San Juan Bautista photo exhibit, film screening call attention to Indigenous influence

A photographic exhibition and screening of the documentary film “Contemporary Indigenous Voices of California’s South Coast Range” will be featured on March 15 in San Juan Bautista.

Previously debuted at the de Young Museum of Fine Art in San Francisco, the free photographic exhibit will take place 4-6pm at Luna Gallery and Eco Art Studio, 107B The Alameda in San Juan Bautista. This exhibition will run through April 27. 

A screening of the documentary—created by director and cinematographer Kirti Bassendine—will take place at 7-9pm at Teatro Campesino, 705 Fourth Street in San Juan Bautista. The cost of admission to the film screening is $20-$40, determined on a sliding scale. 

The exhibition of portraits by Bassendine features indigenous community members from the South Coast range. The photographs are accompanied by powerful personal statements from Native community members, in an effort to call attention to cultural connections to the land, rematration (restoring the relationship between indigenous people and their ancestral land) and climate change, says a press release. 

The documentary “Contemporary Indigenous Voices of California’s South Coast Range” explores the cultural practices and personal stories of 10 tribal community members calling attention to their connections to the land and the forces that threaten that relationship. 

Having been born in Kenya and emigrated to England at a young age, Bassendine’s artistic expression was shaped by her experiences growing up within a minority culture, Bassendine said. 

“As an Indian child growing up in Kenya, I experienced a lot of racial discrimination close up at a very young age,” Bassendine said in an artist’s Q&A published on the de Young Museum website. “There was a lot of segregation. We were actually discouraged from mingling and socializing with African children.”

“Then moving to England, I suddenly became a child of displacement. The culture was so different. It was so alienating. Trying to find my feet within that culture I was suddenly put in. Growing up in an Indian culture, it’s very different to going to school in a Western culture.”