Land/ Water/ Meat/ Noise @ Southern Exposure

Alejandro Almanza-Pereda, Greta Alfaro, Michael Arcega, Jeremiah Barber, Nao Bustamante, Tania Candiani, Leslie Garcia, Bessma Khalaf, Hughen/Starkweather, Suzanne Lacy, Sean McFarland, Anne McGuire, Gabriel Rico, SUPERFLEX, Richard T. Walker

Southern Exposure is thrilled to present Land/ Water/ Meat/ Noise, bringing together artists working with water, landscape, food, and sound as primary mediums. The exhibition explores how these elements shape our environments and everyday lives—how they move, transform, and leave traces across spaces, bodies, and time. We are invited to see, hear, and experience these materials in new ways and encounter these materials as living forces to imagine how different relationships are to the world we share and the future we create.

Curated by Southern Exposure’s Executive Director Julio César Morales, Land/ Water/ Meat/ Noise brings together international, national, and regional artists to launch a new initiative at SoEx focused on cross-generational and cross-disciplinary exhibitions. The initiative expands opportunities for collaboration, inclusion, and representation while reflecting the creative spirit and cultural diversity of the Bay Area.

“It is amazing to return to the Bay Area at the helm of Southern Exposure and create an exhibition that highlights the true spirit of the Bay and its long history of cultural radicalism—from music and sound to community organizing, social movements, and artistic production. Land/ Water/ Meat/ Noise is a cross-generational and cross-cultural gathering that reflects on the importance of artists as storytellers of our time. Artists have the extraordinary ability to connect the past and present while offering new ways of imagining and reading the future. This exhibition celebrates the spirit of experimentation, collaboration, and possibility that continues to shape the Bay Area and its creative future.” — Julio César Morales, Executive Director and Curator, Southern Exposure

Through installation, performance, sculpture, and sound-based works, the artists engage the physical and sensory qualities of these materials. Water flows and gathers, land is marked and reshaped, food carries cultural and ecological histories, and sound reveals rhythms, tensions, and disruptions—often felt as much as heard. Rather than existing separately, these elements move through and shape one another, making visible and audible the conditions that structure both our environments and our shared cultural landscape.

EXHIBITION CURATOR

JULIO CESAR MORALES (he/him/el) 

Julio César Morales is an influential artist, curator, and educator, Morales has a range of experience: executive director and lead curator at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, Arizona State University Museum,Yerba Buena Center for The Arts in San Francisco, Queens Nails Annex,  2013 Venice Biennale, he currently serves as the Executive Director of Southern Exposure in San Francisco and has curated more than 100+ exhibitions to date.

EXHIBITION DESIGNER

MÁRIO PIRES CORDEIRO (he/him/el) 

Mário Pires Cordeiro is an American-Portuguese artist and the exhibition designer, bring extensive fabrication and design experience to his practice. With an MFA from Chelsea College of Art and Design, his work explores the intersection of fine art, geometry, and color theory across sculpture, film, and 3D printing. He is a Faculty Artist at 1240 Minnesota Street Project.