Panel: "Brown Futurity: Artists and Their Archives"

Brown Futurity: Artists and Their Archives brings together artists and archivists for a timely and urgent conversation about preservation, authorship, and legacy. This public panel centers artists and explores archives as powerful tools for storytelling, self-determination, and cultural futurity.

The discussion features Xaviera Flores, Librarian and Archivist at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, artist and cultural worker Sandra de la Loza, and mural and graffiti artist Man One. Together, they will examine how artists can build, protect, and activate their archives as living documents of creative practice.

Designed to give artists agency over the long-term impact of their work, the panel serves both as a practical guide and a conceptual exploration. Participants will learn about archival tools and resources available to artists—including record management strategies, documentation practices, and approaches to organizing a lifetime of work. The conversation will also address how artists engage archives as part of their artistic practice, reshaping memory and history through self-authored narratives.

As the first event in a two-part series, Brown Futurity invites participants to think expansively about legacy. Securing one’s archive becomes not only a logistical task, but an intentional act of history-making, futurity, and storytelling. 

For more information, visit: https://mexicalibiennial.org/event/brown-futurity-artists-and-their-arch...

Organized by the Whittier College StoryLab and cosponsored by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.