ALL OF US ALL OF US

APRIL 16 – JUNE 18, 2022

Marcel Pardo Ariza, Tristan Crane, First Exposures Mentees & Mentors, and The Q-Sides (Vero Majano, Brown Amy & Kari Orvik)

Curated by Roula Seikaly

View the Exhibition

 

Vero Majano, Brown Amy, and Kari Orvik, The Q-Sides, Volume 3 (featuring Esteban Rodriguez, Al Lujan, Manuel Rodrigues, Yelz Gochez, Prado Gomez, Jess Vu), 2015, archival pigment print, 31 in x 24 in. Image courtesy of the artists.

About the Artists

MARCEL PARDO ARIZA (b. 1991, Bogotá, Colombia) is a trans visual artist and curator that explores the relationship of representation, kinship and queerness through constructed photographs, color sets and installations. Their practices celebrate the erroneous, navigate intergenerational connection, and question arbitrary paradigms while pushing against the boundaries of photography.

Ariza is the recipient of awards including a 2021 CAC Establish Artist Award, 2020 San Francisco Artadia Award; 2017 Tosa Studio Award; 2018-19 Alternative Exposure Grant; and a 2015 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award. Their work has recently been exhibited at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Richmond Art Museum; San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Palm Springs Art Museum; and the Institute of Contemporary Art San José. Ariza is a former member of the Curatorial Council at Southern Exposure, a co-founder of Art Handlxrs, and a studio member at Minnesota Street Project.

TRISTAN CRANE (they/them/he/him) is a Bay-Area based queer photographer from Stockton, California and currently living in Oakland. Their background is in photography and anthropology, they're specifically interested in using portraiture and documentary photography as a tool for social expansion and inclusive representation of historically marginalized groups of people. Tristan is currently working on a masters degree in psychology while continuing several personal documentary projects, including 'Here', and 'Queer Collections'.

FIRST EXPOSURES is a nationally recognized youth photography and mentoring program in the San Francisco Bay Area. First Exposures provides youth aged 11-18 the opportunity to engage with photography in a classroom with guidance from a photographer who serves as both a mentor and a positive adult role model. Many of our students have experienced difficult life circumstances and are in the process of stabilizing their lives. Photography is the catalyst by which our students acquire vital life skills and the vehicle through which we deepen their intellectual, academic, and developmental experiences. While learning to photograph, students are also enhancing their self-confidence, developing their personal vision, and cultivating their passion for learning. Since 2004, over 95% of our students have gone on to pursue a college education. We reinforce our class time with time spent in experiential learning environments: major museums, alternative art spaces, commercial photography studios, etc. The students use their cameras to explore and interpret these places and their lives.

VERO MAJANO is a multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in San Francisco's Mission District. Her work creates space to acknowledge and remember the queer Latinx communities that have shaped one of San Francisco's most iconic yet contested neighborhoods. As a storyteller and curator, Majano's practice includes live cinema, archival film, performance, collage, which preserve stories and work towards a collective goal of including untold narratives in a greater San Francisco history, like the flowers on hippies on Haight Street. Her work has shown at the Guggenheim Museum in NewYork, the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, the deYoung Museum, Oakland Museum of California and Galeria de la Raza. She has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation Media Fellowship, the Puffin Foundation, SF Arts Commission, and the Free History Project, and was a resident at the HeadlandsCenter for the Arts and Djerassi Resident Artist program.

BROWN AMY is a DJ/musician who has been working in and around San Francisco for the last 9 years. She is co-founder of monthly queer soul party Hard French, which has been voted Best Overall Queer Party for four consecutive years of its five year stint, and spins some of her favorite 45’s the first Saturday of every month. A hairdresser by trade, she is also the percussive backbone of the powerful, all-women of color, psych-rock four-piece Queen Crescent. Both her DJ and performance practices have garnered international recognition and have allowed her the opportunities to tour the continental US, Canada and Mexico. When she’s not in the studio or digging through record crates, Amy is busy making connections between alternative music forms and global social movements, texting her mom and making taco salads.

KARI ORVIK is a photo-based artist and educator. Through film and found materials, her work is often site-specific, and engages ideas of presence and absence, exploring what we hold onto, what we let go of, and where we place value. She has shown at the Oakland Museum of California, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Petersen Museum in LA, SF Camerawork, and has held residencies at Recology SF (the dump) and Headlands Center for the Arts. She operates a tintype portrait studio in San Francisco, and has taught photography at Stanford University, San Francisco Art Institute, City College of SF, and UC Berkeley.

 

Michelle Zhao, Crimson Craving, 2021, archival pigment print, 20 in. x 16 in. Image courtesy of the artist and First Exposures.

 

About the Curator

ROULA SEIKALY is a Berkeley-based independent writer and curator, and Senior Editor at Humble Arts Foundation. Her curatorial practice addresses photography and New Media, social justice efforts in contemporary art and exhibition making, and institutional critique. Her writing is published virtually and in print on platforms including Hyperallergic, Photograph, BOMB, and KQED Arts. She has curated exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, SOMArts, SF Camerawork, Blue Sky Gallery, Filter Photo, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, and Photographic Center Northwest. She is the co-recipient of Blue Sky Gallery’s 2019 Curatorial Prize for the exhibition An Inward Gaze. In 2021, she was named Curator at the NFT platform Quantum Art.

 

Tristan Crane, Rawiyah (from the series Here), 2019, archival pigment print, 34 in. x 25 in. Image courtesy of the artist.