[exhibit] Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico: Inocencio Jiménez Chino // Walnut Creek
The Bedford in Walnut Creek, CA presents “Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico: An Inocencio Jiménez Chino Retrospective.”
Based in the Balsas River basin of Guerrero, Mexico, this is Jiménez Chino’s first retrospective, tracing the Nahua artist’s 55-year evolution, from early works on board and protest line drawings from the 1990s to newly completed narrative amate paintings that capture the artist’s community and daily life with remarkable intimacy and detail.
Bedford Gallery at Lesher Center for the Arts
1601 Civic Dr, Walnut Creek, CA
Dates: April 18 –June 28, 2026
HOURS: 12:00pm–5:00pm, Wednesdays through Sundays.
General admission is pay-what-you-can.
Meet the artist!
About exhibit:
Inocencio Jiménez Chino’s first-ever retrospective explores over five decades of the artist’s practice through paintings, video interviews, and audio recordings. Opens April 18th, 2026!
Rooted in Nahuatl storytelling and cultural preservation, this exhibition explores Jiménez Chino’s practice and advocacy through paintings, video interviews, audio recordings, and examples of handmade amate (bark paper).
“Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico: An Inocencio Jiménez Chino Retrospective” will be on view at the Bedford from April 18, 2026 through June 28, 2026, with a public opening party on April 18, 2026 from 5:00–7:00 pm. For more information, visit www.bedfordgallery.org.
At the center of narrative artist Inocencio Jiménez Chino’s first retrospective are 13 acrylic paintings on handmade amate illustrating the oral story of Uncle Rabbit and the Wax Doll. In Nahuatl folklore from southern Mexico and Central America, Uncle Rabbit manipulates Old Man Crocodile to ferry him across the river to feast on the farmer’s vegetable plot before escaping unharmed. Uncle Rabbit moves through verdant hillsides and lush gardens along the Balsas River, where he has lived and foraged his entire life. Here, farmers tend cornfields, laborers lead loaded donkeys, storks fish, cows graze, and butterflies flit between bountiful flowers. The bold, geometric borders framing select compositions adhere to common amate painting traditions—an homage to centuries-old designs that adorned ceramics from the region—binding the scenes to traditional material conventions as much as to narrative.
At age 16, Jiménez Chino began making art during the commercialization of amate paintings that spread through his region in the 1960s, when families were taught to produce homogenized images en masse for a growing tourist market. Alongside his saleable pictures, he began developing his own distinct visual language, characterized by fine detail and ever finer observations of his community.
In the early 90s, he created three meticulous line drawings on amate to protest a proposed dam that threatened to flood over two dozen communities in the basin. Observation quickly turned storytelling into activism.
The impulse to record extends beyond ancient stories to the rhythms of daily life in Oapan. While many of Jiménez Chino’s narrative paintings are the result of the artist’s imagination, the artist is also inspired by friends, family, and fellow neighbors who ask him to visually memorialize important historical events, stories, and fables like political gatherings, religious festivals, and the old methods for storing corn and building palm-roofed homes. In this way, he works as a keeper of memory, ferrying shared knowledge forward through time.
“I want to paint the things that are disappearing,” he said in a recent interview.
For instance, Los Campesinos Limpian la Parcela Para Poder Sembrar (The farmers are clearing the plot of land so they can plant seeds) shows traditional slash-and-burn agricultural practices and Las Tres Familias (The Three Families) depicts the community working together using traditional methods for things like maize production after harvest.
In the Uncle Rabbit series, cleverness is never mischief for its own sake but a means of surviving within unequal conditions. Jiménez Chino approaches painting with a similar understanding of continuity. Working on amate, he preserves local craft, history, and tradition from the great erasure of time.
“We are honored to present Inocencio Jiménez Chino’s first retrospective and to introduce Bay Area audiences to the beauty and cultural knowledge embedded in these paintings,” says Bedford curator, Emilee Enders. “Jiménez Chino’s careful observations and narratives rooted in Nahuatl tradition document the memories, traditions, and stories that might otherwise be lost. The Bedford is thrilled to share this important body of work and celebrate the richness of Nahuatl art and culture.”
To expand visibility for “Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico” beyond the Bay Area, this exhibition will travel to visual arts venues nationwide beginning in 2027 through the Bedford’s traveling exhibitions program, BG Exhibitions. Venues to be announced.
“Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico” was curated by Emilee Enders, organized by the Bedford and presented in collaboration with Catalyst Contemporary, Baltimore, Maryland.
