I see every wave

curated by Aay Preston-Myint

September 12 - November 22, 2026

Participating Artists: Annie Albagli · Joshua Moreno · Ruby T.

The Berkeley Art Center is thrilled to present our fall exhibition: I see every wave, a group exhibition curated by Aay Preston-Myint, featuring artists Joshua Moreno, Annie Albagli, and Ruby T. This exhibition explores attentiveness and ecological care through a site-responsive commission, immersive video, and mixed-media drawings. On view September 12–November 22, 2026, and open Thursday through Sunday from 12 PM to 5 PM at Berkeley Art Center in Live Oak Park.

PRESS RELEASE

Related programs

• Opening Reception: Saturday, September 3 - 5 pm. Free and Open to the Public. RSVP

• Artists in Conversation: TBD Saturday, October, 1-3 pm. Curator Aay Preston-Myint in conversation with Annie Albagli and Joshua Moreno. RSVP

• Public Programs: TBD Art Workshops October/November

• Closing Reception: Saturday, November 21, 3-5 pm

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

Once while looking out over the ancient, loping sand dunes lining the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan, I took out an old Polaroid camera to snap a picture of the horizon. Save for the pleasure of the company with me, it was not an extraordinary day, or even an extraordinary view, though it was, and felt, beautiful. With or without event, the dunes are a beautiful place scarred by ice and lapped by sun. As I released the shutter, my friend asked me: “When you look out at the water, do you just see...water? Or do you see every wave?” She asked me this as a person who just sees “water,” yet knows that the water is composed of individual waves, even if she does not immediately perceive it. This may have had something to do with them being a songwriter. As if she knew the waves would come later, fleshing out and individuating anew, once the image was retrieved and processed into language and memory and sound. I looked out at the hundreds or thousands of star-filtered points bouncing off the murky gray slate of the lake, the sun glinting hotly from its late afternoon station. We watched them again, emerging in blurry, warm-toned miniature on the square of film in my hand. I made a sing-song gesture to the water, indicating my failure to count the actual number. “I see every wave,” I said simply in reply. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she answered, turning down the dune in satisfaction.

I see every wave is an exhibition about mindfulness, close reading, caring gesture, and the importance of noticing the play of light and surface across our surroundings in nature.

I see every wave takes delightful advantage of the Berkeley Art Center’s unique architecture and site to explore this theme, including its dark, cavernous interior, the sun-dappled park outside, and the rushing cut of the creek below.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Aay Preston-Myint is an artist, publisher, curator, and educator working in the San Francisco Bay Area, after several years building a career and community in Chicago, Illinois. Their practice employs both visual and collaborative strategies to investigate memory and kinship, often within the specific context of queer community and history. In addition to their studio work, they have founded and led several cooperative efforts, including No Coast, an artist partnership that prints and distributes affordable contemporary artwork, the Chicago Art Book Fair, and Chances Dances, a nightlife collective that supported and showcased the work of queer and trans artists in Chicago. They currently support Bay Area artist communities through Real Time and Space's studio and residency program, Southern Exposure's Curatorial Council, and the Board of Directors at Small Press Traffic, a seedbed for poets who push boundaries in the arts.

They have worked as an independent and institutional curator, arts writer, and publisher since 2009. Their particular interests include queer and BIPOC production, poetics, and ecology. They curate across all media with specialized experience in installation, performance, sound, photography, and printmaking. They are particularly well-versed in commissioning new works from living local artists, as well as operating and developing community programs for gallery shows, multi-venue events, fairs, and festivals. They have also worked across a wide range of contexts, including underground artist collectives, academia, and executive positions at non-profit organizations. aay.pm

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Joshua Moreno is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation, sculpture, filmmaking, painting, and drawing. He uses tracing, collecting, stacking, and other repetitive gestures to track time, map activity, and follow the movement of light and human detritus through space. His commissioned work will be site-responsive and activated by the light and material that fall and flow across the surfaces of Live Oak Park. joshuamoreno.com

Annie Albagli is a multimedia artist exploring personal and environmental narratives bound together by different forms of power-–governmental, military, and industrial. Her practice finds new ways to witness landscape and its relationship to human and non-human worlds through archival research, fieldwork, and play. Albagli has exhibited at the Headlands Center for the Arts, YBCA, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, with videos screened at the Tate Modern. She was a YBCA Truth Fellow (2017-18). Her recent installations create immersive, materially rich environments that place viewers in intimate contact with landscape and ecological vulnerability. Albagli will display one or more configurations of her work in the center of the BAC gallery. anniealbagli.com

Ruby T is a multidisciplinary artist creating hypnotic drawings and altars about water and plants using marbled paper, textiles, and piecework. Their practice spans painting, drawing, performance, and fibers, examining fantasy within an oppressive social landscape, translating fragmented media into layered, materially rich compositions. T’s mark-making, embroidery, beadwork, and reverence for the natural world anchor the themes of "I see every wave." They have exhibited at Western Exhibitions in Chicago, Hales Gallery in New York, and Bass & Reiner in San Francisco. rubyt.net