Southern Exposure

04/17/2025

The Southern Exposure benefit auction is tomorrow, Friday 4/18!

Your support will help SoEx remain a place for artists to experiment, advance their craft, and reach new audiences, as it has for hundreds of artists over the past 50 years.

Among the exciting works up for auction are those from .arzabe, , and , who each shared a bit about the importance of Southern Exposure in their journey.

Purchase 🎟️ and browse the available works at soex.org/auction

04/16/2025

Friday is the day ❗ Come out at 6 PM to support SoEx and the community we serve by bidding on works by more than 100 of the Bay’s most exciting artists. 🎟️ can be purchased in advance at soex.org/auction.

Featured works by:

04/11/2025

New Suns: Resist & Rejoice is just 10 days away! Join us for an evening of fun, fundraising, and community as we work to secure SoEx’s future as a home for daring art. With more than 130 works from an exciting roster of Bay Area artists, there’s something for every taste and price point. Register to bid and snag your 🎟️ at soex.org/auction.

Featured works by:




arzabestudio

04/07/2025

Southern Exposure has been an early stepping stone in the careers of hundreds of artists. Among this year’s live auction works is an exciting collaborative piece between two of those artists: who exhibited at SoEx in 1991 and again in 2002, and in 1999 (see the final slide!).

Chris also sent a second work for the silent auction, and a short video encouraging everyone to bid generously.

Browse the works and purchase your tickets at soex.org/auction

04/02/2025

🆕 Up now at soex.org/auction, more than 130 exciting works by Bay Area artists, established and emerging alike. Bidding is open, and “Buy It Now” begins after the VIP preview tomorrow, 4/3. Purchase your 🎟️ today!

Featured works by:






artz
is

03/27/2025

In just a few days, bidding will open for New Suns: Resist & Rejoice, an auction benefitting Southern Exposure and the community of artists it supports. Come out on Friday, 4/18 for a night of fun and fundraising. Come see the works IRL beginning this Saturday. Register to bid and buy your 🎟️ at soex.org/auction.

Featured works by:







manga

03/21/2025

Now, more than ever, SoEx needs your support! Here are just a few of the more than 130 amazing works available at New Suns: Resist & Rejoice, our 2025 benefit auction on Friday, 4/18.

Purchase your 🎟️ and register to bid today at soex.org/auction.

Featured works by:

03/19/2025

Southern Exposure proudly presents NEW SUNS: Resist and Rejoice, our 2025 benefit art auction. Join us for an interstellar evening both in-person and online on Friday, April 18, in the SoEx gallery where we will celebrate the resilience and ingenuity of our arts community in the face of adversity.

This is a dire moment for so many. Southern Exposure is facing significant economic uncertainty in this shifting landscape for nonprofits and art spaces. It would be devastating to lose Southern Exposure at this moment when so many are being silenced. As a community, we desperately need to hold these spaces for open communication, risk taking, and experimentation. We need your help to continue this important work.

We invite you to our largest fundraiser of the year both to fortify our organization for the future and to reinvigorate for the fight ahead with a joyful night of camaraderie.



Our Main Event will feature both a silent and a live auction (led by esteemed Bonhams Auctioneer Aaron Bastian), showcasing over 130 pieces of astronomical art from some of the Bay Area's most stellar artists. The auction exhibition is on view March 29–April 17.

Together, we can build new worlds, find new horizons, and create new art. In these difficult times, we look to the wisdom of revolutionary thinkers like Octavia Butler: “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”

Find the next sun with us. Support Southern Exposure and get your ticket today.
www.soex.org/auction

03/17/2025

To Our Amazing SoEx Community,

We were thrilled to celebrate our 50th anniversary with you last year, and we look forward to another 50 years of supporting artists, providing a space for artistic experimentation, and facilitating arts education for young people at Southern Exposure. To do this, we need your help and support.

Currently, SoEx, like many other arts organizations, is facing some serious financial challenges. Funding from local and national government grants is down; some grants, like the ones we get from the NEA, may go away altogether. Foundation funders are also seeing economic uncertainty. All of this comes at a time when we need to be prepared to adapt and respond to the rapidly shifting needs of artists, our communities, and our society as a whole.

Which is why we need you now more than ever.

A confluence of events has put SoEx in a financial bind that we’re confident we can overcome, but only with your help. We are making some tough cost-cutting decisions in the coming weeks, launching a short-term stabilization fund, and working hard on our annual auction.

Here’s how you can help:

Contribute to our Short-term Stabilization Fund: We’re thrilled to share that we’ve raised $70,000 towards our goal of $125,000 to be used for strategic planning and leadership support and to secure our rent for 6 months. Donate here: https://soex.org/donate

Attend and Place Bids at our Annual Auction: We are pleased to announce our 2025 benefit art auction New Suns: Resist and Rejoice on April 18th at Southern Exposure. We need to raise $275,000, even more than in previous years, in order to secure the next steps in our organizational evolution. At New Suns: Resist and Rejoice, we will honor the need for reinvigoration across our many communities as we fortify and revitalize for the fight for a better world. Together, we can share in good drinks, good company, and over 130 pieces of amazing art from some of the Bay Area’s most exciting artists. Come be reminded of the ways we all nourish each other in our shared love of art and community as we reach our fundraising goal of $275,000 through sponsorships, ticket sales, and auction sales. How you can contribute:

Buy tickets ( https://cbo.io/bidapp/index.php?slug=soex )at one level higher than you usually do, or sign up to volunteer by emailing [email protected].
Come prepared to purchase 2x the art you usually do.
Bring 3x of the number of people you normally bring.
Become an Auction Sponsor (as a business or individual) by emailing [email protected].

If, with your help, we’re able to raise $400,000 between the fund and the auction, we’ll be in a stronger position to do some deep work with our community to shape the long-term vision for SoEx together—one that allows SoEx to remain a vital and vibrant voice in this quickly changing world.

Now, more than ever, we believe in the importance of art and artists. We hope you agree and will join us in securing SoEx’s future to help evolve the organization and invest in the artists and audiences whom we are so grateful to serve.

With love and gratitude,
The SoEx Board

ClickBid Mobile Bidding Silent Auction for New Suns - Southern Exposure's Annual Art Auction. Smartphone bidding web application.

02/15/2025

We are honored to be among the recipients of the California Arts Council grants! This funding will help us continue our mission of extensive and innovative programming — Southern Exposure strives to experiment, collaborate and further educate while providing an extraordinary resource center and forum for Bay Area and national artists and youth in our Mission District space and off-site, in the public realm. The CAC’s support for the arts across California is invaluable. We believe that the arts make us who we are in California!

* Photos taken by the talented of our summer 2024 Artists in Education exhibition, Timeformation(s).

02/14/2025

Congratulations to Alternative Exposure Grantee Black & White Projects (BWP)! We are so excited to fund the fabulous project BWP is taking on this coming year.

Black & White Projects (BWP) will create a series of publications documenting three multidisciplinary, multi-year artist-led projects—Red Clay Sound Haus, Cinema Insomnia, as well as Black & White Projects itself. These three projects have deeply impacted culturally-specific communities and are all led by Black and Brown artists through collaboration, perseverance, and resourcefulness. They wish to create lasting, distributable documentation as evidence of their creative work, their methods of equity and collaboration, and the people who have co-created these unique projects.

02/13/2025

Take a closer look at some of the amazing artwork by the young artists in our Artist in Education program.

The AIE exhibition ends this Saturday, February 15th. Catch it before closing!

Parting to Begin
January 25–February 15, 2025
Tuesdays through Saturdays, 12:00 – 6:00 PM

02/12/2025

Congratulations to Alternative Exposure Grantee CALMA’s Stories of Survival: Threads of Resistance! We are so excited to fund the fabulous project CALMA is taking on this coming year.

CALMA’s Stories of Survival: Threads of Resistance is a collaborative platform for artistic and cultural production centered on migration, labor, and asylum-seeking communities. In conjunction with CALMA’s ongoing efforts, this initiative will create a series of programs for local artists and activists to exhibit, perform, and engage in public dialogue on migration and social justice. The project envisions a limited-publication, a multimedia exhibition, and community performances hosted in the Bay Area. This initiative aims to serve as a cultural intervention, bringing together artists working at the intersection of political activism, migration, and visual art to foster a truly community-driven exchange.

02/10/2025

Thank you for coming to the opening reception of the winter Artists in Education exhibition, Parting to Begin! We had so much fun experiencing the fabulous youth artworks together.

The exhibition includes drawings and multimedia work made by SoEx’s Contemporary Classrooms program students, who attend Abraham Lincoln High School and George Washington High School in San Francisco.

Don’t miss out on an opportunity to see San Francisco youth tackle finding love, identity, and heritage, and more through their work!

January 25–February 15, 2025
Tuesdays–Saturdays 12:00–6:00 PM

Photo credits: Minoosh Zomorodinia

02/07/2025

Congratulations to Alternative Exposure Grantee Salon Salon! We are so excited to fund the fabulous project Salon Salon is taking on this coming year.

Salon Salon is a monthly artists’ gathering held in an intimate apartment in Oakland. Each month, a local early- or mid-career artist presents work or works in progress and gives a casual artist talk or leads a conversation about their work, process, or another topic of their choosing. Salon Salon is open to artists by invitation with openings to the public and seeks to cultivate community among emerging and early-career Black q***r artists.

02/05/2025

Congratulations to Alternative Exposure Grantee Light Field! We are so excited to fund the fabulous project Light Field is taking on this coming year.

Light Field is an artist-run and collectively organized exhibition of recent and historical moving image art on celluloid, with a focus on expanding the dialogue between a network of international artists and our own vibrant community here in the Bay Area. Since 2016, Light Field has organized events dedicated to cinema as a sight-specific and durational medium, embracing the communal aspect of film viewership and striving to create a space that is contemplative, committed, and intentional.

01/25/2025

Join us TODAY for the Opening Reception of the winter Artists in Education Exhibition. Parting to Begin presents work from Southern Exposure’s Youth Advisory Board and Contemporary Classrooms Artists in Education programs. Artwork in the exhibition explores disconnection and connection, inspired by the idea of interbeing as described by Thich Nhất Hanh: “Interbeing is the understanding that nothing exists separately from anything else. We are all interconnected. By taking care of another person, you take care of yourself. By taking care of yourself, you take care of the other person.”

The exhibition includes drawings and multimedia work about finding love and finding self, tapping into the social consciousness, detaching from and yearning for connection with one’s heritage, drawing in the margins of disenfranchisement, and all of the ways we come in and out of focus to ourselves and each other.

Students who participate in SoEx’s Contemporary Classrooms program are from Abraham Lincoln and George Washington High Schools in San Francisco.

January 25–February 15, 2025
Tuesdays–Saturdays 12:00–6:00 PM


OPENING RECEPTION
Saturday, January 25, 3:00–5:00 PM

12/30/2024

Southern Exposure is committed to bringing 50 MORE years of incredible artwork, programming, and projects to the Bay Area, but we can only do it with your support!

So here’s one final reminder to make a tax-deductible donation to Southern Exposure before the end of the year! Support us at www.soex.org/donate

By supporting a sustainable arts community and the longevity of Southern Exposure, your generous donations will be used to uplift artistic voices, nurture the artistry of local youth, and present MORE groundbreaking work, right here in San Francisco.

Design Credit: David Polka