Guest Curators
Through our Guest Curatorial program we hope to expand the offerings of a regional perspective by offering the opportunity to create valuable conversations around social justice and environmental protection. Our curators select artists who are choosing to use their creative voices as a form of resistance, solution, appeal and cultural commentary.
While we attempt to align with our curators, our curators will not always be focused on the issues that we hold dear in our own values; however we welcome the commentary that this brings forward. We ask our curators to consider both our mission statement, our efforts towards anti-racism and our values during their curation.
While we attempt to align with our curators, our curators will not always be focused on the issues that we hold dear in our own values; however we welcome the commentary that this brings forward. We ask our curators to consider both our mission statement, our efforts towards anti-racism and our values during their curation.
Interior Life
Guest Curators: PJ Policarpio and Samantha Huira
In the long shadow of centuries of activism and systemic violence, we find ourselves pushed to turn inwards, towards ourselves and the interior lives of others. This inward step opens up a space of deep connection across boundaries of difference to forge communities of belonging. The artists in Interior Life construct sacred architectures of queer BIPOC interiority through the photographic medium. Their intimate focus on themselves, their subjects, and the space between them resists the inherently violent potential of the camera, and empowers them with agency over their own representation. Ultimately, Interior Life explores a sense of tender reverence and community-rooted gestures of care through a philosophical framework of subjectivity.
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PJ Gubatina Policarpio is a cultural leader and creative collaborator —an educator, curator, and community organizer — at the forefront of art and social justice. With over 10 years of experience in museum education, public programming, youth development and art administration, PJ has led innovative, rigorous, and social justice-centered initiatives that advocate for artists, scholars, and communities of all kinds. He has worked at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, Queens Museum, The Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum, where he was a Fellow in Museum Education. As the inaugural manager of youth development at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, PJ developed and led transformative programs and partnerships that engaged diverse audiences. He is currently Associate Director at Micki Meng San Francisco.
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Samantha Hiura (she/her) is a second year graduate student in California College of the Arts’ dual degree program for Visual and Critical Studies (MA) and Curatorial Practice (MA) (anticipated graduation 2025). Her academic and professional focuses are centered on contemporary art as forms of resistance, with particular interest in the intersections of queer and BIPOC representation. She also holds a BA in Humanities and Art History with departmental honors from Seattle University. She has previously worked at CCA Exhibition’s new campus gallery, Micki Meng Gallery (San Francisco, CA) and currently as the Curatorial Fellow at the Institute for Contemporary Art San Francisco.
Samantha and PJ began working together at Micki Meng Gallery in 2023, and share interests in Asian American studies, queer studies, and contemporary curatorial practices. Interior Life is their first collaborative curatorial project, and combines each of these professional interests. 
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R.I.S.E COLLECTIVE FURY
Guest Curator: Demian DinéYazhi
Guest Curator: Demian DinéYazhi
Demian DinéYazhi, an Indigenous Diné Non-Binary Trans transdisciplinary artist and published author born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábaahá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) and Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water) living in Portland who has exhibited throughout the U.S. and Canada. At Parallax, Demian DinéYazhi will be curating R.I.S.E.: COLLECTIVE FURY, a project that will explore how outrage and anger can be mobilized not as tools of division, but as a means to solidarity and empowerment.
Through a series of performances, artworks, workshops, and talks, R.I.S.E.: COLLECTIVE FURY will seek to amplify the work of hyper-marginalized Indigenous artists and challenge the exclusion of Indigenous narratives, histories, and communities throughout the ancestral lands of their respective tribes.
The exhibit will function as equal part event space, exhibition site, and infoshop presenting work focused on the interwoven political and artistic urgencies of Indigenous Queer and Two Spirit communities (IQ2S) including Indigenous Feminisms and Matriarchal empowerment, Decolonization and Indigenous Sovereignty, Anti-fascism, and environmental justice.
At work in DinéYazhi’s project is a concern for the routine and ubiquitous ways in which the outrage and emotions of communities of color are policed, with often violent ends, and the implications of whose anger we choose to hold space for. Through R.I.S.E.: COLLECTIVE FURY, DinéYazhi´ and Indigenous artists will stage the ways that Indigenous communities shape spaces of collective fury that ultimately yield forms of healing and resilience.
Through a series of performances, artworks, workshops, and talks, R.I.S.E.: COLLECTIVE FURY will seek to amplify the work of hyper-marginalized Indigenous artists and challenge the exclusion of Indigenous narratives, histories, and communities throughout the ancestral lands of their respective tribes.
The exhibit will function as equal part event space, exhibition site, and infoshop presenting work focused on the interwoven political and artistic urgencies of Indigenous Queer and Two Spirit communities (IQ2S) including Indigenous Feminisms and Matriarchal empowerment, Decolonization and Indigenous Sovereignty, Anti-fascism, and environmental justice.
At work in DinéYazhi’s project is a concern for the routine and ubiquitous ways in which the outrage and emotions of communities of color are policed, with often violent ends, and the implications of whose anger we choose to hold space for. Through R.I.S.E.: COLLECTIVE FURY, DinéYazhi´ and Indigenous artists will stage the ways that Indigenous communities shape spaces of collective fury that ultimately yield forms of healing and resilience.
CLOTH, Construct, Culture: Fashion Builds a Story
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“CLOTH, Construct, CULTURE: fashion builds a story”, a first of its kind, showcases the work of Kyle Denman, Isabella Diorio, Korina Emmerich (Puyallup), Karen Glass, Alena Kalana, Ruree Lee, Maital Levitan, Abiola Onabulé, and Yun Qu,, exploring how culture and identity are shaped through fashion. Hill says, “my hope is that the audience will engage, dream, and indulge in the aesthetics, while understanding far-ranging social issues, advancing their knowledge of fashion’s deeper purpose.”
Upcoming project at Sheehan Gallery, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, Spring 2025 Hill currently lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, writer and visual artist, Erik ReeL. I find that sharing my personal experiences with societal issues and problems give such a special meaning and feeling to my clothes and work. I wanted to share the visualization of the difference between humanism and the world that humans created through their phones. |
CONVERGE 45 Social Forms: Art as Global Citizenship
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Christian Viveros-Fauné (Left) & Derek Franklin (Right) Photo by Mario Gallucci |
Independents Curators International: Notes for Tomorrow
Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.
Arising from a moment where collective crisis had to be managed through collective care, Notes for Tomorrow understands that no singular voice can guide us forward. Instead, it presents a network of overlapping solutions. The works on view are connected across geographies by a shared interest in decolonization. In many works, nature is a recurring focus; at the same time, there are projects that imagine digital space as a point for connection to one another, and even to the sacred. A number of artists stress the importance of sustaining cultural memory and sharing knowledge, while also maintaining a critical gaze toward the monument and the museum. Above all, the works in Notes for Tomorrow call for change. Notes for Tomorrow also explicitly champions new voices. It was curated from selections by alumni of ICI’s Curatorial Intensive, a professional development program founded in 2010 on principles of international exchange, inclusivity, and knowledge-sharing.
For Notes for Tomorrow, the traveling exhibition format has been recalibrated to encourage international collaboration and versatile modes of presentation. The exhibition travels digitally to museums, university galleries, and independent art spaces where artworks are produced on-site, engaging local resources and responding to the local context. Because of the exhibition's format, simultaneous presentations across the globe are possible and encouraged; additionally, the exhibition makes room for the addition of local voices throughout the project. Each iteration engages audiences with video, photography, installations, murals, and scores within the gallery space, outside, and online.
CURATORS
Charles Campbell, Freya Chou, Giulia Colletti, Veronica Cordeiro, Allison Glenn, Tessa Maria Guazon, PJ Gubatina Policarpio, Ivan Isaev, Ross Jordan, Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick, Josh Tengan, Esteban King Álvarez, João Laia, Luis Carlos Manjarrés Martínez, Fadzai Veronica Muchemwa,
Lydia Y. Nichols, Marie Hélène Pereira, Balimunsi Philip, Josseline Pinto, Florencia Portocarrero, Shahana Rajani, Rachel Waldrop (Reese), Marina Reyes Franco, Mari Spirito, Alexandra Stock, Eszter Szakács, Fatoş Üstek, Su Wei, Sharmila Wood
ARTISTS
Madiha Aijaz, Ernesto Bautista, Maeve Brennan, Vajiko Chachkhiani, Luke Luokun Cheng, A Liberated Library for Education, Inspiration, and Action, Nothando Chiwanga, Shezad Dawood, Demian DinéYazhi', Cao Guimarães, Ilana Harris-Babou, Rei Hayama, Amrita Hepi, INVASORIX, Tamás Kaszás, Ali Kazma, David Lozano, Mona Marzouk, Joiri Minaya, Peter Morin, Omehen, Daniela Ortiz, Kristina Kay Robinson, Luiz Roque, Mark Salvatus, Ibrahima Thiam, u/n multitude, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake, and Yan Shi
Aaron Gach - Guest Curator: Probably Just the Wind: Death, Necropolitics and Transformation
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Aaron Gach’s diverse artistic practice consistently addresses public concerns, social politics and power dynamics. Inspired by studies with a private investigator, a magician, and a ninja, he established the Center for Tactical Magic in 2000. His work has been presented by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Hayward Gallery, London; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Vigo, Spain; Deutsches Theater, Berlin; and a major public commission for the City of Toronto. Aaron Gach has taught courses in Community Art, Street Media, Art & Magic, Collaborative Practices, and 4D Art at the University of California Santa Cruz, Stanford University, the San Francisco Art Institute, and currently at the California College of the Arts.
Curatorial Statement |
Christie Mitchell - Guest Curator: Seeking Discomfort: Artistic Strategies in a Dystopian Reality
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Christie Mitchell is an independent curator based in New York. She specializes in post-war and contemporary art, and is a Program Committee member of Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA), where she works with leadership to create content for programming streams. Previously, she worked in the curatorial departments of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she organized the collection display fruits, vegetables; fruit and vegetable salad, and the commissioned public project Do Ho Suh: 95 Horatio Street. Mitchell was a member of the curatorial team for the retrospective Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again, which debuted at the Whitney before traveling to the San Francisco Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018-2020. Other projects at the Whitney included work on Julie Mehretu, Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium, Open Plan: Steve McQueen and Open Plan: Michael Heizer. Mitchell holds a B.A. in Art History from Duke University, and an M.A. in Art History and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.
Voices of Contemporary Art |
