• Amalia Mesa-Bains: Circle of Ancestors, 1995; mixed media installation including candles and seven hand-painted chairs with mirrors and jewels; 168 in. diameter; courtesy of the artist and the Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco.

Free Film Screening: Amalia Mesa-Bains: In Her Own Worlds

  • Introduction

    Raymond Telles is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies and the artist in residence at UC Berkeley’s Latinx Research Center.

Amalia Mesa-Bains’s work is deeply concerned with memory and with how art serves as a portal into the cultural histories of Indigenous, Mexican, African diasporic, and multiply gendered communities. In this new film directed by Raymond Telles, the artist reflects on how culture, history, and family memories have informed her art.

 Raymond Telles’s thirty-five-year career in film and television includes the production of numerous documentaries and segments for PBS, ABC, NBC, National Geographic, Discovery and Univision. Among the documentaries Telles has produced and directed are The Storm That Swept MexicoThe Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers’ Struggle, and segments for several PBS series, including FrontlineLatino Americans, and American Masters. At UC Berkeley, he teaches in the Department of Ethnic Studies and is artist in residence at the interdisciplinary and transnational Latinx Research Center.