@ Riverside Art Museum

EXHIBITION ON VIEW: March 15, 2025 – August 31, 2025

Location: Powell and DeVean Galleries (Second floor)

Tamara Cedré: To Rise Above Ruins

The sigh of History rises over ruins, not over landscapes.

—Derek Walcott

“To Rise Above Ruins” takes inspiration from Caribbean poet Derek Walcott, who ruminates on how cultures persist under the threat of erasure. Photographer Tamara Cedré builds her work upon this notion of the remaking and reassembly of cultures from fragmental memory by bringing together archival and new images to conjure what Walcott calls a “visual echo of history.” 

The exhibition engages past and present, to create a photographic commons for Cedré and the communities she calls home in Puerto Rico and Southern California to understand how land has been used and shaped. Projects featured include Cedré’s El Suspiro de la Historia (The sigh of history, 2015–23) in which she responds to federally sponsored FSA imagery depicting Puerto Rico, to question the ongoing impacts of the island’s colonial status, including its impacts on her, as a first-gen living stateside, and her family. 

“To Rise Above Ruins” also includes Cedré’s recent work in Southern California that also examines land-use policies as ongoing colonial projects. These include her photographic and filmic series Live from the Frontlines (2023–present) and Un Corrido de la Tierra (A song of the land, 2021–present) documenting the route of a supply chain that has largely subsisted on Latinx labor and currently threatens the health of the residents who live and work in its shadows.

Curated by Lisa Henry.

Photo credits: Cedre, Tamara-Santa Fe Avenue, Hesperia, 2021 (landscape2), Cedre, Tamara-Vera’s Front Yard, Central Avenue, San Bernardino, 2024 (24b), Cedre, Tamara. Church Doors Opening Out to Warehouses, St. Mark’s Missionary Baptist Church, San Bernardino, 2024 (11).