February 20 - August 1, 2026 | Armory Center for the Arts

Material Prophecies: Craft as Divination

Across cultures, artists have turned to craft as a way to interpret the past and imagine possible futures. Working in earth, fiber, metal, cyanotype, terracotta, and film, these makers engage with materials as carriers of cosmological knowledge. Creating forms through which memory is transmitted, reconfigured, and made visible, their practice operates simultaneously as object and process, blurring the distinction between aesthetic and ceremonial tools, and between the personal and the ancestral.

Material Prophecies: Craft as Divination gathers together eight artists who approach material as a framework to understand what we know, where inherited knowledge systems intersect with contemporary modes of making. Their work traces the architecture of memory, ritual, and speculation, offering pathways through uncertainty toward resilience.

In the San Gabriel Valley, time is archived through cycles of fire and flood, wind, and regrowth—patterns that disrupt linear narratives and foreground return. These ecological rhythms reflect how craft traditions move and change across geographies and lineages. The works on view invite us to consider material not as a static object, but as an active participant in shaping how communities remember, survive, and imagine beyond the present.

Material Prophecies includes works from Jackie Amézquita, April Bey, Calethia DeConto, Emmanuel Louisnord Desir, Joel Gaitan, vanessa german, Sky Hopinka, and Lani Trock.

Curated by Taylor Bythewood-Porter, Director of Exhibitions