2018 exhibition program at YBCA

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts marks its 25th anniversary with a year of exhibitions featuring Bay Area and California artists, architects, and designers whose work resonates with the current moment. These experimental exhibitions implicate audiences in the creative experience through monographic, in-depth presentations of contemporary practitioners who prioritize civic action and public engagement, bridging people, communities, and sectors across disciplines.

Edgar Arceneaux
December 1, 2017–March 25, 2018

The Los Angeles–based artist Edgar Arceneaux creates drawings, sculptures, and films that interrogate how history and memory are constructed in a racially divided country. Arceneaux’s presentation at YBCA features Until, Until, Until… (2015–17) a multi-media video installation as well as a live action play—written, staged, and directed by Arceneaux—that revisits a controversial performance by Ben Vereen at President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration. Complementing this work, Library of Black Lies (2016) is a large-scale sculpture and labyrinth containing a collection of crystallized books presenting variants on African American history. The exhibition is curated by Lucía Sanromán, director of visual arts, and Dorothy Dávila, associate director of visual arts.

Until, Until, Until… will be performed live in the gallery February 22–24, 2018.

Yishai Jusidman: Prussian Blue
December 1, 2017–March 25, 2018

Yishai Jusidman, a Mexican artist of Jewish heritage currently living in Los Angeles, examines the history of paint and painting through a contemporary lens. Prussian Blue is a series of paintings rendered almost exclusively in one of the earliest artificially developed pigments used by European painters. The chemical compound that makes up this pigment happens to be related to the Prussic acid in Zyklon B, the poisonous product deployed at some of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. By a strange turn, traces of the pigment remain to this day in the walls of the gas chambers. Through images, color, and stains Jusidman creates quiet, disturbing, and palpable evidence of the historic event before which politics and ethics today draw their shared boundaries. This exhibition is organized by Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City, and is making its United States debut at YBCA.

The Open Workshop
March 9, 2018–July 15, 2018

The Open Workshop, led by Neeraj Bhatia, is a multidisciplinary design workshop based in the Bay Area whose work resides at the intersection of politics, infrastructure, and urbanism. This exhibition is part of The City Initiative, a series of case studies by architects, designers, planners, and artists creating provocative work in the urban environment. It is curated by Lucía Sanromán, director of visual arts, and Martin Strickland, exhibitions associate.

Futurefarmers: Out of Place, in Place
April 20–August 12, 2018

Futurefarmers propose a collective, playful, inquiry-based approach to art-making that spans multiple disciplines and ways of inhabiting the world, from sailing and farming to environmental design and DIY scientific experimentation. Working in the tradition of social sculpture and participatory art, the coalition of artists, farmers, scientists, and designers have called San Francisco and the Bay Area their hub since 1995. Futurefarmers: Out of Place, in Place surveys their practice from the perspective of the creation of a new speculative fog-harvesting machine for today’s Bay Area. The exhibition is curated by Lucía Sanromán, director of visual arts.

Bay Area Now 8
September 7, 2018–March 24, 2019

YBCA’s signature triennial program, Bay Area Now, returns to its origins in its eighth manifestation by focusing intimately on Bay Area artists and artistic practices. At this critical juncture in national and Bay Area history, artists struggle to find the time, resources, and space to present and pursue their work, and yet they continue to create works that address their urgencies, often shaping the cultural dialogue across the country. BAN8 will bring the creative space of the studio to the gallery to spark conversations that matter. The exhibition is curated by Lucía Sanromán, director of visual arts, and Susie Kantor, curatorial associate.

Bay Area Now 8: City Initiative
July 27, 2018–March 10, 2019

For the first time in its history Bay Area Now will feature Bay Area architects and designers working at the leading edge of environmental, landscape, and housing design. It is curated by Lucía Sanromán, director of visual arts, and Martin Strickland, exhibitions associate.