LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) presents "A Tender Excavation" Curated by Selene Preciado "A Tender Excavation" approaches research-based artistic practices through propositions of alternative histories, bringing together a group of artists who work with historical and familial photographic archives as a point of departure to construct new narratives and elicit transformation. Artists featured in the exhibition include Zeynep Abes, Susu Attar, Jamil G Baldwin, Mely Barragán, Artemisa Clark, Arleene Correa Valencia, Mercedes Dorame, Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, Leah King, Tarrah Krajnak, Heesoo Kwon, Ann Le, Arlene Mejorado, Star Montana, and Camille Wong. The works selected for the exhibition originate from personal, familial, or historical photographic archives, recontextualized through installation, collage, painting, film, video, sculpture, and mixed media. Artworks reimagine and reconnect lost fragments to speak about personal and collective resilience, constructing new possibilities for an interconnected futurity. Several pieces in the exhibition share aesthetics of abstraction, layered distortion, glitch, or incompleteness, signaling how loss, damage, or decay of the photographic object can be poetic metaphors for the transmission of history and memory as an act of self- and collective preservation. The title of the exhibition borrows a description of Arlene Mejorado’s practice as “an act of care, via a tender excavation of objects, anecdotes, and memories simultaneously.” "A Tender Excavation" centers identities that have been systematically excluded from mainstream narratives and representations of not only American art but also of “American” identity. "A Tender Excavation" features mainly US-based artists who represent Afro-Latinx, African American, Chinese American, Gabrielino/Tongva Nation, Korean American, Iraqi American, Latinx, Mexican, Mexican American, Peruvian American, Thai, Turkish American, and Vietnamese American intersecting identities, among others. For these artists, whose backgrounds are connected to diasporic experiences of discrimination, displacement, erasure, exclusion, slavery, and systemic violence, the practice of piecing together history through memory and counter-narrative is an act of transformation and healing. Luckman Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA, 90032 Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Friday: 12:00 PM–5:00 PM, or by appointment Gallery closed on November 26–28, 2025, and December 23, 2025–January 2, 2026 Parking is available on the top deck of Structure C, located directly in front of The Luckman.