Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026 (7:30pm)
FRANCIS & ANTHONY ALMENDAREZ: NAVIGATING THE ARCHIVES WITHIN
Co-presented by Aurora Picture Show, Blaffer Art Museum, and Lawndale Art Center
Location: Aurora Picture Show - 5601A Navigation Blvd.
Free Admission
This experimental live performance and media work by Francis and Anthony Almendárez explores distinctions between official narratives, marginalized histories, and subjective memories, while it blends and remixes them. Incorporating archival and original imagery, readings, and improvised music, Navigating the Archives Within is both a unique expression of the artists’ personal history and a communal meditation on the lived experience of the liminal. Featured performers include Francis Almendárez, Anthony Almendárez, Gabriel Martinez, Ivette Román-Roberto, Juan Garcia, Brandon Willis, and Xavier Gilmore. Previously commissioned by Aurora Picture Show, this will be the first time the work is experienced live!
This program is held in conjunction with the exhibition Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue, presented in parts across the Blaffer Art Museum (Jan. 17 – Mar. 14) and Lawndale Art Center (Feb. 28 - May 2). It is supported by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, and funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance and by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
Note: Admission is first come, first served. Doors open at 7pm, performance at 7:30pm. No late seating.
Performers:
Francis Almendárez - prose
Anthony Almendárez - trumpet, electronics
Gabriel Martinez - drums
Ivette Román-Roberto - vocals
Juan Garcia - double bass
Brandon Willis - keyboard
Xavier Gilmore - electronics
PERFORMER BIOS
Francis Almendárez is an artist, filmmaker, and educator from South Central, Los Angeles. His work takes many different forms including exhibitions, screenings, performances, workshops, and collaborations that have been presented across museum, university, virtual, and DIY spaces both nationally and internationally. Through the merging of history, autoethnography, and cultural production, his works offer ways to navigate and reconcile with intergenerational trauma and reclaim diasporic identities. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Blaffer Art Museum and FotoFest, Houston, TX; San Antonio Museum of Art; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, TW. He has presented solo exhibitions and commissioned projects at Fullerton Museum of Art, San Bernardino, CA; Antenna, New Orleans, LA; Galveston Arts Center, TX; Artpace, San Antonio, TX; The Reading Room, Dallas, TX; Houston Center for Photography, TX; and NX Project Space, London, UK. Recent presentations include an early-career survey at Los Angeles Filmforum; screenings and performances at La Cueva, Mexico City, MX and Prospect Art, Los Angeles, CA; and group exhibitions at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, Riverside, CA; Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, El Paso, TX; Usdan Gallery, Bennington, VT; and ANTHROPOZÄNTA, Hof/Saale, Germany. Almendárez is an Assistant Professor of Photography/Video and Studio Art at California State University, San Bernardino, and previously lectured at University of Houston School of Art and Houston Community College. He received his MFA (with Distinction) from Goldsmiths, University of London, and BFA in Sculpture/New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design.
Anthony Almendárez is an artist from Los Angeles, CA based in Houston, TX who builds multimedia installations and performances to speak on issues of labor and the history of labor movements. His work centers sound and free improvisation in collaboration with others to challenge inherited/imposed criteria and value systems. Almendarez’s work has been presented nationally and internationally including DiverseWorks, Aurora Picture Show, The Menil Collection, and Blaffer Art Museum (Houston, TX); Irvine Fine Arts Center (Irvine, CA); Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago, IL); Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, FR); Banff Center for the Arts (Alberta, CA); Seen:Sound Visual/Music (Melbourne, AU); and ECHOFLUXX 19 (Prague, CZ). He received his MFA in Music/Sound from Bard College, an MA in Music Theory and Composition from Marshall University, and BA in Music Education from CSU Dominguez Hills.
Juan J. García is a contemporary double bass musician and improviser living and working in Houston, TX. He has been a resident artist in Mexico's national contemporary music ensemble CEPROMUSIC (Centro de Experimentación y Producción de Música Contemporánea.) and a collaborator with Mexico City's modern and experimental ensemble Liminar. He has performed at the Tate Modern in London, Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, The Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City, Issue Project Room and Roulette in New York City, and at festivals such as No Idea Festival (Austin), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), and Aural Festival, El Nicho, and Umbral (Mexico City).
Xavier Gilmore is an interdisciplinary artist and producer who works in sound, traditional mediums and collaborative performance. Through his work, he explores ideas on dissent, abstraction and social topography. He has exhibited regionally and internationally at Artpace, Southwest School of Art, Museo Soumaya and the McNay, among others. Gilmore holds a BFA from UTSA and studied at School of the Art Institute Chicago, and Universidad de Las Américas Puebla, Cholula, México.
Gabriel Martinez was born near an atomic blast crater in the New Mexico desert. He graduated with an MFA from Columbia University and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program before moving to Houston as a Core Fellow and artist-in-residence at Project Row Houses. He is the director of Alabama Song, an experimental arts space founded in 2012. Martinez was a 2022 Olmsted Fellow at MacDowell and was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant and a Robert Rauschenberg SEED Grant. His work has been exhibited at the Blaffer Art Museum, Artpace, and the Houston Museum of African American Culture.
Ivette Román Roberto Resounding Vision Awardee Ivette Román Roberto’s original voice project, Voices of Enchantment, addresses colonialism and magic; Sin-funny for Guitar explores gender and migration; Humus Terroristas Todos was a response to 9/11; and RÉQUIEM was a community singing project supported by the National Performance Network. She has performed at the ViXual Poetry Biennale of Mexico City, Sia/Poesia at the University of Bologna, the Bâtie Festival in Geneva, and NYU’s Hemispheric Institute encounters in Peru and Mexico. Her 2026 project, Cantata for Progress, is supported by the Musician Changemaker Grant from Music to Life.
Brandon ‘The Biggest Brandon” Willis, a Houston-born vocalist with a deep command of voice, piano, flute, production, and arrangement, fuses genres to reflect personal truth and cultural legacy. A graduate of Kinder HSPVA and Prairie View A&M University, Brandon has created original music for exhibitions by Carrie Mae Weems, including The Shape of Things at Park Avenue Armory in New York and Land of Broken Dreams, a nationally touring installation. He also composed music for Lifeblood, a video and installation by Tania Candiani at the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston. His debut album, The Biggest Love, is scheduled for release later this year.
Photo by Laura De León.
