Lena Martinez Miller on What We Inherit and Engaging With Family Archive

During our very first Show and Tell gathering, local artist, Lena Martinez Miller, was the first to share work and she presented this thoughtful and imaginative zine that honors family archive as creative process where photographs are cut, obscured, and reassembled. Hand written text appears as a testimony of sorts and allows us to engage in the work in what feels like a deeply human way.

Kirstyn Jesica Magdalena “Lena” Martinez-Miller was born in Mexico City and raised in the Bay Area, where she continues to live and work. Family is central to her practice. Early ruptures in her own family life meant she was largely raised by nonbiological kin, shaping her understanding of family, belonging, and care.

She works with photographs, both inherited family images and photographs she has made herself, alongside journals and personal documents. Through these materials, she examines how her family formed, fractured, and persisted, using the archive as a way of understanding the “why” of family and how larger social and historical forces shape our most intimate lives.

Through this work, she invites viewers to reflect on their own histories and to feel less alone in the complexities, losses, and inheritances they carry.

You can follow Lena’s work here.