Sarah

SOMArts is proud to partner with the San Francisco Foundation to present The Annual Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition, a focused look at the future of the Bay Area visual arts. Made possible by the San Francisco Foundation and its donors, we’re excited to feature 13 promising visual artists working across disciplines and identifying young artists from Master of Fine Arts programs throughout the Bay Area whose work intersects with emerging trends. If [...]

Listen to the artist: Fred M. DeWitt is an African American interdisciplinary artist with a disability who is researching and exploring ways to deconstruct notions of white supremacy as it is promoted in early American art. DeWitt's research at Berkeley places materials as a cornerstone of cultural liberation. Coffee, cotton, gold, clay, sugar, ground pigments are just some of the elements he uses as a means [...]

Listen to the artist: Alexandru Salceanu's artistic concerns revolve around micro and macro tensions: between power and vulnerability; fear and resilience; cultural identity and the homogeneity of globalism. These themes arise from Salceanu's childhood in Communist Romania and assimilation into the culture of the United States. Salceanu's f­­amily lived under surveillance during the regime’s most repressive period. After the revolution, they managed to immigrate to the U.S. [...]

Listen to the artist: Zhongyu Yuan looks closely at the space between the individual and the surrounding world. Yuan believes that self consciousness is the key factor separating one's self and others, and is reinforced by the structure of today’s society. In answer to the spectacle of this era overwhelmed by modernization, Yuan relates minimalism to zen culture, endeavor to recover the echo of nature, and survive [...]