Divergent Positive
Masako Miki: Midnight March
David Cruz: stay, take your time, my love
Tau Lewis: Spotlight
ICA – SF
Ongoing – December 7
If You Haven’t Been …
THE BUILDING
Referring to itself as a “startup,” last October, the Institute for Contemporary Art San Francisco (“ICA SF”) moved to The City’s struggling Downtown, occupying two floors at 345 Montgomery Street. Its current location places it within walking distance of the SOMA-cluster of SFMOMA, the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Lovers of contemporary art will barely be getting their steps in as they move between this “museum quintet.”
Designed in 1971, ICA SF’s new home, affectionately known as “The Cube,” was destined to be a museum, Light pours into the building from all sides and flows over the thin doughnut of open floor that hugs the walls of the atrium. 🌳
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ICA SF
ICA SF’s bold mission is to promote “constant reinvention in the realm of contemporary art” and to make that experimental work accessible. To date, the museum’s exhibitions have spotlighted several Bay Area artists at pivotal moments in their careers.
ICA SF is a non-collecting institution – it keeps no permanent collection – emphasizing experimentation and nimbleness, according to Alison Gass, the ICA SF’s founder. The new space is rent free for two years, which will allow the museum to pursue its goals of breaking down barriers in exhibition (ALWAYS FREE admission) and raising pay for artists and staff.
“We were founded on this vision of allowing artists to dig into their back pocket and imagine what they would do if they had a little bit of time and a little bit of money to create something new,” said Gass. “That’s really where we want to put our funding dollars.”
CURRENT FEATURED ARTISTS
Masako Miki
The first fully site-responsive exhibition in the ICA SF at The Cube, Midnight March will present Masako Miki’s work as never seen before in her largest presentation to date. The exhibition collapses Miki’s two-dimensional and three-dimensional practices, bringing her paintings known as “Night Parades” to life in experiential form.
As you descend to the lower level, you encounter throngs of Miki’s signature felted characters in a dramatically darkened environment – Miki’s world of riotous resistance. Dark indigo walls dotted with gold stars will echo the voids in her two-dimensional works, while the theatrically lit characters will gather and disperse in complex relationships. Midnight March helps one understand deeper aspects of Miki’s “othered” figures and recognize Difference as a Positive Force, even as we are unsettled by it.
David Antonio Cruz
Born and raised in North Philadelphia (that’s the very tough, homicide-ridden neighborhood known as “North Philly” to those who grew up around there) by parents who migrated from Puerto Rico, David Antonio Cruz explores the complexities of queerness and race through painting, sculpture, and performance. stay, take your time, my love brings together a selection of Cruz’s ongoing chosen family series anchored by newly commissioned work for ICA SF. A major new painting, two new drawings, and a site-specific installation all respond to San Francisco sites of LGBTQ+ rest, resilience, and resistance.
His chosen-family group portraits capture queer relationship structures, highlighting the strength of nonbiological bonds formed through mutual love and support. Cruz’ painting process personifies his deep sense of community. Each portrait begins with conversations around the project’s intention, sharing gratitude and stories of family, and a celebratory dinner. The celebration transitions into a lavishly styled group photoshoot that Cruz later collages and reimagines into intricate artworks.
The sitters hale from the edges of the country – California, New York, DC, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania (and Illinois to spice things up). They lounge together in loving, nonhierarchical arrangements that upend traditional European and American portraiture.
Real and imagined elements combine in glitching, dreamlike environments where skin is fluorescent blue, limbs double up, and sitters melt into each other. Cruz’ bright paintings and layered drawings rest on new custom wallpaper—a lush, dark landscape combining San Francisco scenes with art historical references.
In the face of discriminatory policies, erasure, and rising violence around the nation, Cruz highlights moments of touch, support, and empowerment as a “love letter” to the Bay Area queer community. This exhibition affirms: you are loved, you are safe, you are here to stay.
Tau Lewis
Tau Lewis remixes found materials using craft techniques like quilting, dyeing, appliqué and assemblage. Stitching together pieces of history and personal experience, she honors African diasporic traditions of creative repurposing and upcycling.
Her monumental sculptures often carry an ancestral presence, working within a long lineage of Black cultural producers who reach across time to unearth stories and memories embedded in textiles. The intense labor and care Lewis pours into each layered installation advocates for a future of love, healing, and justice.
Opus (The Ovule) is just one figure in a fictional universe Lewis calls T.A.U.B.I.S. Here, the spirits are caring, compassionate, and free from earthly hierarchies. Opus’ head is their omniscient power source – floating flower garlands collect and upload knowledge into one unified consciousness. As its title suggests, this sculpture captures the hope of fertility, growth, and transformation. Merging elements of the feminine and masculine, human and plant, Opus (The Ovule) blossoms and unfurls, beckoning us into a genderless utopia.
Lewis is a self-taught artist whose work is often informed by her environment, often incorporating found and recycled materials from Toronto, New York and outside her family’s home in Negril, Jamaica.
For more information about ICA SF and these three exhibitions, click here.
