Esteban Cabeza de Baca ’14 Brings Exhibition ‘Memories of the Future’ to SLOMA
Visual arts alum and adjunct assistant professor Esteban Cabeza de Baca ’14 opened his latest exhibition, Memories of the Future, at San Luis Obispo Museum of Art. The surreal, political paintings draw from his family’s experiences as labor and community organizers in California in the 1960s and 70s. The installation runs from February 22 to June 21, 2025.
Many of the paintings in Memories of the Future debuted at Parker Gallery in Los Angeles last year, in an exhibit called Cesar’s Angels. The paintings evoke Chicano heritage through folk symbols like marigolds, biker jackets and cloth dolls, as well as the western landscapes—red mesas, mountain vineyards, open skies—where forces of colonization and resistance have long struggled for sovereignty.
“Often painting on square canvases, Cabeza de Baca’s paintings feel like snippets of time, as if recreated from a dream or a childhood memory,” said San Luis Obispo Museum of Art.
In March to Sacramento, striking, lanky Delano grape workers parade through fields and mountains, under the watch of traditional Mexican cloth dolls, like those Cabeza de Baca’s mother made for him. These cloth dolls feature symbolically throughout Memories of the Future as guardians of hope and freedom.
Cabeza de Baca’s parents were active in liberation movements in postwar California, organizing and protesting with the Brown Berets, American Indian movement and Black Panthers. Cabeza de Baca’s father was iconic labor leader Cesar Chavez’ bodyguard.
“My dad had to pat people down before they would go into the hall to hear Chavez talk, ” he told the Parker Gallery. “One guy came in with sticks of dynamite wrapped onto his body, and my dad had to take that apart and get him out of there.”
Liberation remains a strong theme of Cabeza de Baca’s paintings. “Justice for undocumented migrants and a keen awareness of the history of colonialism in the United States informed the artist’s upbringing and have become central subjects in his multifaceted practice,” said the Parker Gallery in Los Angeles.
Esteban Cabeza de Baca is a painter based in Queens and the southwest. Since graduating from Columbia, Cabeza de Baca has been awarded a Civitella Ranieri Visual Art Fellowship, a NYFA Painting Fellowship, Henk en Victoria de Heus Fellowship, a Stokroos Foundation Grant and a Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Award. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in New York City, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Provincetown and Cologne. His work has been featured in over 20 group exhibits in New York, Antwerp, Tucson, New Haven and more.