Southern Exposure Surpasses $1 million in Grants to Bay Area Arts Groups this Year.

San Francisco, CA, November 3, 2021 – Southern Exposure is proud to announce the grant recipients of Round 15 of our Alternative Exposure Grant Program. Alternative Exposure grants fund the unincorporated, independent work of artists and collaboratives who invigorate and transform the San Francisco Bay Area arts community. This year, we are granting a total of $60,000 to 14 projects, each receiving an award of $4,285. To date, Southern Exposure has awarded a total of $1,012,400 to 312 artists and projects, an enormous milestone for this project, thanks to major support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
 

“This million dollar milestone is significant because it points to the impact of support that Alternative Exposure has provided and the expansive network of Bay Area artists that continue to create opportunities for each other. It’s thrilling to have been able to see the seeds planted by Alternative Exposure grow into such diverse, ongoing projects. Amidst the ongoing economic crisis experienced by so many, it’s exciting to see Bay Area artists continue to create dynamic work and to show up for each other again and again.” - Valerie Imus, Artistic and Co-Director
 

Links to each of the artist’s work will be made available for public viewing on the Southern Exposure website. The 2021 grantees were selected by an outside panel of three artist organizers and former grantees, Jessalyn Aaland, Pablo Guardiola, and Marcel Pardo Ariza.

Alternative Exposure grants fund a wide range of projects and activities led by self-organized artists and small groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. Previously funded projects have included a exhibition or exhibition series; the ongoing work of an arts venue or collective, including Cloaca Projects (Round 13) or Milkbar (Round 12); a public art project, such as the Clarion Alley Mural Project (Round 1) and  Emergent Landscapes (Round 12); a one-time event or performance; publications directly related to the visual arts, including the Church of Black Feminist Thought: Theory Atlas (Round 12) and The Thing Quarterly (Round 3); an online project including The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (Round 10); an artist residency; a series of film screenings, including Lightfield (Round 13) and Shapeshifter Cinema (Rounds 7 & 11) and more. In general, Alternative Exposure seeks to foster the development and presentation of artist-led projects that provide opportunities for San Francisco Bay Area artists and include programs that are accessible and open to the public.

LIST OF GRANTEES
AEROSOUL COLLECTIVE: BLACK PANTHER PARTY TEN POINT PROGRAM MURAL
FEELS' ETERNAL NOW RESIDENCY
FENCELINES: A COLLECTIVE MONUMENT TO RESILIENCE
GRAVITY SPELLS II: BAY AREA NEW MUSIC AND EXPANDED CINEMA ART
MAPPING A COLLECTIVE QUEER FUTURE
MOMENTS ARTIST & WRITER RESIDENCY PROGRAM
PREMIERE JR.
PRESENTIMIENTOS
RATSKIN RECORDS HOLOSUITES PRESENTS MIXED REALITY FESTIVAL
REAL TIME RESIDENCY + REAL TALKS: LECTURE SERIES
SUN NIGHT EDITIONS: DOOMSDAY PRINT PORTFOLIO
VACANCY ROAM
VOICE BREAK
VOICING PLACES: STORIES FROM THE MAYA-MAM DIASPORA IN OAKLAND

 

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Jessalyn Aaland (she/her) is a Bay Area visual artist working across painting, sculpture, print, and social practice. Her work explores the impact of systems on our daily lives, but with a sense of humor, hope, and joy. Through her use of color, shapes, and familiar imagery, Aaland hopes to convey the possibility that a more utopian society is not unreachable. Aaland’s project Class Set has provided 20,000 Risograph-printed, artist-designed posters featuring social justice quotes to schools worldwide. She has been supported with funding Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the San Francisco Arts Commission, and has twice received an Alternative Exposure grant for Class Set and Organizing Power. 

Pablo Guardiola (he/him) is a visual artist.  His work points to different modes of narration and how these are perceived and understood.  He is co-director of Beta-Local, an arts non-profit dedicated to support and promote contemporary art practices and aesthetic thought in Puerto Rico. He recently curated the exhibition one month after being known in that island (ways of working in the Caribbean) with Yina Jiménez Suriel at Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger in Basel, Switzerland. His project The Lecturers received an Alternative Exposure grant in 2012. 

Marcel Pardo Ariza (they/them) is a 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 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 the co-founder of Art Handlxrs* and a studio member at Minnesota Street Project. 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ALTERNATIVE EXPOSURE

The program was launched in 2007 in partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Since then, based on the model co-developed with Southern Exposure, The Andy Warhol Foundation has invested in the creation of a growing national network of fourteen regional regranting programs. The Regional Regranting program has awarded nearly $10 million in grants through organizations in Alabama, Albuquerque, Atlanta, Arizona, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Knoxville, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Newark, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Philadelphia, Portland (OR), Portland (ME), Providence, Puerto Rico, St. Louis, Seattle, Washington DC, and here, in the Bay Area via Alternative Exposure. 

With lead support from the Warhol Foundation, Southern Exposure continues to expand support for the vital creative work that would otherwise fly under the radar of traditional funders. Alternative Exposure reinforces the creative landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area arts community and plays a significant role in its growth, supporting the independent, self-organized work of artists and small groups that play a critical and significant role within the San Francisco Bay Area arts community.