Alexis Childress:
Migration, Memory, Movement
On View: September 19, 2026 - March 20, 2027
Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) presents two solo exhibitions Alexis Childress: Migration, Memory, Movement and Tristan Esmino: sa gawi ng araw (September 19, 2025-March 20, 2027) as part of the ongoing MCASB Satellite Gallery program at the Riviera Beach House in the heart of Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone neighborhood. Childress is a recent MFA graduate from UCSB and Esmino is an MFA candidate at USC. Linked by the artists' use of textiles and themes of landscape and ancestry, the two exhibitions will be installed throughout the gallery, in conversation.
The artworks in Migration, Memory, Movement, Childress has digitally created patterns made using infinitely repeated images of the Illinois and California landscapes, and then printed on velvet fabric. Childress explains that this new body of work:
…represents my ancestral connections to both the Midwest and the West, examining the way pattern can represent time, and how personal choices can become a disruption in the pattern. This work highlights the physical differences, as well as the unexpected similarities, between the Western and the Midwestern landscape, and visualizes how family, time and history can be mapped through digital patterns.
Alexis Childress (1993) is a visual artist born in Illinois. She received her BFA from Georgia State University (2020), and her MFA from the University of California Santa Barbara. Her work uses 2D and 3D digital collage to investigate Black American identity, systems of power and Astro-Blackness- "the emergence of a black identity framework within emerging global technocultural assemblages, migration, human reproduction, algorithms, [and] digital networks." Alexis has exhibited in venues such as the Morean Arts Center (FL), Echo Contemporary Gallery (GA), Phipps Center for the Arts (WI) and the Rhode Island Center of Photographic Arts. As an established writer, her contributions extend to publications like Burnaway Magazine, Create! Magazine and Scientific Reports. She has been recognized with the Red Bull Arts Microgrant, the Georgia Visual Artist Grant as well as a presenter at the 2021 Society of Photographic Education National Conference.
The Riviera Beach House is an artful boutique hotel situated steps from the sand in Santa Barbara’s eclectic Funk Zone neighborhood. The newly redesigned property has become a destination where people gather to enjoy curated experiences, explore local culture, and embrace the Riviera lifestyle. Maya Mallick, owner of The Riviera Beach House, is passionate about design and embraces art as an intrinsic part of the hotel experience.