September 14 - November 16, 2024
Opening Reception and Celebration
September 14, 2024
6:00 PM

ARTISTS:
Erina Alejo & William Collins
Enrique Chagoya & Kara Maria
Futurefarmers (Amy Franceschini & Michael Swaine) & Shaun O’Dell
Marcel Pardo Ariza & Julián Delgado Lopera
Related Tactics
Pablo Tut
 

Launched in 1974 by a collective of artists amidst the artist-run-space movement of the early seventies, Southern Exposure carries on this legacy, continuing to be an epicenter for experimentation, innovation, and artist support. Southern Exposure has a huge impact on the Bay Area’s diverse arts ecosystem, and serves as an important site for sparking conversation, exploring new formats, launching careers, and educating youth. We honor this legacy through a group exhibition that highlights the role Southern Exposure plays in the Bay Area art scene, alongside a kick-off party for our beloved community. The exhibition, titled A leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container, will be on view September 14 through November 16, 2024. Our 50th Anniversary Celebration community event will take place September 14, 2024, at 6:00 PM, opening this exhibition and bringing an array of entertainment, including a DJ set by Brown Angel, sweet treats, beer on tap from BareBottle Brewing Company, screenprinting, and a plant swap installation organized by exhibiting artist Erina Alejo. Join Southern Exposure as we honor our 50-year legacy and celebrate the 50 years to come!

This show embodies Southern Exposure’s identity as a container for the many multivocal histories and imagined futures that make up our remarkable artist-centered community. A leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container features artwork by Erina Alejo, Enrique Chagoya & Kara Maria, Futurefarmers & Shaun O'Dell, Marcel Pardo Ariza & Julián Delgado Lopera, Related Tactics, and Pablo Tut. The exhibition takes its name from Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” in which Le Guin offers new metaphors that enable us to reimagine our histories as well as our futures while telling our most important stories. The current political and ecological moment is one in which we are compelled to nurture and mend the narratives that reinforce community connections, to let go of our attachments to the archetypal hero’s linear journey through time, and to bring our ancestors and kin along with us on our journey into an undetermined future. As Southern Exposure looks toward the next 50 years of supporting artists and presenting experimental and provocative art, we acknowledge the deep relationships that make up our community, connections woven together to create a container that holds space for multivocal histories and futures. This container, or “bag of stars,” as Le Guin names it, carries conversations born out of the possibilities found in learning from and teaching each other. This 50th Anniversary exhibition represents a web of connected artists who have been crucial in shaping, and have in turn been shaped by, Southern Exposure. Each invited artist is actively engaged in pedagogical practice as both liberatory and creative work, having been invited to reach across generational gaps toward artistic and spiritual ancestors, such as those who were engaged in dynamic practices before them, as well as dreaming toward a future  space for newly emerging thinkers and makers.