Sylvia Fernández: Habitando, I Don't Belong Here, We Belong Everywhere

Exhibition Dates: October 17, 2026–January 9, 2027

Opening Reception: Friday, October 16, 5:30 PM–7:30 PM

Artist Talk: Friday, October 16, 5:30 PM

In Habitando, I Don’t Belong Here, We Belong Everywhere, artist Sylvia Fernández (b. 1978, Lima, Peru) navigates the complexity of finding home everywhere and nowhere at once. Using Spanglish as a structural tool, and the flowing nature of water and air as frameworks for thinking about transformation, migration, and belonging, Fernández materializes the experience of moving between places as a journey toward the self, where memory and feeling continually shape a place to belong.

For this exhibition in the Joseph Clayes III Gallery, Fernández expands beyond personal experience into collective awareness through two archives she has created: Archivo de Sentires (Archive of Feelings) and Archivo de Sombras (Archive of Shadows). The Archivo de Sentires draws on responses to seven questions posed to women of different ages living around the globe. These responses have been translated into paintings, with a palette drawn from every color named in the archive. The Archivo de Sombras comprises photographs of each woman’s sun-cast shadow, which act as source materials for the paintings. In the resulting works, the shadows appear as silhouettes, at times merging with Fernández’s own body to mark presence and absence.

Fernández’s adopted home of San Diego is linked by the Pacific Ocean to Lima, where she was born. San Diego’s dry terrain, waterways, shifting light, and native flora and fauna enter the paintings as fragments reimagined into new landscapes. Birds following the Pacific Flyway, from Alaska to Patagonia, appear as symbols, moving and belonging everywhere.

The exhibition design further reflects Fernández’s interest in fluidity of place and identity. Double-sided paintings hover and swirl in the gallery, inviting viewers to navigate works as they become portals for transformation and expansion.

The exhibition can be viewed in the Joseph Clayes III Gallery at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library (1008 Wall Street, La Jolla, CA 92037) during open hours, Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Appointments are not required.

Selections from the Athenaeum’s Erika & Fred Torri Artists’ Books Collection

Exhibition Dates: May 2–July 25, 2026

Opening Reception: Friday, May 1, 2026, 5:30–7:30 PM

A selection of artists’ books on the environment in the Athenaeum’s Erika & Fred Torri Artists’ Books Collection will be showcased in the Max & Melissa Elliott North Reading Room.

About the Athenaeum’s Erika & Fred Torri Artists’ Books Collection

The Athenaeum’s artists’ books collection was initiated in 1991 when Joan & Irwin Jacobs Executive Director Emeritus Erika Torri received a generous donation from life member Hope Shipley with the advice “to use it for her dreams.” Artists’ books have been Torri’s passion for many years prior and it seemed a natural fit for the Athenaeum. She purchased Harry Sternberg’s limited edition A Life in Woodcuts, published by Brighton Press, and thus the collection was launched. The mission of the collection was established with a focus on regional artists and presses and on artists who emphasized art and/or music in their works. The collection has grown enormously through purchases, sponsored acquisitions, and generous donations—now numbering close to 2,200 books—and so has its reputation. It is sought out by artists, researchers and collectors and can be viewed by making an appointment with library staff.

The exhibition can be viewed in the Max & Melissa Elliott North Reading Room at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library (1008 Wall Street, La Jolla, CA 92037) during open hours, Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Appointments are not required.

Ess Whiteley: listening materials

Exhibition Dates: August 29–October 17, 2026

Opening Reception: Saturday, August 29, 5–8 PM

Athenaeum Art Center, 1955 Julian Avenue, San Diego, CA 92113

In Ess Whiteley: listening materials, speaker cones filled with organic and inorganic matter (rocks, gravel, clay, metal), fans and harmonicas, are hung and placed throughout the Athenaeum. The space itself becomes a self-sounding resonant body, absent of any visible human agency or "performer." Various materials are animated by sound waves that cause them to vibrate, producing different self-organizing behaviors. The frequencies generate beating interference patterns that activate the materials in distinct ways, tuned specifically to interact with qualities of the Athenaeum itself — the room's natural resonances, HVAC system, and ambient noise — and as the listener moves through the space, the sonic material shifts depending on location. 

Ess Whiteley: listening materials investigates the audible trace of various things meeting: frequencies, speaker cone membranes, matter, reeds, air, and room. Set into motion is a field of relations — wave meeting mineral density, wave meeting wave, air pressure meeting reed, ear meeting pressure wave — in which sound emerges only ever between materials: between frequencies close enough to produce interference patterns, between moving air and a still reed, between pressure waves and matter, between matter and force, between the room, matter, and listening subject. What reaches the ear is not only evidence of this meeting, this betweenness, but of matter's own capacity to act, resist, respond, and co-arise with the listener. Through this betweenness, the invisible agency of sound becomes visibly materialized, and matter’s vibrancy, agency, its being-there, made perceptible through sound. 

About the artist: New Jersey–born, West Coast–based composer and sound artist Ess Whiteley creates sonic worlds that combine electronics, acoustic instruments, multimedia, and repurposed materials to explore new modes of listening and the relationships between humans, technology, and the natural world. Their work has received the Martirano Composition Award and recognition from the MA/IN Matera Intermedia Festival, and has been commissioned by acclaimed ensembles, including Alarm Will Sound and Riot Ensemble. Whiteley’s work has been presented internationally at MATA (New York), Mixtur (Barcelona, ES), Dublin Music Current (Dublin, IR), Espacios Sonoros (Salta, AR) and has been featured on Pitchfork, The Wire, New Music Handbook, and Relevant Tones. They recently earned a Ph.D. in composition from the University of California, San Diego.

The exhibition can be viewed in the Catherine and Robert Palmer Gallery at the Athenaeum Art Center (1955 Julian Avenue, San Diego, CA 92113) during open gallery hours, Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and every second Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m., during the Barrio Art Crawl, and by appointment.

La exposición se puede ver en la Galería Catherine y Robert Palmer en el Centro de Arte Athenaeum (1955 Julian Avenue, San Diego, CA 92113) durante el horario de atención de la galería, de martes a sábado, de 11 a. m. a 4 p. m., y cada segundo sábado de 5 a 8 p.m., durante el Barrio Art Crawl, y con cita previa.