Cesar Lopez, Structural Form: Sequence, 2025, anodized aluminum, PLA print and hardware (courtesy of Cesar Lopez)
The story of American art is inextricable from the story of immigration. Throughout our history artists from around the globe have arrived in America and used art to share their journeys and their histories. The Albrecht-Kemper Museum shares two contemporary voices in the new exhibition A Scattering of Jades: Cesar Lopez and Kiki Serna. The paintings, drawings, and sculptures by these emerging Kansas City artists explore their memories of home and their place in the wider Latino experience of America.
Lopez, born in Guatemala, and Serna, born in Mexico, are both graduates of the Kansas City Art Institute now pursuing their MFAs at Yale School of Art. Both have exhibited in multiple galleries and institutions throughout Kansas City, including in A Layered Presence at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in 2023. The two artists feel their shared experiences and interest in similar themes of home and identity can connect with audiences with a wide range of family stories. Eric Fuson, Executive Director, says, “The AKMA is excited to exhibit the work of these artists who are sharing such strong ideas early in their careers. Supporting the work of artists at all stages is important to the mission of the museum.”
Though they share similar themes in their work, they approach the subject with very different styles and materials. Kiki Serna’s drawings and mixed-media works draw heavily on language as a way of examining personal memories, family stories, and larger ideas of myths of home. Letters and other writings physically fill the blank spaces in compositions from old family photos. The stories and words recall and replace the missing figures in a visual representation of the ephemeral and sometimes fragmentary nature of memory recalled through a card, a photograph, or a piece of clothing.
In contrast, Cesar Lopez’s highly abstracted aluminum sculptures evoke migration patterns and global movements. He uses mathematically precise pieces to create the curved, interconnected bands of white, black, blue, or yellow which weave together to suggest paths of movement. The skeletal globes explode outward with branching paths that also circle and reconnect back to one another. The physical pathways embody the movement of people, but also the intertwined nature of each person and each place.
A Scattering of Jades is on view from February 27 through May 10. Information about exhibitions and other upcoming events at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum can be found at albrecht-kemper.org.
Financial assistance for this project has been provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency, and the St. Joseph Convention and Visitors Bureau.
