Ancestral Threads brings together a collection of artworks from the Capuli culture (800 to 1500 CE), a group in Pre-Columbian South America on the Andean plain, to contemporary representations by Latino, Puerto Rican, and Chicano artists exploring identity, gender roles, and socio-political tensions.

Several representations of 19th and 20th-century Huichol yarn paintings are included, which have been used as an instrument for storytelling. Roberto Lugo's ceramics reimagine classical pottery forms by adding a 21st-century street sensibility to highlight themes of poverty, inequality, and racial injustice.

Over the past five decades, Judithe Hernández has centered the realities and mythologies of Mexican migrant women alongside the legacies of colonization and the US-Mexico border. Hernández is currently the subject of a retrospective at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum.

Abel Alejandre's most recent series of paintings, The Chicano Moon Landing of 1968, introduces us to Xicanoland. This space seeks to honor real and imagined ancestors in a society that acknowledges our history while embracing hope for a better future.

We invite visitors to view the works and consider the various materials used over time to shape creative expressions to document stories.