Produced by SOMArts Cultural Center, we’ve created these virtual gallery experiences that can be viewed from the safety and comfort of your home!
The Blueprint: If the Universe Can Be Imagined It Exists
The Black Woman is God
Curated by Karen Seneferu and Melorra Green
Co-curators Karen Seneferu and Melorra Green envision The Black Woman is God not only as an exhibition but as a movement-building platform that explores the intersections of race and gender, dismantling racist and patriarchal notions that devalue Black women’s contributions to the world. The Black Woman is God highlights a community of Black women artists whose complex creative practices have influenced the world.
Dreams Emerging, Beyond Resilience: Día de Los Muertos 2021
Curated by Rio Yañez and Carolina Quintanilla
Curated by Rio Yanez and Carolina Quintanilla, Dreams Emerging, Beyond Resilience: Dia de Los Muertos 2021 honors how grieving rituals have shifted in response to the global pandemic. The exhibition reflects on how the past year has transformed our visions of connection, freedom, and healing. After a year of collective isolation and survival, what are we longing for? What becomes possible when we are able to imagine futures beyond resilience?
The Annual Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition
Curated by Kevin B. Chen
Produced in partnership with the San Francisco Foundation
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 16 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.
Sounds Like Home: Longing and Comfort through Lullabies
Curated by Duygu and Bengü Gün
2020–2021 Curatorial Residency
Based in San Francisco and Istanbul respectively, curators Duygu and Bengü Gün were inspired by their family history with migration and interest in music as a connecting force. Sounds Like Home: Longing and Comfort through Lullabies not only questions how cultural memory is preserved and transmitted through simple melodic messages from childhood, but also challenges the way lullabies, family stories and fairy tales transmit gender roles and cultural norms while affirming that culture is dynamic.
Sowing Agency: Seeding the Future
for Environmental Justice
Curated by Lisa Pradhan
Presented by Asian American Women Artist Association (AAWAA)
and Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC)
Sowing Agency is inspired by the fight for environmental justice, activating our Asian Pacific Islander communities to engage in the issues of today’s climate crisis. With a number of artistic disciplines represented, the pieces featured in the show work to realign our relationships with the Earth through introspection and collective leadership. The exhibition’s broad coalition of community partners amplifies calls for increased action to challenge extractive industries, monocultures, corporate greed and colonization. Weaving local and global climate resistance into our cultural consciousness, Sowing Agency is a visual and poetic address to the grief and resiliency rooted in “seeding the future.”
CARAVANA: Mobilizing Central
American Art (1984–Present)
Curated by Fátima Ramírez, Mauricio Ramírez, and Josué Rojas
2020–2021 SOMArts Curatorial Resident
CARAVANA: Mobilizing Central American Art (1984–Present) is a multidisciplinary traveling exhibition that centers U.S. Central American artists living in California as well as across the United States to examine their lived experiences in relation to the impact of mass migration, family separation, and the legacy of political action and solidarity with the people of Central America.
Bay Area Deaf Arts
Curated by Antoine Hunter
2020–2021 SOMArts Curatorial Resident
Bay Area Deaf Arts celebrate and center the art forms and cultural expression historically rooted in the Deaf community, raising Deaf awareness in non-Deaf populations, and inviting collaboration between Hearing and Deaf artists. Curated by renowned performer and activist Antoine Hunter for SOMArts’ Curatorial Residency program, this exhibition asks us: Where are the voices of Deaf and Deaf people of color? What truths are we willing to listen to? Do you know they have more to show than just talk about Deaf culture itself?
The Black Woman is God: Reclaim, Reconfigure, Re–Remember
Curated by Karen Seneferu
and Melorra Green
Now in its fourth iteration at SOMArts, The Black Woman is God reveals a community of Black women artists that pay homage to their complex creative practices that have influenced the world, but are often overlooked because of the intersections class, race, and gender discrimination. The Black Woman is God: Reclaim, Reconfigure, and Re-Remember gives Black women their flowers, affirming that they are essential to building a more just society and a sustainable future.
Living Legacies:
Día de Los Muertos 2020
Curated by Rio Yañez
and Carolina Quintanilla
Living Legacies: Día de Los Muertos 2020 is a call to action for our responsibility to future generations. It is a call to invoke the strengths and lessons of our ancestors to survive the historic moment in which we’re currently living. This exhibition recognizes that the status quo has continued to fail communities of color while holding space for collective grief, mourning, and resilience in the face of systemic oppression.
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