i've had an out of body experience

I’ve Had an Out of Body Experience: Ephemeral Structures and the Human Displacement of HemisFair ’6

In 1968, more than six million people came to San Antonio to see the future. Hemisfair ’68 promised technological progress, international cooperation, and a transformed city. But before that future could be built, something had to disappear.

The 92-acre fairgrounds were carved from an existing neighborhood southeast of downtown. Homes, businesses, churches, streets, and gathering places were demolished or removed, displacing more than 1,600 residents, some of whom had spent nearly half a century in their homes, for an event scheduled to last six months. 

I’ve Had an Out of Body Experience occupies the space between those two realities: the temporary architecture of spectacle and the permanent disruption required to make room for it. Through painting, fiber, embroidery, sculpture, and mapping, Ann Enzminger pulls from archival photographs, maps, architecture, and the visual language of Hemisfair itself, taking apart the imagery of progress and reassembling it through material, memory, and absence.

The exhibition does not ask whether Hemisfair was simply good or bad. Instead, it asks a more uncomfortable question: Who gets to decide what a city should become?

Nearly sixty years later, as San Antonio again considers large-scale redevelopment through projects such as Project Marvel, that question is not confined to history. Cities continually remake themselves. The question is what, and who, will be lost in the process.

Ann Enzminger, 2026

This exhibition was made possible in part through support from the City of San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture Individual Artist Grant.

Special thanks to Christopher Medina, Bill Baird, Jessica Anderson, Chip Lieck, Michael Carroll, Hettie Jordan-Vilanova, Tom Shelton, Angela Pardo, Maureen Garindo, Stowell Ray Hanson, Rick Bublitz, Bill Cotter, Ed Saavedra, Bill Fisher, Gene Morales, Barbara Renaud Gonzalez, Vanessa Colōn, Yvette Benavides, Matt Bronshvag, Jane Walker, MJ, Jessica Brown, Eva Marengo Sanchez, Joe De La Cruz, Justin Parr and Monica Walker