From quilts and textiles to sculpture and painting, ‘Remixed: Entwined Histories and New Forms’ reveals how contemporary artists transform inherited histories into bold new visual languages.
15 July 2026
At the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, ‘Remixed: Entwined Histories and New Forms’ brings together a dynamic group of contemporary artists who approach making as an act of translation, transformation, and cultural continuity. The exhibition explores the idea of the “remix” not simply as a musical reference, but as a powerful artistic methodology that reshapes memory, material, and tradition into new forms.
Featuring works by Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, Jeffrey Gibson, Basil Kincaid, Candice Lin, Shinique Smith, Wendy Red Star, Porfirio Gutiérrez, Adia Millett, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Michael C. Thorpe, Ben Venom, and others, the exhibition demonstrates how textiles, quilts, pigments, and found materials become living archives that carry stories across generations. Rather than preserving history as something fixed, these artists unravel, stitch, layer, and reconstruct it, creating works that speak to migration, ancestry, spirituality, identity, and collective memory.
By dissolving the boundaries between craft and fine art, painting and textile, personal narrative and shared history, ‘Remixed’ offers a compelling meditation on the evolving life of materials and traditions. Rich with tactile experimentation and conceptual depth, the exhibition invites audiences to consider how inherited forms can be reimagined without losing their origins, revealing creativity itself as an act of connection across cultures, generations, and time.
This exhibition is on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art until 30 August 2026.
