Daniela García Hamilton: Amanecer / Atardecer

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present Daniela García Hamilton: Amanecer / Atardecer (Sunrise / Sunset), the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. García Hamilton creates hybrid canvases that combine embroidery and oil painting, capturing an intergenerational family story drawn from an archive of family photos and stories. As a first-generation American from a Mexican family, García Hamilton investigates legacies of tradition, the inevitability of assimilation, and the ways in which family histories replay themselves over time. The works thread family members together across generations and borders, reinforcing the ties that transcend time and geography.

García Hamilton began working with embroidery after the passing of her grandfather, as a way to connect with her own family history. Both grandparents had worked in textiles, but her grandfather was the storyteller of the family. His dedication to craft and to family memory became the foundation for her art practice later in life. García Hamilton is drawn to embroidery’s marriage of evident markmaking and vibrant color, where color is mixed in the eye rather than on the canvas. This allows for an expressionist effect. Perhaps paradoxically, García Hamilton employs embroidery mainly for figures, and especially hands and faces. Her deft use of embroidered color lends her figures an almost inner glow, as if, through these works, we are allowed to see more than just their physical appearance.

Many of the works in the exhibition dwell on García Hamilton’s late grandfather and her young nephew, his great-grandson. Though the two never met, the young boy’s resemblance to his ancestor in looks and manner proves the strength of blood as it moves through time and space. The two appear together in La tejana de mi abuelo. In this poignant tribute to her grandfather, his portrait – one of the few images of him hatless – hangs in an elaborate frame reminiscent of a home altar. Just above, his cowboy hat hangs in a dust bag on the wall. Deep purple fades into blue around the hanging portrait, as if to signify the sun setting on one generation. A golden snapshot of his young great-grandson tucked into the bottom corner of the frame reminds us that hope is found in the legacies passed to new generations. The lush En el Jardín de mi abuelo finds the same young boy confidently striding across beautiful tiles of the family’s ancestral Guadalajara home.

The vibrant yet enigmatic High Noon is based on a snapshot from a family wedding. The dusty flat expanse and vibrant blue skies of the high desert stretch behind the group, all of whom pose stoically for the viewer’s gaze. In place of the sun, a pre-Columbian coyote howling whistle floats in the dense sky – a souvenir from the Temple of the Sun outside of Mexico City. The spectre of the coyote stalks through several works in the exhibition, often watching over the youngest members of the family and serving as a reminder of the family’s immigrant history. In 2nd Generation, one of the few strict paintings of the group, a silhouetted coyote overlays a portrait of a young boy. The coyote is a vibrant red-orange that, because of its precise tone, all but disappears when viewed in black and white. The family’s Mexican roots grow weaker as each generation inevitably becomes more assimilated – tradition loses potency until it is almost imperceptible, yet never fully disappears. 

Music is also important to the exhibition as a trigger for and container of memory. García Hamilton’s first experimentation with found objects comes in the form of a pink denim jacket, the artist’s own, embroidered with three patches featuring popular cartoon characters. Each bears the name of a music artist who prompts a particular memory: the famous Marco Antonio Solís (MAS), Mexican crooner José José, and the early-2000s regional band El Trono de México. These musicians are literally worn on the sleeve, full of emotional meaning. Similarly, Jálale bursts with potential energy, an accordion caught mid-pull evoking its own sound and movement in the mind of the viewer.

The largest work in the exhibition captures the comfort and ease of a domestic scene. Over three panels, La sala’s disjointed visual narrative conveys a sense of time and movement within the space as figures relax in each other's presence. Here and elsewhere, the space around the figures has been distilled into its simplest detail, allowing the eye to focus on the vibrancy of the figures themselves and of the sky glimpsed through the windows. A sense of continuity flows through the scene, as if we are watching an entire afternoon pass by. Past and present exist together throughout this body of work. Beginnings and endings intermingle, yet all is suffused with a serenity born in community.