Lorraine García-Nakata: Knowledge We Carry is a solo exhibition of recent works and sampling of earlier pieces, by Royal Chicano Air Force founding member and artist Lorraine García-Nakata, that opened in San Francisco in 2025 and now tours to Blue Line Arts joining a larger regional acknowledgement celebrating 50 years of the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF). This exhibit includes recent paintings, Lorraine’s signature large-scale drawings, fabric and paper pieces as well as a sampling of earlier sculpture and mixed media artwork.
“For over sixty years, García-Nakata has been prolific in creating drawing, painting, sculpture, mixed media, textile, installation pieces, and as a muralist. Her work articulates concepts both personal and political ultimately resulting in inspiration. Of note, her drawings and paintings are powerful in subject matter, masterful technique, scale, and in their singular effect on the viewer. Lorraine’s earlier sculptures utilize material as acrylic, wood, ceramics, and mixed media. Her recent paper pieces lean in on the whimsical as seen in her very recent 2023-2025 paper dolls. Among other aspects, these pieces shed light on various ways she and other children articulated themselves in the early 1950’s.”––Adriana Williams, Author, Collector, Historian
An artist who expresses in various mediums, Lorraine has also hand-created fabric pieces in the form of full traje and glove pieces which intentionally acknowledge ancestorial, poly-ethnic, social justice, and healing references. Metal feathers reference Indigenous precious wisdom, butterflies symbolize transformation, paper tags reference the healing milagro, and use of the color red points to the ongoing global feminicide.
“My creative work and process has never let me off that easy. It presses on me to go deeper pushing me to envision, to imagine what it looks like, feels like when we finally have what we need. Over the decades I have come to know that this is where our deep power resides, in each of us, the collective “we”––by making time to imagine, visualize the world we need. It is no surprise that our contemporary world keeps so many of us struggling, surviving. By design, it keeps us from the necessary time needed to be still, imagine, and in this way, assert what we need and want.”–– García-Nakata, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 16, 2026, 5:00-7 pm, 2026
Artist Talk: May 16, 4:00-5:00 p.m.
Closing Reception: Saturday, June 20, 5:00-7:00 pm, 2026
Closing Reception:
