Marcus Zúñiga: mirasol
August 1–30, 2026
Los Angeles State Historic Park
1245 N Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Public art installation at the River Station Roundhouse turntable
Public Programs at L.A. State Historic Park
Saturday, August 1, 5–7 PM
Saturday, August 29, 5–7 PM
“I am convinced that memory has a gravitational force. It is constantly attracting us. Those who have a memory are able to live in the fragile present moment. Those who have none don’t live anywhere. Each night slowly, impassively, the center of the galaxy passes over…” -Patricio Guzmán
If our future in the cosmos is being planned beyond Earth — in space stations, lunar colonies, and imagined extraterrestrial cities — who gets to participate in shaping that future? For many whose deep ancestral-cosmological bonds to the North American continent have been fractured by displacement, remembering becomes a way to regain orientation: a route back to place, time, and belonging. How can we use the knowledge of our cultural heritage to describe our future within the cosmos?
Our cosmos is designed by a spiral migration: the planet and the solar system move through the galaxy in a vast orbit. The mountain collects the rain that drains into the arroyos, flowing into the river, into the ocean. I invoke the form of the Xicalcoliuhqui, repeated throughout ancestral cultures in the Americas. I see it in the streams and rivers that bring life through this place, and in the spiral orbit the planet makes through the galaxy.
We look at the sun and heal the land we stand upon as we remember our ancestral light within our spiral migration through the cosmos. When we see ourselves represented as part of the cosmos, we further our connection to the sky. How do we go to space? Perhaps we already are there, and we once knew this. -Marcus Zúñiga
In August 2026, LACE commissions LA-based artist Marcus Zúñiga for a site-specific temporary public art installation at LA State Historic Park, expanding on his recent sculptural works heliotrope: a clear day is the mexican sunflower’s medicine (2023), and mutualism imager (2024). Zúñiga’s work is research- and time-based, interacting with their surroundings to embody relationships between human and cosmic bodies. Drawn in part from Mesoamerican cosmology, his commission for LACE will be developed based on the site-specificity of the park as an anthropological site, exploring the history of the LA River’s Zanja Madre. Zúñiga’s temporary sculptural installation, mirasol (2026) is located in the center of the historic River Station Roundhouse turntable, and will be activated with two public programs featuring performance art, ceremonial-based celebrations, and dance by local Indigenous and Mexican American contemporary artists whose works are in conversation with Zúñiga’s artistic practice.
About the Artist
Marcus Zúñiga (b. 1990, Silver City, New Mexico) is an artist working in sculpture and time-based media. Zúñiga was raised among the rural communities of Southern New Mexico and is currently based in Los Angeles. His practice references research drawn from Mesoamerican cosmologies, astrophysics, curanderismo, and his ancestry. Using the primary material of light, his works interact with their environment to embody the space between human and cosmic bodies. They deconstruct the apparatus of the modern telescope to center the subjectivity of the cosmos through multicultural perception. Often, Zúñiga develops land-based preliminary works in relation to his installations. Zúñiga received his BFA from the University of New Mexico and MFA from Art Center College of Design. His work has been featured in curated exhibitions at Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles; Benito Greene Arte Público, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; 516 Arts, Albuquerque; MexiCali Biennial at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; and Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, Claremont. https://www.marcuszunigaart.com/ IG: @marcuszunigaofficial
Support
Support for this program is provided by Karen Hillenburg, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Teiger Foundation.
¹ Nahuatl word meaning “twisted gourd.” A prominent motif, often called a “stepped fret,” characterized by a series of steps connected to a spiral or hook, and used by ancient cultures across the Americas. The motif is associated with many ideas, and is variously thought to depict water, waves, clouds, lightning, a serpent or serpent-deity like the mythological fire or feathered serpents, as well as more philosophical ideas like cyclical movement, or the life-giving connection between the light of the sun and the earth, and it may have been a protection against death, but no single meaning is universally accepted.
² The original aqueduct that brought water to the Pueblo de Los Angeles from the Río Porciúncula (Los Angeles River).
