Christina McPhee: Diagramming Sentences
Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara
June 7 - July 25, 2026 (installation photographs forthcoming)
DOWNLOAD GALLERY NOTES FOR THE EXHIBITION 'CHRISTINA MCPHEE: DIAGRAMMING SENTENCES' AT MCASB (PDF)
INTRODUCTION
Graphical scores in the form of six large scale drawings, on unframed washi, convene in a classroom at the back of the house. The drawings riff on lines by contemporary writers — Krystal Languelle, Patricia Lockwood, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Lidia Yuknavitch, Miriam Reyes, and Myriam Gurba — as well as the late founder of Deep Listening, Pauline Oliveros. A Shoshone Naraya song and an Enigma poem from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz round out the set. A single channel installation of the animated film short, Mirrors, made with central coast / San Francisco composer Julie Herndon, screens on loop, while at the entrance three works on paper invite a close look at smaller scales. Two drawing workshops are planned for the run of the show. Diagramming Sentences at MCASB is an invited artist-led project installation. Many thanks to the executive and curatorial team, Frederick Janka and Dalia Garcia.
ARTIST STATEMENT
In school, you watched as your teacher was diagramming sentences. She hoped you could see how subject-object-verb sequences could sport off-shoots. Verbs dripped adverbs like little runners. How the prepositional phrase could slant right or left, up or down, into the main line of subject-verb-object: and then escape like paper airplanes in a sputter of low lying wings. Scatter zones map to star charts. Being read aloud to, a child listens through her hands. Inside the large vertical drawings, stretching at large from near the top all the way down, is a form like a snake, or like the shape of a quarter rest form in musical notation. The figuration of a quarter rest in the center vertical column of each large drawing is a visual motif, and directive: a sign to pause. Drawn from Spanish, Galician, English, and Shoshone.
COMMENTARY
"McPhee's practice is grounded in the belief that drawing and mark-making can hold states of feeling that words cannot fully reach. Her work returns consistently to questions of survival, resistance, and cultural memory. That weight is carried in the surface and structure of the work as much as in its subject matter. Her long-term aspirations point toward deeper collaboration across disciplines, with composers, poets, and writers. That direction reflects her conviction that art shapes how a community understands itself, and that bringing more people into contact with challenging, emotionally honest work is itself a form of cultural change. The current Diagramming Sentences project, now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara, is a clear example of that direction. The drawings are built around texts by women and indigenous writers, and the project is designed to travel, moving from the museum into towns, libraries, and community art centers... where it can find new audiences and spark cultural engagement." - Tim Stark, curator, Harold J. Miossi Art Gallery, Cuesta College
SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Christina McPhee makes collapsing and regenerating landscapes that blend technological precision with notions about place-making, spirituality, and more-than-human community. Recent solo exhibitions include: Museum of Contemporary Art-MCASB, Santa Barbara, CA, 2026; Performing Arts Center, San Luis Obispo, CA, 2024-25; KinoSaito Art Center, Verplanck, New York, 2022; and Irenic Projects, Pasadena, CA, 2020. Recent group shows include include Grief Work at Material, Salt Lake City, 2026; Echoes of Voynich: Coded Systems in Contemporary Art, at Wonzimer Gallery, Los Angeles, and Atmospheres of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption, at UCLA's Sci-Art Lab with the Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, 2024; Here in a Homemade Forest: Common Reading Connections, at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Washington State University, Pullman, 2023-24; Otherwise/Revival at Bridge Projects, Los Angeles, 2021; among others. Carbon Song Cycle, a collaboration with Pamela Z for voice, electronics and expanded cinema, most recently was staged at the Exploratorium, San Francisco, in 2023. Her work is held in the public collections of the International Center of Photography, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Thresholds Artspace, Perth, Scotland; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art; Great Plains Art Collection and Sheldon Art Museum, University of Nebraska - Lincoln; Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; among others. Born in Pomona, California, she lives as an uninvited guest on unceded lands of the Northern Chumash and Salinan communities in central coast California.