Overview: The Riverside Art Museum in California is hosting an exhibition titled “Regional History” by artist Noé Montes, which explores the histories of labor, land, and environmental change across Inland Southern California. The exhibition features three bodies of work, including “Coachella Valley Farmworkers,” “Cuyama,” and “Imperial Air,” and combines photographs, workshops, and narrative accounts drawn from interviews. The exhibition highlights the experiences of marginalized communities often omitted from or underrepresented in local histories and heavily facing environmental injustices.
Aryana Noroozi
In its final weeks at the The Riverside Art Museum, “Regional History” explores the histories of labor, land and environmental change across Inland Southern California, centering communities often left out of dominant historical narratives.
On view from Oct. 11, 2025 through April 19, 2026 in the Bobbie Powell and R. Ross DeVean Galleries, “Regional History” features three bodies of work by artist Noé Montes. Montes created these works over the last decade: “Coachella Valley Farmworkers,” “Cuyama,” and “Imperial Air.” Curated by Dr. Catherine Gudis, the exhibition combines photographs and workshops with residents and narrative accounts drawn from interviews.
Together, the project’s three bodies of work document communities across Southern California while foregrounding the experiences of residents – including white working-class, Indigenous, Latine, Black and other communities of color – who are often omitted from or underrepresented in local histories. These same communities are disproportionately on the frontlines of environmental injustices.
Born in Modesto and raised in a family of migrant farmworkers in the Central Valley, Montes uses photography to examine how the agriculture, oil and logistics industries have shaped both the land and the lives of the people who live in close proximity. The exhibition also highlights the role communities themselves have played in building the region’s social and economic infrastructure, such as providing jobs across various sectors.
“The exhibition scrutinizes the relationship between power and narrative, exposing regional histories that have long ignored or erased marginalized communities,” the wall text reads.
One section of the exhibit, “Imperial Air” (2019), focuses on the Inland Empire and the effects of air pollution tied to the goods movement industry. Commissioned by the California Air Resources Board, the project documents how logistics development is transforming the region’s landscape while affecting residents’ quality of life in an area long burdened by ozone and particulate pollution.
The exhibit text also points to the tensions many communities face. For example, while some residents organize against warehouse expansion and push for stricter land-use controls and greater public input, others view logistics work as one of the few available paths to remain in the communities they call home. Montes highlights the tensions created by this industry.
Beyond the photographs themselves, “Imperial Air” included community workshops, youth photo projects and educational materials. Montes also created a large-scale public artwork based on the project, titled “Paradise,” which is now on view at the California Air Resources Board campus in Riverside.
Across all three projects, “Regional History” asks viewers to consider the relationship between power, historical narrative and the continued exploitation of historically marginalized communities, while also documenting resistance through activism, cultural preservation and the texture of everyday family life.
Programming tied to the exhibition will include additional engagement with local, personal and community archives in the Inland Empire to help address gaps in historical accounts of the region, including a conversation in March with Noé Montes for a special tour of his exhibition.