Jacqueline Valenzuela: In Practice of Return

Community Gallery & Glenn Court, September 9 – December 10, 2026

Jacqueline Valenzuela: In Practice of Return explores memory, ritual, and place through a selection of Valenzuela’s work across different media. The exhibition includes paintings, altars, and mixed media presented together as an assemblage that showcases their material breadth and interwoven devotional themes. For Valenzuela, artistic exploration is itself a sacred ritual where the spiritual realm merges with the everyday. Valenzuela draws deep inspiration from her life immersed in Chicano lowrider culture, incorporating personal stories and those of people from her community into her practice. Each work becomes a meditation on what it means to hold space for community—how to continually return to a place, honor and protect it, and keep its memory alive. 

In the tradition of Mexican-American altar building, Valenzuela uses objects from her immediate environment to create her artwork. In Temporary Sanctuary, a simple milkcrate adorned with artificial flowers, votive candles, and LEDs becomes a decorative home for Our Lady of Guadalupe. In another sculptural work, a car tire balanced on top of cinderblocks becomes a Christ reliquary and a devotional centerpiece for both religion and lowriders. The artist’s mixing of cultural and spiritual metaphors here is intentional. The practice of building or cruising a lowrider, Valenzuela says, is “an act of worship.”

Originally from East Los Angeles, lowrider culture has always been a part of Valenzuela’s everyday life. “Growing up right by the Boulevard, I was exposed to the kinetic art of lowriders, classics, and hot rods that passed me by, low and slow,” she says. During Valenzuela’s third year attending Cal State Long Beach, she was gifted La Playgirl, a hot pink 1975 Cadillac Eldorado. Soon after, Valenzuela paused her fine art practice and devoted three years to learning how to paint lowriders from auto shop technicians. This experience changed her trajectory as an artist as she began to embrace non-traditional methods and materials.

In Practice of Return highlights Valenzuela’s blending of media and considers her explorations of the sacred everyday. Together, the works bring to light the ritual nature of community building and the myriad textures, colors, and materials that define and sustain collective identity.  

Valenzuela received a BFA in Drawing and Painting from California State University, Long Beach in 2019.