiga
Student Assistants: Noel Bodadilla, Katherie Dominguez, Juan Pablo Rodriguéz Villegas and Alex Ramirez
Vendors: Artworks on the Fly & Downtown Framing
VP of Academic Affairs: Dr. Lee Douglas
Dean of Visual and Performing Arts Media & Cultural Programs: Dr. Janét Hund

We would like to thank the following people for their support in the creation of the exhibition: Neil France, Letty Totah, Brian Doan, Christina Chuu and Andrea Reid. 

About The Curators

Alex Nicholls (she/her) is an independent curator and PhD candidate in Art History, Theory & Criticism at UC San Diego. She has held positions at various museums and institutions, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the Hammer Museum, where she assisted in the organization of the first North American retrospective of artist and activist Jimmie Durham. As curatorial assistant at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, she organized the first solo Los Angeles museum presentation of Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette.

Karla Aguíñiga (she/her/hers) serves as the Art Gallery and Exhibitions Manager at Long Beach City College, where she also leads the Public Art Advisory Group. She has held positions with the Hammer Museum, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Material Art Fair in Mexico City, and the Chicago Artists Coalition, among others. Originally from Tijuana, Mexico, Aguiniga is an arts educator, curator, and arts administrator whose work focuses on advancing inclusive opportunities for artists of color. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Art from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Master of Arts in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

About FOTOSoCal

FotoSoCal is a constellation of exhibitions that brings together over twenty community college galleries and affiliated spaces across Southern California, including Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego, and Orange counties, featuring the work of emerging Latine/x photographers and lens-based artists.
FotoSoCal’s axis are the shared experiences of brown individuals whose ancestral ties link them beyond the borders of the United States. Individuals often deemed Latinx. This project centers Latinidad as an ethnorace and seeks to linguistically acknowledge that ‘Latine’ and ‘Chicanx’ are loaded terms that weigh heavily upon our communities. We will, therefore, make space for every single complicated linguistic identifier of the members of our community, which includes but is not limited to: Brown, Mexican-American, Nepantlera, Mestiza, Indigenous, Chicanx, Mexican-Irish, Afro-Mexicana, Chicano, Latine, Undocumented, Oaxaqueñe, Yaqui, migrant, Guatemalan-Mexican, Salvadoran, Mexican-Filipino (Mexipino), Chapin, immigrant, undoc+, and Japanese-Mexican (Jaxican).

The language provided here is by no means comprehensive of the plethora of positionalities that make up this community. Still, it does begin to highlight the complexity of a people bound together by shared cultural experiences.
Find out more about upcoming event and affiliated exhibition by visiting: Fotosocal.com and follow them on Instagram at: @Foto_SoCal

Special Thanks To Our Sponsors

Lead Sponsor: 

Additional Support by:

LBCC Art Gallery located at 4901 E Carson St, Long Beach, CA 90808, Building K

Gallery hours:  

• Tuesday: 12pm-7pm
• Wednesdays: 11am -4pm
• Thursday: 12pm -7pm
• Friday: 12pm -6pm
• Weekends open by appointment

Parking: $2 a day in Lots C, D, and E 

IMAGE CREDIT
Image by Star Montana, “505 years since we were last all connected. I weep and continue our diaspora”, 2025. Courtesy of the artist.