When Unearthed Sights Collide was the resulting exhibition of a mentorship/fellowship program through the San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery. Throughout Spring and Summer of 2024, I mentored emerging artists Shirin Khalatbari and Sun Park and worked with them towards their two person exhibition at SFAC Main Gallery. When Unearthed Sights Collide opened and was on view Fall 2024. Below is more about the exhibition. Thank you to SFAC Main Gallery team for the opportunity and support throughout this experience.

What happens when we feel empowered to take control of the narrative from Western doctrines and allow ourselves to ground into our own rituals and history? We may be charmed by what’s reflected out.

When Unearthed Sights Collide examines the exploration of such inquiries through the interpretations of two artists. Through installation, photography, drawing, and sculpture, Shirin Khalatbari and Sun Park surface and shape alternative narratives that question the established notions of religion and archeology.

Park’s installation begins left of the gallery entrance and walks you through their personal mythology and rituals. As you move through the installation, you’ll feel the guidance and luring presence of dragons in many forms. A nod to this year’s cosmological astrology, the wooden dragon. Take a closer look at the objects before you. Some are common and familiar materials, rice paper, a Lego piece, lychee skin, communion crackers, and so on. Some are natural and some are not, a true reflection of our existing world. All are treated with respect and displayed symbolically; they present Park and collaborator tani tane’s ritualistic practices. The installation leaves the viewer with the question of what feeds us spiritually and how we digest that into our bodies. Their work pulls from childhood experiences and narratives from literature that illuminate the act of consumption and invite viewers to reconsider the boundaries of identity and community.

Take a moment to sit on the smooth wooden benches and try to root yourself in the moment. If facing the fountain, you may be meditated towards another place or space. Facing the other direction, you may find a blurry reflection of yourself and start imagining other ways of being.

Photography: San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries and Aaron Wojack

Link to the digital catalog and more of my writing about this exhibition.

Reorienting the Imaginaries presents a controversial study of the racialized and gendered form, insomuch that understanding the complexities of confronting one’s own (mis)representations becomes catalysts for subversion and creation of autonomous futures.

This multidisciplinary exhibit brings together artists of color who are connected by complex histories, identity and power to disrupt the unwarranted representations imposed upon them by the Western gaze. We define the colonial imaginary as a romanticism of exotic places and people that through time and again have been used to justify the mechanisms of subjugation. Yet, when these processes become reclaimed as a platform of resistance, this imaginary lens is reoriented as method for creating new futures and narratives.

Sara Emsaki, Cathy Lu and Christopher Martin intertwine a bittersweet tale of nostalgia within double-consciousness. Jeffrey Cheung, Gina M. Contreras, and Jamil Hellu channel playful yet sinister undertones attached with observations of the queer and brown body. Sofía Córdova, Việt Lê, Diana Li and Nina Reyes Rosenberg draw on performing the ‘Other’ as method for recoding power within stereotypes. Anum Awan procures light into a somatic experience of self-reflection, while Shirin Towfiq and Kalahati emphasize the power of the people through collective action. Together these artists materialize a satirical deconstruction of archetypal caricatures, critical discourse against media hegemony, and negotiations of ancestral lineage and home to reorient the imaginaries.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS

Anum Awan

Jeffrey Cheung

Adrian Clutario

Gina M. Contreras

Sofía Córdova

Sara Emsaki

Jamil Hellu

Kalahati

Việt Lê with Jamie Maxtone-Graham

Diana Li

Cathy Lu

Christopher Martin

Nina Reyes Rosenberg

Shirin Towfiq

CURATORS

Robin Birdd

Anh Bui

Shirin Makaremi

Renae Moua

Lena Sok

Featured on KQED

Reflections exhibited work by Anh Bui, Anna Rotty, Azucena Hernandez, Leigh Ann Coleman, Wesaam Al-Badry, and Zach Clark. It took place in the fall of 2017, one year after the 2016 presidential election, at Incline Gallery in San Francisco, CA. The exhibition was a response to a number of political and social events that had occurred in the prior year, such as police brutality, Standing Rock and the election of Donald Trump. The artists, influenced by these events, took a personal approach in their work to comprehend what had happened. The work varied from projections, sculptures, pyrography, installation, photography, textiles, and printmaking. As visitors walked up the ramps of Incline Gallery they were encouraged to spend time with each body of work, in acknowledging all the political and social events that have surfaced and to take a moment to personally reflect.

Throughout the exhibition, there were two coinciding public programing events. One being a printmaking workshop, in collaboration with Mission Grafica at the Mission Cultural Center, where folks were invited to learn to make resistance posters. Another was an artist talk and closing reception, where the exhibiting artists shared with the public their work, practice and stories, sparking conversation between the public and the artists.

A Conversation Between Body and Mind  was a two-person show focused on the dialogue between the subconscious and physical self. How does one make a decision and act upon it? Bay Area artists, Sofie Ramos and Stephanie Sherriff examine the act of decision-making by creating work that was in constant flux. Neither of the artists are interested in creating a final product, but are instead continuously manipulating their work. A three-way conversation was formed between Ramos, Sherriff and the space as they responded and transformed Incline Gallery’s atypical architecture through installation and projections.

With the continuous increase of rent, limitations in space, and their work often seen as “unsellable,” new media and installation artists face a declining ability to survive in contemporary San Francisco. That being said, we wanted to express how grateful we were to have this opportunity to work with Ramos and Sherriff and be able to see them work in their element.

A Conversation Between Body and Mind was co-curated by Stephanie Wu and myself.