CURATED EXHIBITIONS
FIGHT AND FLIGHT: CRAFTING A BAY AREA LIFE
Museum of Craft and Design
April 15 - September 10, 2023
Fight and Flight: Crafting a Bay Area Life is a timely examination of the Bay Area arts ecosystem. This exhibition features 23 Bay Area artists who have stuck it out during the many crises of our times.
Recent narratives have placed San Francisco and its surrounding urban areas “in the shadow” of larger art metropolises like Los Angeles or New York. The Bay Area finds itself in the penumbral margins of the art world conversation. So, too, is craft often marginalized or footnoted in the canon of art history. To survive and thrive in the margins is a radical act that occasionally requires the will to fight.
Fight and Flight is about the struggle to live and work in the Bay Area where, despite the lack of affordable housing and studio space, the participating artists' histories are nuanced expressions of the determination to remain.
Curated by Jacqueline Francis and Ariel Zaccheo
Exhibition Design: Caroline Holley
Artists: Libby Black, Craig Calderwood, Erica Deeman, Cheryl Derricotte, Ala Ebtekar, Liz Harvey, Angela Hennessy, Alexander Hernandez, Liz Hernández, Cathy Lu, Michelle Yi Martin, Adia Millett, Nasim Moghadam, Richard Jonathan Nelson, Ramekon O’Arwisters, yétúndé ọlágbajú, Woody De Othello, Related Tactics, Charlene Tan, Margaret Tedesco, Lauren Toomer, Leila Weefur, Jenifer K Wofford
Press: NBC California Live, KQED, SF Examiner, e-flux Art Agenda
Fight and Flight: Crafting a Bay Area Life, 2023, Museum of Craft and Design. Photo Courtesy of Henrik Kam.
CONCRETE JOURNALS: ANNE HICKS SIBERELL
Museum of Craft and Design
April 15 - September 10, 2023
Among many other projects parallel to book-making and writing, artist Anne Hicks Siberell has been a visual diarist since the 1970s. Her Concrete Journals series exists as a record of time, collaging elements of the artist’s life and encasing them in concrete.
Throughout her life and career, Siberell has always kept diaries. After attending the University of California, Los Angeles and Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts), Siberell began a career in design and illustration. She illustrated nine books from the 1960s to 1980s. From 1985 to 2009, she authored and illustrated an additional four children’s books, two of which were translated into Arabic for international audiences. Her expansive practice includes handmade artists’ books and printmaking, for which she has been awarded residencies at the American Academy in Rome in 2005, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt in 2002. In the 1970s, she began a series of accordion books, pairing written narratives with collaged cuts of paper. These collaged journals illustrate matters both personal and cultural.
Curator: Ariel Zaccheo
Exhibition Design: Caroline Holley
Press: Brooklyn Rail
Concrete Journals: Anne Hicks Siberell, 2023, Museum of Craft and Design. Photo courtesy of Henrik Kam
MODE BRUT
Museum of Craft and Design
September 4, 2021–January 23, 2022
In collaboration with Creativity Explored, Mode Brut explores the idea of accessibility, gender roles, identity, and sustainability in fashion. Featuring the work of over 50 developmentally disabled artists from the Creativity Explored studio, Mode Brut is a testament to the collaborative process of fashion design.
Focusing on art practice as fashion, the exhibition features four collections of inspiring new fashions made by designer teams alongside local developmentally disabled artists: Creativity Explored Studio Line, community art collective Bonanza, Queer advocate and model Yanni Brumfield, and San Francisco-based Haute Couture fashion brand Tokyo Gamine.
Curated by Cléa Massiani and Ariel Zaccheo
Exhibition Design: Randolph Designs
Full artist list here.
Press: Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz, Square Cylinder
Mode Brut, 2021–2022, Museum of Craft and Design. Photos courtesy Henrik Kam.
INTERIOR/EXTERIOR
Museum of Craft and Design
July 27–December 1, 2019
Interiors are the settings of our private hopes and dreams; the intimate places we hang hats, eat with family, converse, sleep. Exteriors are where those dreams are made and enjoyed. In daylight or under soft streetlights, in fringe and sequins and denim and leather, communities form in public places. To be in public is to perform. We dress and decorate our bodies to conform to the ideals of the space we’re in. From boardroom to barroom to bedroom, we adjust to the spaces we inhabit.
Curated by Ariel Zaccheo
Exhibition Design: Randolph Designs
Artists: Julie Alpert, Benjamin Armas and Ori Carino, Macon Reed, Kathy Sirico, Kaori Yamashita
Interior/Exterior, July-December 2019, Museum of Craft and Design. Images courtesy of Henrik Kam. In order: Kathy Sirico, Lost Horizon, 2017, Sugar Rush, 2016, Between Two Worlds, 2018. Julie Alpert, Special Occasion, 2019. Kaori Yamashita, Remote Ancestors, 2017. Macon Reed, Eulogy for the Dyke Bar, 2015-2016. Benjamin Armas and Ori Carino, 1:50am, 2017.
ALMOST PUBLIC/SEMI-EXPOSED 6
ATA Window Gallery
November 1 - 30, 2019
Almost-Public/Semi-Exposed is the ATA Window Gallery’s annual month of installed performance. Each November we open the space to a wide range of live performers. Past years have included performance art, modern dance, Butoh, art games, endurance pieces, sound art, live painting, ritual practice, projector performance, public intervention, radical burlesque, durational poetry, and more.
Artist honoraria was generously supported by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation.
Co-curators, Tessa Siddle & Ariel Zaccheo
Participating artists: Crystal Vielula, Elsa Trash and Semaj Peltier, T Shell, Hannah Beck, Jennifer Locke, Monet Clark, Raegan Truax, Gabriella Contreras and Nicole Casado, Stella Fontinella/Laura Miller, Claire Bain and Alfred Hernandez, Jenell Del Cid
Almost Public/Semi-Exposed 6, November 2019, ATA Window Gallery. Performances in order from left to right: Jennifer Locke, Snowglobe, 11/13 (3 photos); Raegan Truax, All the Nothing, 11/23 (2 photos); Stella Fontinella/Laura Elayne Miller, Stinky Knits, A Feminist History, Fabricated, Unabridged, 11/27 (2 photos); Claire Bain & Alfred Hernandez FS17ATA2019, 11/29 (1 photo); Jenell Del Cid, Hello Again? 12/1 (2 photos); T Shell, An Apology to My Mother, 11/9 (2 photos).
WANXIN ZHANG: THE LONG JOURNEY
Museum of Craft and Design
March 16 – July 14, 2019
In a political climate that reinforces difference, comfort can be found in discovering similarities across cultures and thousands of miles. The sculptures featured in Wanxin Zhang: The Long Journey are markers along such a path. Each piece reveals a chapter in the story of their maker, weaving together the personal and the political through Zhang’s extensive iconography.
Co-Curator, Ariel Zaccheo
Presented in partnership with the Catharine Clark Gallery.
Exhibition Design: Ted Cohen
Wanxin Zhang: The Long Journey, March-July 2019, Museum of Craft and Design. Images courtesy of Henrik Kam.
ALMOST PUBLIC/SEMI-EXPOSED 5
ATA Window Gallery
November 1 - 30, 2018
Almost-Public/Semi-Exposed is the ATA Window Gallery’s annual month of installed performance. Each November we open the space to a wide range of live performers. Past years have included performance art, modern dance, Butoh, art games, endurance pieces, sound art, live painting, ritual practice, projector performance, public intervention, radical burlesque, durational poetry, and more.
Co-curators, Tessa Siddle & Ariel Zaccheo
Participating artists: Claire Bain and Alfred Hernandez, Margaret McCarthy, Adea Guidi, Faith Holland, Jen Fedrizzi and Kat Culture (pictured), Linda Scobie, Liat Berdugo and Margaret McCarthy
Jen Fedrizzi and Kat Culture, What Remains
ALMOST PUBLIC/SEMI-EXPOSED 4
ATA Window Gallery
November 1 - 30, 2017
Almost-Public/Semi-Exposed is the ATA Window Gallery’s annual month of installed performance. Each November we open the space to a wide range of live performers. Past years have included performance art, modern dance, Butoh, art games, endurance pieces, sound art, live painting, ritual practice, projector performance, public intervention, radical burlesque, durational poetry, and more.
Co-curators, Tessa Siddle & Ariel Zaccheo
Participating artists: Suki O’Kane and Rae Diamond, Princess VuVu, Melissa Koziebrocky, Fred Frith and Heike Liss, Jen Fedrizze and Kat Culture, Alfred Hernandez and Claire Bain, Alexa Eisner and Kevin Friedrichsen, Stella Fontinella (Laura Elayne)
RUBBER FANGS!
February 24 - April 1, 2017
Paxton Gate Curiosities for Kids, SF
In the late 1950s, Universal syndicated a package of classic monster movies to local TV stations. Hot off the heels of the atomic bomb and in the midst of the red scare, classic movie ghoulies like the Wolf Man, the Creature, Frankenstein and the Mummy fell from the silver screen to flicker across the boob-tube, broadcast direct to living rooms across the country.
To counteract the creepies, weekly “Horror Hosts” like Vampira and the “Cool Ghoul” Zacherley emerged, bookending the spooky flicks with their brands of campy gallows humor. Their fearful fangs stripped, these classic monsters moved from spooky to kooky, leaving space for a new industry of monster themed toys, comics, songs, and TV shows, all with a kitschy, goofy affectation.
Glow Claw Collective members Aidan Monahan, Thomas Fernandez and Zac Amendolia mix this ooky, screwy monster mania with psychedelic colors and kawaii cuteness. Featuring creatures both nostalgic and new, they’ve created a groovy five and dime style monster paradise.
Curated by Ariel Zaccheo
ALMOST PUBLIC/SEMI-EXPOSED 3
ATA Window Gallery
November 1 - 30, 2016
Almost-Public/Semi-Exposed is the ATA Window Gallery’s annual month of installed performance. Each November we open the space to a wide range of live performers. Past years have included performance art, modern dance, Butoh, art games, endurance pieces, sound art, live painting, ritual practice, projector performance, public intervention, radical burlesque, durational poetry, and more.
Co-curators, Tessa Siddle & Ariel Zaccheo
Participating artists: Casper McEvoy-Zamosa, Balitronica, Laura Miller, Claire Bain, Mirabelle Jones, Melissa Koziebrocki, Maribel Lopez and Nicole Casado. Jason Wyman, Lady Red, Princess VuVu and Hannah Beck, Suki O’Kane and Bodil Fox
CONSTRUCTED COMMUNICATION: NAKAYAMA, SINBONDIT, VENOM
Museum of Craft and Design, SF
April 9 – August 7, 2016
Picking up threads of the handmade in our impersonal digital era, Kenji Nakayama, Amy Sinbondit and Ben Venom utilize traditional craft techniques to construct objects that communicate in nontraditional ways: through symbols, through lettering and through gestures. These three artists stem from different traditions, each with a long history, each with a unique vocabulary, each with a self-contained community of practice. These communities are often closed, accessible only to those who speak an almost secret dialect of ceramics, quilting or sign-painting.
Nakayama, Sinbondit, and Venom seek to open these communities of practice by creating works that communicate not only their mastery of construction, but also embedded messages legible to those beyond the community boundaries. They demystify the secrets of their respective crafts by speaking in a variety of ways with different forms.
Constructed Communication is a combination of talk and technique. Nakayama, Sinbondit and Venom reappropriate traditional craft techniques with their chosen materials, novel approaches, and contemporary dialogues. The work in this exhibition provides a counter-note to the fast-fabrication alternatives that sometimes clutter the modern world. Rather than standing in opposition, they provide alternate points of view that open new portals of understanding and use.
Co-curators: JoAnn Edwards and Ariel Zaccheo
Exhibition Design: Ted Cohen
ALMOST PUBLIC/SEMI-EXPOSED 2
ATA Window Gallery
November 1 - 30, 2015
Co-curators: Tessa Siddle and Ariel Zaccheo
Participating artists: Mirabelle Jones, Nathalie Brilliant and Christine Lee, Maribel Lopez and Nicole Casado, Ryan Bealer, Paula Morales, Jake Micron, Oscar Tidd, Claire Bain, Melissa Koziebrocki, Ryan Bealer and Darius Sohei, June Li, Princess VuVu
Mirabelle Jones, To Skin a Catcaller, photo by Lieven Leroy of Subversive Photography
ALMOST PUBLIC/SEMI-EXPOSED 1
ATA Window Gallery
November 1 - 30, 2014
Co-curators: Tessa Siddle and Ariel Zaccheo
Participating artists: April Dean, Mirabelle Jones, Dan & Cheryl, Amanda Chaudhary, Jacquelyn Shannon, Laurie Krsmanovic, Nathalie Brilliant, Maria Dawn and Sarah St. Leger, Bob Webb, Ryan Schrinel, Tessa Siddle, Princess VuVu
Princess VuVu, Princess VuVu and the Undead Machine
EVERYTHING OUT THERE: BAY AREA’S FIRST TRIENNIAL NOW
Diego Rivera Gallery
April 2013
Over the last academic year, led by faculty member and curator Betti-Sue Hertz, a group of seven visual scholars have been working within art exhibition history in order to conceptualize the Museum of Exhibition History (MoX) and its inaugural exhibition: Everything Out There: Bay Area’s First Triennial Now.
Although the museum is, at this point, a purely theoretical project, MoX is conceived as a curatorial collaboration that positions art exhibitions as major devices of social and cultural value. Through remounting internationally notable exhibitions from 1960 to the present, MoX invites its audience to access, experience and reexamine significant displays from the past.
Co-curators: Suzanne Minatra, Carlos Garcia Montero, Sarah Nantais, Martin Strickland, Stephanie Tran, Regina Velasco, Ariel Zaccheo
WHIMSICAL SISTERS GROUP
Diego Rivera Gallery
February 4-9, 2013
Artists Emily Bayless, Li Ma, Ingrid V. Wells, and Momo Yao join forces as the WHIMSICAL SISTER GROUP for an exhibition at San Francisco Art Institute’s Diego Rivera Gallery. The show will run from February 4-9th, with an opening reception and artist’s talk on Tuesday, February 5th at 5pm.
The WHIMSICAL SISTER GROUP is a lighthearted examination of feminine identity through a variety of media. Narratives of sisterhood, bodily abjection and childhood fantasy are woven through mediums of installation, sculpture, painting and pencil drawings. Using the body as a flexible object of discourse, these artists stretch and contort normative understandings of gender identification and feminine collectivity.
Curator, Ariel Zaccheo
WE STILL READ FAIRYTALES
Swell Gallery
November, 2012
Through an exploration of childhood memory and imagination Momo Yao, Jos Truitt, and Seo Kyeong Yoon document their experiences with literary sources and enchanted imagery. The artists collapse time, melding the nostalgic imprints left by thumbing through worn copies of Victorian children’s literature with a heightened awareness of one’s own ticking mortality. Populated by anthropomorphic figures, the imagery recalls a step through the looking glass, or diving under a foreboding cerulean sea. The immersive environment of sculpture and painting plays with shadows to pull the viewer into dark, romantic creations. As haunting as it is poetic, We Still Read Fairytales updates the trope of the “happy ending”, toeing atmospheres of the arcane and the decadence of the dreamworld.
Co-curators, Aimee Harlib and Ariel Zaccheo