04/28/2026
PC alumnus Edgar Fernandez was at a South Mountain gathering with his family when he saw his abuelo — a man in his nineties who still farms corn in his hometown in Mexico — standing quietly at the edge of the mountain, wearing his tejana hat and a printed shirt with surfboards. Fernandez pulled out his camera.
"He didn't know I took a photo," the Phoenix muralist and painter says. "But his face says so much."
That image became a graphite and gouache portrait in Cultural Identity, Fernandez’s exhibition on view through May 31 in the Phoenix Art Museum's Administration Building. In the drawing, Fernandez replaced the surfboards on his abuelo’s shirt with ears of corn, referencing the land and lineage of corn fields that have been tended across generations in his family. For Fernandez this is his artistic territory: the intersection of personal history, indigenous heritage, and the living culture of communities that too often go unrepresented in gallery spaces.
Don't miss Cultural Identity, on view through May 31 at the Phoenix Art Museum's Administration Building, 1st Floor Gallery, 1625 N. Central Ave., Phoenix. Admission is free.
Full story:
Edgar Fernandez was at a South Mountain gathering with his family when he saw his abuelo — a man in his nineties who still farms corn in his hometown in Mexico — standing quietly at the edge of the mountain, wearing his tejana hat and a printed shirt with surfboards. Fernandez pulled out his cam...