Ann Enzminger’s I’ve Had an Out of Body Experience Revisits the Neighborhood San Antonio Erased to Build HemisFair ’68

Exhibition at Flight Gallery examines the human cost of civic spectacle, progress, and the city's desire to build its future

Friday October 2nd 7-10pm

In 1968, San Antonio welcomed the world.

HemisFair ’68 promised a vision of the future: monumental architecture, technological innovation, international spectacle, and a city transformed by the possibilities of progress. Over the six months that the San Antonio World’s fair was open to the public, more than six million people came to experience it.

But before the gates opened, something had to disappear.

To make way for the fair, the City of San Antonio acquired a 92-acre neighborhood southeast of downtown through an urban renewal program. Homes, businesses, churches, streets, and other community structures were demolished, displacing approximately more than 1600 residents. The neighborhood that had existed there for generations was transformed into the fairgrounds, convention center, and the infrastructure of a new San Antonio.

Nearly sixty years later, San Antonio is still living with the consequences and successes of that transformation.

It is this complicated legacy that San Antonio artist Ann Enzminger explores in I’ve Had an Out of Body Experience: Ephemeral Structures and The Human Displacement of Hemisfair 1968, opening at Flight Gallery in October 2026.

The multidisciplinary exhibition looks at American World’s Fairs as elaborate promises of a better future and considers what happens to the people and places that are sacrificed to make way for that future.

Enzminger approaches HemisFair not through its familiar icons, the Tower of the Americas, international pavilions, or futuristic attractions, but through the neighborhood that preceded them.
Large-scale acrylic paintings borrow the seductive visual language of mid-century advertising. Hand-felted and quilted aerial maps reconstruct the physical landscape that was altered or erased. Handcrafted souvenirs, including matchbooks, postcards, and apparel, appropriate the language of World’s Fair memorabilia to memorialize the homes, streets, people, and community structures that disappeared.

The resulting installation deliberately mimics the immersive visual experience of a World's Fair while quietly turning that spectacle inside out.

"The fair was designed to communicate a very specific idea of the future," says Enzminger. "I'm interested in what that future looked like from the perspective of the people who were living there before it arrived."

The exhibition also looks beyond HemisFair to the larger pattern of American civic development: the belief that ambitious projects, monumental architecture, and large-scale events can propel a city forward, even when the transformation comes at a human cost.

That history takes on particular urgency in contemporary San Antonio as the city debates Project Marvel, the proposed sports and entertainment district. Like HemisFair before it, Project Marvel is being presented as part of a vision for San Antonio's future, while questions surrounding public investment, development, small-business loss, and who benefits from that future remain part of the conversation.

"I’ve Had an Out of Body Experience" does not attempt to reduce HemisFair to either success or failure. Instead, it occupies the uncomfortable space between the two: acknowledging what the fair brought to San Antonio while remembering what was lost to make it possible.

The exhibition's title comes from that feeling of witnessing a place become unfamiliar while still recognizing yourself within it, a city changing so dramatically that you can almost feel yourself hovering outside of it, looking down at what used to be there.

I’ve Had an Out of Body Experience: Ephemeral Structures and The Human Displacement of Hemisfair 1968 opens at Flight Gallery in October 2026.

EXHIBITION INFORMATION
Ann Enzminger: I’ve Had an Out of Body Experience: Ephemeral Structures and The Human Displacement of Hemisfair ‘68

Flight Gallery - 112R Blue Star San Antonio, Texas 78204

Soft Opening Thursday October 1, 2026 6-10pm
Opening Reception Friday October 2, 2026 6-10pm
Closing Reception Thursday October October 15, 2026 6-10pm
Gallery Hours Wednesday-Friday 6-9pm, Saturday-Sunday 12-5pm
Exhibition open through the end of October
Free and open to the public.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ann Enzminger is a multidisciplinary artist based in San Antonio whose practice encompasses painting, fiber, mapping, and handmade objects. Her work frequently considers place, memory, displacement, repetitive labor, and the systems that shape everyday life. A native Texan and longtime New York City resident, Enzminger returned to Texas and established her studio practice in San Antonio.

I’ve Had an Out of Body Experience is supported in part by a City of San Antonio Individual Artist Grant.

PRESS CONTACT
Ann Enzminger
annenzminger@gmail.com
646-912-4165
www.annenzminger.com
Instagram: @the.mermaid.farm, @enzminger.studio