Past Exhibitions

Executive Order: Poetic Erasures is an exercise in subverting power. Under the leadership of writer in residence Ingrid Rojas Contreras, fourteen to sixteen year old first and second-generation immigrants from Balboa High School created poems by redacting President Trump’s fourth executive order—“Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” a text that states, among other things, that shielding undocumented immigrants harms America, that many undocumented immigrants have been previously incarcerated, and that Sanctuary Cities are in violation of federal law. Using Sharpies and White Out, the students kept words that expressed their personal views and feelings about immigration, conveying a new and positive statement about the role of immigrants in our society.

Kenyatta AC Hinkle's The Retreival features drawings, sculpture and video that responds to the disappearance of Black women and female-identifying women due to various abuses and the current human trafficking trade. Hinkle states, “There’s often a community that knows about women and girls engaged in prostitution or being trafficked, and yet how does accountability enter into the consciousness of teachers, neighbors, shop owners, etc…? How do we ghost these women/girls and how does society at large ghost them?” The Retrieval responds to these questions with new work from two distinct series. Included are over 60 drawings from the artist’s ongoing Evanesced series, which focuses on the erasure of Black women from the African Diaspora. Holding court in the center of the space is a colorful, textile-based figure inspired by Nigerian Egungun festival costumes. The work is a new addition to the artist’s research and educational platform for a contested geography and culture named Kentrifica. Created specifically for this exhibition in collaboration with Angelica Ekeke, the artist can be seen as a healer figure in a newly commissioned video work. 

In partnership with SF Camerawork, SFAC Galleries presents a new exhibition curated by Marilyn Claes. Self/Guided examines a connection between structural boundaries and self-identity. We build physical structures to contain humans and things, and we form identities to contain ourselves. Through two forms of landscapes — the interior and the exterior — the exhibited works ask the viewer to consider how identities can act as boundaries and how boundaries can act as identities. Self/Guided features the work of fourteen artists from SF Camerawork's Fine Print Program. 

In 2002, Tabitha Soren started photographing the new draft picks for the Oakland A’s. In addition to many of those draftees, she followed players from major and minor leagues throughout their careers, photographing their lives in the game as well as personal milestones. Presented by the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries Art at City Hall program, Fantasy Life features an exhibition of 180 photographs on the ground floor, and nine large-scale banners in the North Light Court featuring tintype images of the SF Giants in action. Soren’s photographs are accompanied by documents ranging from team assignments to first-person narratives from the SF Giants and team members across the country. Soren takes us into intimate and thoughtful territory, creating a complex and epic portrait that celebrates the game we think we know, while it also subverts general notions/assumptions of heroism, power and fame.