Free Third Thursday

Join us for a free evening at MOCA with galleries open late, live music by KXCI Community Radio, food by Sushi Hana, and beer by Brick Box Brewery! Don’t miss this lively time to gather with friends and family around art, music, and drinks; all ages are welcome!

At 6pm, join us for a screening of animations that accompany Stories from Home, a series of dances embodying the oral traditions of Nuevomexicano, Chicano, and Mexican American communities in the American Southwest. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Artistic Director Yvonne Montoya and artist Wesley Fawcett Creigh. 

In Stories from Home, choreographer Yvonne Montoya, a 23rd-generation Nuevomexicana, and an all-Mexican American cast of dancers draw upon personal histories and ancestral knowledge, including stories from Montoya’s great-grandmother, grandmother, great-aunts, and father. Themes in Stories from Home include: The Bracero Program, 1940s Americanization programs, the creation of the Atomic Bomb in Northern New Mexico, family, love, and querencia. Animations by Tucson-based artist Wesley Creigh. Stories from Home Artistic Director Yvonne Montoya is also based in Tucson.

Stories from Home screening and conversation is co-presented by MOCA, the Department of Mexican American Studies and the Adalberto and Ana Guerrero Student Center at the University of Arizona.

 

About 

Yvonne Montoya is a mother, choreographer, bi-national artist, and founding director of Safos Dance Theatre. Based in Tucson, AZ and originally from Albuquerque, NM, her work is grounded in and inspired by the landscapes, languages, cultures, and aesthetics of the U.S. Southwest. In 2020, Montoya was the first Arizona-based artist to receive the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) National Dance Project Production Grant. In 2022, her company Safos Dance Theatre received the National Performance Network Creation Fund Grant and the National Endowment for the Arts Grants for Arts Project Grant for her piece Stories from Home.  Stories from Home premiered at GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington, D.C. in October 2023. Montoya was recently featured in KQED’s If Cities Could Dance and KNME’s ¡COLORES! www.yvonnemontoya.co

Wesley Fawcett Creigh’s animation and multimedia work has been included in exhibitions such as the Museo de Arte Nogales, MOCA Tucson, Yavapai College, and the Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport. Her 2018 experimental video work, “Prototype”, received an official selection into the WomenCinemakers Biennale and the Sharjah Film Platform. She has been awarded grants and residencies from organizations such as the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona, The Puffin Foundation, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Springboard for the Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Franconia Sculpture Park. Wesley is honored to be a member of the Stories from Home team. To see more of her work, visit wesleyfawcettcreigh.com.

Department of Mexican American Studies (MAS) at the University of Arizona offers interdisciplinary degree programs designed to study, recover, and disseminate knowledge of the history, culture, and intellectual legacy of Chicanx, Mexican, Indigenous, and Latinx peoples in the United States and across the Américas.

The Adalberto and Ana Guerrero Student Center is one of 7 cultural resource centers at the University of Arizona. The Adalberto & Ana Guerrero Student Center came into existence as a result of student activism and has served many generations of Latinx/e students at the University of Arizona. Today, the center continues to support Latinx/e students achieve academic and personal excellence by cultivating and fostering a sense of belonging on campus. Our resources and events are completely free and open to all students!

 

 

About the Exhibitions

On view in the Great Hall is DEMO, a multimedia exhibition by artists Juan Obando and Yoshua Okón that explores the practice of “astroturfing”—a marketing ploy that generates fake public demonstrations intended to appear as grassroots political movements. On view in the East Wing Galleries is 500 Places at Once, an exhibition centering poet CAConrad that features a newly commissioned collection of three-dimensional poem sculptures; and Graves for the Rain, the first solo museum exhibition by artist and musician Karima Walker who works with sound, sculpture, and durational performance to consider ecological practices and grief in response to the hydrological death of the Santa Cruz River.

 

Third Thursdays are presented in collaboration with KXCI Community Radio.