[Courtesy of Armory Center for the Arts]
The show marks the curatorial debut of Taylor Bythewood-Porter as the Armory’s Director of Exhibitions. Bythewood-Porter, who assumed the role in August 2025, is a curator and writer whose work centers Black feminist thought and material culture. “I am a curator and writer whose work centers Black feminist thought, material culture, and the aesthetics of the African Diaspora,” she said upon her appointment.
The exhibition features artists Jackie Amézquita, April Bey, Calethia DeConto, Emmanuel Louisnord Desir, Joel Gaitan, vanessa german, Sky Hopinka, and Lani Trock. Their work spans earth, fiber, metal, cyanotype, terracotta, and film. The group includes MacArthur Fellow Sky Hopinka, a Ho-Chunk and Pechanga filmmaker whose experimental work explores Indigenous language and landscape, and vanessa german, a Pittsburgh-based artist who received the Heinz Award for her assemblage sculpture and community-based work.
According to the Armory, the exhibition reflects on time as “nonlinear and ever returning,” rooted in the San Gabriel Valley where cycles of wildfire, floods, winds, and regrowth shape the landscape. The artists’ works suggest that transformation is both inevitable and generative, and that materials can carry memory across distance and lineage.
Among the works on view is April Bey’s “I KNOW ALL ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW ALL ABOUT” (2024), a four-panel textile installation measuring 80 by 240 inches, composed of Jacquard, sherpa, crushed velour, metallic thread, beads, and adorned clothespins. Bey, who grew up in the Bahamas and now works in Los Angeles, creates work that critiques American and Bahamian culture through AfroFuturism and AfroSurrealism.
Jackie Amézquita, a Los Angeles-based artist born in Guatemala, works with biomaterials such as soil, corn masa, charcoal, and rain, treating them as carriers of ancestral knowledge. She received the Mohn Public Recognition Award and Mohn Land Award in 2023. Joel Gaitan, a first-generation Nicaraguan American ceramicist from Miami, creates terracotta vessels inspired by Pre-Columbian traditions. “Each of my pieces is a storyteller, an altar, an offering,” Gaitan has said. “Each piece is a portal; it takes you to something else.”
Emmanuel Louisnord Desir, born in Brooklyn and now based in Los Angeles, creates sculpture and painting that addresses colonialism, spirituality, and biblical narrative. Calethia DeConto, a lens-based artist, works with cyanotype and photography to explore conscious relationships with nature. Lani Trock, born in Hawaii and based in Los Angeles, creates immersive installations that investigate human relationships to nature.
Karen Satzman, the Armory’s vice president of programs, said of Bythewood-Porter’s appointment: “Her curatorial vision and commitment to inclusive storytelling will help shape a bold and dynamic future for our exhibitions program.”
The Armory offers K-12 field trips connected to the exhibition. Armory Teaching Artists guide students through the show and lead hands-on artmaking activities. Field trips are available Tuesdays through Fridays from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. and cost $475 for up to 35 students, with sliding scale options available. Teachers can contact exhibitions@armoryarts.org to schedule visits.
Lead support for Armory programs comes from the Perenchio Foundation. Exhibition public programs are supported, in part, by California Community Foundation.
“Material Prophecies: Craft as Divination” opens Thursday, February 20, at the Armory Center for the Arts, located at 145 North Raymond Avenue. Gallery hours are Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., and admission is free. For more information, call (626) 792-5101 or visit armoryarts.org.
