Ailene deVries - a stone holds my shadow

Ailene deVries
a stone holds my shadow

May 31 - June 22, 2025

When I asked a friend how grief lives in her body, she gracefully responded, "Grief gets lost and sticks to the bottom. It's a heavy sediment." Her response, simple yet jarring, echoes the weathering and erosion that happens when you are saturated with grief. A sediment, a breaking down, a crushing.

Maybe this is why, when creating images in response to grief years earlier, I felt a flattening of something that was inherently tactile. In 2018, I began a photography project in a Toronto graveyard. I was using a twin-lens camera, and the format allowed me to stand upright and interact with my shadow. I would look down towards my waist, where the viewfinder was, and create a frame in which I could dance when I looked up and met my shadow. For years afterwards this was my choreography; my shadow would jump from stone to stone, casting body onto unfamiliar names.

The language of photography commonly offers us the word capture. For a long while I sought to make grief my captive. I must admit, it took me years before I realized that I could not put a cage around erosion. When studying weaving in 2020, I brought one of my graveyard images to the loom. It was through the weaving of these photographs that I was finally able to process grief. I followed the pattern

of the weave as I had previously followed my shadow as the sun set behind me. My choreography continued in a new form: building an image, not capturing it.

— Ailene deVries

*****

In this poignant exhibition, artist Ailene deVries invites viewers to explore the delicate intersection of memory, loss, and connection through their exquisite jacquard weavings. Drawing from their personal experiences with grief, deVries transforms photographs taken in cemeteries into intricate textile works that serve as both a meditation on mortality and a celebration of enduring bonds. 

In each weaving, an unassuming tombstone holds deVries’ shadow and their gestures. As they move through various burial grounds, they capture their own silhouette cast upon gravestones, creating a visual metaphor for reaching out to those who have passed. These fleeting moments are then meticulously recreated in thread, resulting in woven tableaux that blur the lines between presence and absence, the tangible and the ethereal. 

By translating their photographs to jacquard weavings, deVries allows themselves to process the grieving through their body, as they pass the shuttle through the loom. The woven shadows take on a life of their own, sometimes appearing to embrace the cold stone, other times seeming to dissolve into the texture of the cloth itself. This interplay of light, shadow, and texture creates a tactile representation of the complex emotions surrounding loss and remembrance. 

While deeply personal, deVires’s work resonates with universal themes of grief and the human desire to maintain connections with loved ones. Viewers are invited to reflect on their own experiences of loss and to find solace in the shared nature of mourning. 

As part of this exhibition, we are honored to host a Death Cafe event on Sunday, June 22nd from 11:30am-1pm. Originating in Hackney, East London in 2011, Death Cafe provides a welcoming space for people to gather, enjoy refreshments, and engage in open conversations about death and grief. This complementary program aligns perfectly with deVires’s artistic vision, fostering a community of support and understanding around these often-taboo subjects. 

a stone holds my shadow is not just an exhibition; it’s an invitation to confront our relationship with mortality, to honor those we’ve lost, and to find comfort in our shared human experience. Through their evocative weavings, Ailene deVires reminds us that even in the face of loss, the threads that connect us remain unbroken.

*****

deVries is an artist and educator currently living in Long Beach, CA. deVries curiously tends gardens, weaving through intersections of art, language, and botany. With the lens of a professional photographer, they approach fibers and botanical pressings to explore grief, daughterhood, and correspondence. They hold a bachelors of fine art from the Toronto Metropolitan University and a Masters in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

H Leslie Foster II + Sadie Greyduck + edua mercedes - Xeno-Euphoria

H Leslie Foster II + Sadie Greyduck + edua mercedes

Xeno-Euphoria

April 26th - May 18th, 2025

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Xeno-Euphoria, a three-person show curated by Ashton S. Phillips, featuring fractured glass sculpture by Sadie Greyduck, surrealist drawings on black velvet by edua mercedes, and a four-channel video installation by H Leslie Foster II centering an all Black, Brown,Trans, and Nonbinary cast performing Mark Aguhar’s iconic “Litanies to My Heavenly Brown Body” as queer/trans liturgy. In the midst of a national crisis fueled by the weaponized fear of the “xeno” or alien, these artists invite us to think and feel differently about the “other” inside and outside ourselves. Conjuring ecstatic dissonance, defiant pleasure, and alien belonging, Xeno-Euphoria opens up a sensual world of fragments, speculative ritual, and sur-real possibilities that defies cis-authoritarian control.

Sadie Greyduck’s pretty and strange fragments of ruptured and unseen wholes become building blocks for new forms. A trinity of fractured votives hold the materiality of embodiment and transformation: bullets cast with raw wool and lead, oil infused with polluted rosemary, and bone fragments of bison and cow. Prismatic and legibly heterogenous, Greyduck presents a xeno-euphoric brew of threat, protection, longing, and magic.  

My euphoria is from the power of the ugly brave gnarled ecstatic bitch goddess who makes me work and teaches me about bones and beetle resin and flesh torn apart with glass.  - Sadie Greyduck

H. Leslie Foster II’s four-channel video installation “Heavenly Brown Bodies” performs Mark Aguhar’s searing poem of Brown Trans rage and benediction as queer/trans liturgy. 

FUCK YOUR WHITENESS

FUCK YOUR BEAUTY

FUCK YOUR CHEST HAIR

FUCK YOUR BEARD

FUCK YOUR PRIVILEGE

FUCK THAT YOU AREN’T MADE TO FEEL SHAME ALWAYS …

Resting in the tension between the need of oppressed peoples to name their pain and their incredible ability to celebrate their existence and dream of far better futures, Heavenly Brown Body animates Aguhar’s electrifying text through the unflinching eyes, mouths, and hands of an all Black, Brown, Trans, and Nonbinary cast. Installed in the center of Monte Vista Project’s gallery space, Foster’s installation confronts the viewer from all sides like an ecstatic tribunal of mythic xeno bodies claiming their rage and power.

Faces become xeno-landscapes and bodies become unsteady architectures in edua mercedes’ series of prismatic surrealist drawings on stretched black velvet. Multicolor caterpillars and leaking buckets of liquid gold play with mythic women bound and blindfolded inside surveillance-topped fencing. Fractured narratives and automatic symbols stretch across the walls like silky black hides reflecting and revealing inner landscapes back to the world. 

Alien among and within each other, Xeno-Euphoria builds a world of fragments, disorientation, and pleasure that defies despair and refuses cis-authoritarian control. Like McKenzie Wark’s xenoeuphoric trans raving, Xeno-Euphoria makes space for the transformation of rage into reverence, the oppressive real into the revelatory surreal, and impurity into possibility. the breaking of old forms as a pathway to new shapes and unimagined possibilities.

H Leslie Foster II, Heavenly Brown Body (video still)

Christine Hudson - Kapwa?

Christine Hudson

Kapwa?

March 22nd - April 13th, 2025

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Kapwa?, a solo exhibition by Christine Hudson. Kapwa? is  an inquiry into the ways we form and sustain relationships within our community, within ourselves, and within the environment around us. What shifts occur when we position selfhood as collective rather than individualistic?

The work throughout the show ruminates on the Filipino concept of “kapwa,” which speaks to the interconnectedness of the self with others. Kapwa is not just about shared space, but a shared inner self—where the boundaries between individual identity and the collective operate in conjunction. The prefix “ka” denotes relationships, companionship, or alliance, while “pwa” (or “puang”) signifies space. Together, they convey the idea of being in relationship with others and shaping our sense of self through those connections. The work delves into the complexities of fostering togetherness, while also considering the implications generated within the formation of this grouping. How can community engender care without homogenizing personhood, allowing room for difference, conflict, and change?

Using ceramics, Kapwa? recreates objects considered supplemental —things that help build or support others—and explores the ways in which we attribute value and power to such objects through the application of ornamentation. Elements of food are also incorporated within the sculptures, accentuating the bonds created and sustained within a community. The connotation of nourishment is imbricated with the notion of hospitality, inviting reflection on how we align our inner selves with the gesture of abundance to cultivate the collective. What role do the additive, the supplemental, and the embellishment play in our understanding of care, reciprocity, and interconnectedness?

Christine Hudson (they/them) is an artist that works in sculpture, ceramics, performance, and installation. Their art situates personal narrative as an entry point to integrate discussions of community, care, resistance, and resilience. Their utilization of objects and space investigate the ways visual language can be employed as a powerful tool for archiving histories that are often erased, overlooked, or rendered silent. By highlighting the subtle tensions between the varying degrees of visibility, their practice imagines a rethinking of what preserving these marginalized untold stories entails, creating a space for healing, remembrance, and empowerment. These explorations prompt viewers to reflect on the enduring influence of history and traditions on our lives and collective consciousness. They received their MFA from the University of California Irvine and their BFA in ceramics from California State University Long Beach.

Ching Ching Cheng - Breathe Through the Lingering Whispers

Ching Ching Cheng

Breathe Through The Lingering Whispers

February 22nd 2025 - March 9 2025

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present Breathe Through The Lingering Whispers, a solo exhibition by Ching Ching Cheng. 

Breathe Through The Lingering Whispers evokes the process of finding solace and strength in the faint remnants of a voice or an object of memory. It suggests a dance between presence and absence, where each breath carries the essence of a story not yet faded. These whispers, like soft echoes, entangle with the air around the objects, urging you to listen closely— to let them flow through your soul and draw ritual from the fragments of what once was.

This exhibition features an array of ceramic works, metal wire sculptures adorned with fence spears, and 3D-printed forms, including foo dogs cast from casts of the original, as well as rocks and branches the artist collected from nature. These objects serve as vessels for a hidden soundscape recorded in the artist’s yard in Altadena before the Eaton fire, capturing the calls of chickens, wild parrots, and other birds.

“Especially after the fire and the experience of displacement, the need to find or create new rituals—or modify existing ones—carries a profound weight in daily life. The process of searching raises questions about the very meaning of rituals.”

Ching Ching Cheng is an artist, art educator, and filmmaker who lives and works in Altadena, Los Angeles. 

Image: Water Caltrop, 2024, ceramic, glaze, vinyl, epoxy putty

Rio Asch Phoenix - While Light Still Falls Here

Rio Asch Phoenix
While Light Still Falls Here

January 18th - February 2nd, 2025

Monte Vista Projects is pleased to present While Light Still Falls Here, by Rio Asch Phoenix. At the northern edge of Los Angeles city limits, there is a 300-acre piece of wild land. It is home to oak trees and sagebrush, year-round water, gullies and streams and mountain lions. It is the ancestral homeland to the Gabrieleno-Tongva and Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians. It is now slated for development into a luxury gated community called "Canyon Hills.” While Light Still Falls Here memorializes a thriving ecosystem in an effort to not only preserve the land, but also to question what we value most in the face of the climate crisis.

If construction begins, it would mean the destruction of mature sycamore and oak trees, it would mean grading some ridges down by over 80 feet, it would mean paving over countless streams and waterfalls, and it would mean years of noise and pollution in the community. In a city that is in the middle of a housing crisis, where over 45,000 people are experiencing homelessness, another gated development of luxury homes is unconscionable.

In the system we are all operating under, land like Canyon Hills only holds value as a place for potential development. This system is enormously successful at creating wealth, but it erases the inherent value found in local ecosystems like this one. This work is both a memorial to an immensely beautiful place and a catalyst for people to imagine a more inclusive and sustainable land ethic - one that looks at these ridges and canyons vibrating with life and places just as much value on their continued existence as the potential profit that could be extracted from them.

I have hiked and fallen and crawled through this place for over a year, desperately trying to materialize its light into physical negatives. I might not be able to stop the land from being destroyed, but at least I can bear witness to its beauty while it still exists. In conjunction with this exhibition please join us on a walk near the site, a closing ceremony featuring NCH leaders, and a risograph print available at the opening.

NCH

No Canyon Hills (NCH) is a community coalition forged in solidarity with the plant and animal communities of the Verdugo Mountains in Los Angeles, ancestral land and unceded territory of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, and the Gabrieleno-Tongva Band of Mission Indians. Catalyzed by a proposal to build a luxury gated development on 300+ acres of intact native habitat in the Verdugos, NCH deploys cooperative actions and interventionist strategies across social, political, educational, and legislative registers. NCH works as a multiform entity to conceive and realize urgent anticolonial land conservation solutions.

BIO

Rio Asch Phoenix (b. 1996) is a Los Angeles-based photographer documenting the contested boundaries between built and natural environments. Raised in North Florida, his work focuses on the intersection of these sites and the stories of destruction, renewal, and harmony that emerge from them. His photographs have appeared in Contemporary Art Review LA, Telegraph Magazine, and KCRW. Recently, he received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects and was selected for Review Santa Fe 2024. He holds a BFA in Photography from Northeastern University (2019)