A persimmon tree stands in the garden of Maribel Nuño Navarro’s parents’ house. The tree is one of the symbols Navarro uses to explore his heritage in a piece titled “El Persimo (The Persimmon)” featured in the Contemporary Art Center of Orange County’s exhibition, “Original Sources.”

“It’s a portrait of how I think about heritage, conceptually,” said Navarro, who co-curated the exhibition with fellow artist and friend Juan Gomez.

Several images are superimposed in the graphite work; the ancient ruins blending seamlessly with the plants, animals and khaki make it difficult to see where one image ends and another begins.

Open Saturday and through November 30, “Original Sources” presents 11 artists examining ancestral influences and the ambiguity of time. Like Navarro’s work, a family’s shared history can go back so far that it can be difficult to know exactly where it began or when it evolved into the present.

Navarro and Gomez’s diverse work with Chris Maya, Christopher A. Velasco, Dino Perez, Em Hernandez, Juan-Carlos Perez, Kiyomi Fukui, Priscilla Scott-Chavez, Sara Hassan Khani and TheZonkyGirl explores different cultures using a variety of mediums.

The found objects constitute an installation by Dino Perez, a well-known local Santa Ana artist, who uses childhood imagery like popular cartoons and other interior decorations, as well as political signs for Pete Wilson and Proposition 187, which sought to deny access to public services to undocumented immigrants. immigrants in the 1990s.

“He harkens back to the youth culture of his childhood, and there are some statements here that I can relate to,” said Gomez, himself a Santa Ana native. “Talking about immigration and the fear of your parents being deported to their home country.”

Ancestral influences are at the forefront of the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art’s “Original Sources” exhibition.

(Courtesy of Juan Gomez)

Gomez himself draws on his own family history to create a sculpture titled “Sobresaliendo,” which incorporates elements of iron and rope.

“My father worked several types of jobs during his professional career,” Gomez said. “Truck driver, construction worker, but the one that always had an impact on me was ironwork. »

A piece of ornate iron fence protrudes from one of her rooms, a sign of protection and a reminder of her father, an ironworker whom Gomez remembers as her family’s protector.

“Original sources” also raise questions about the lack of recorded history for some individuals and the difficulty of forming an identity when there is no access to sources.

A work by Los Angeles-based artist Priscilla Chavez Scott, for example, photographs a woman in water in two phases, the first with her face on the surface, the moment before she completely submerges, the second when underwater, weightless and untethered. .

Photograph by artist Priscilla Chavez Scott.

(Courtesy of Juan Gomez)

“It makes me think about the fragility of maintaining certain cultural ties; especially when you don’t have access to elders or recorded history, it can feel very stifling,” Gomez said. “You can feel like you’re drowning, out of breath.”

By making this work, the artists are somehow preserving their past and keeping their own recorded history, protecting it.

On November 16, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., OCCCA will host a conference with the artists featured in the exhibition directed by Joanna Roche., professor of art history at Cal State Fullerton. The co-curators said the discussion would give artists the opportunity to talk more about their works.

“Maribel and I, as conservatives, cannot say the same,” Gomez said. “The artists’ conference will give artists the opportunity to express themselves.”

Although the artists don’t necessarily know each other, Navarro said the commonality of ideas in their works and their dedication to honoring their past connects them.

“We think the same way,” Navarro said. “We are not that different in how we see ourselves in relation to our past and how we try to belong to it. »