PLAySPACE Gallery
PLAySPACE, The Paulette Long and Shepard Pollack Art Community Experiment, is an exhibition program currently located in the back of the Nave of CCA's Main Building at 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco. The program provides the resources for student artists and curators to conceptualize and present programming that is oriented toward the academic community. PLAySPACE was founded by CCA's Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice in 2005 and is currently administered by the Exhibitions & Public Programs department. Our spring 2024 program features a series of pop-up exhibitions centering student work.
View installation images of highlighted PLAySPACE exhibitions 2016–2024
January 22–February 2, 2024 | Where are we from, where are we going?
Organized by Yishi Chen, Xinling Wang, and Mingrui Cao (MFA Design)
This exhibition showcases artworks by three multimedia artists: Yishi Chen, Xinling Wang, and Mingrui Cao. As Asian female designers engaged in design practice in the Bay Area, they individually re-examine their identities at the intersections of culture and gender conflicts experienced firsthand. They respond through photography, game design, and 3D design, addressing these issues. Their works aim not to provide definitive answers to these questions, but rather stem from personal emotions, offering a platform for empathy within the same community, sparking broader and more diverse reflections and discussions.
February 5–16, 2024 | Embodied Narratives: Women's Art in Dialogue
Organized by Gabby Anderman, Amanda Bristow, Chloe Cortez, Molly Rapp, and Ashley Spencer (MFA Fine Arts)
We are a group of women artists exploring and making work about women's bodies in connection to pain, pleasure, trauma, subversion and cultural expectations. This exhibition will showcase painting, drawings, sculpture and video performance pieces.
February 19–March 1, 2024 | Disability is Diversity Week
Organized by Preston Arment, Assistant Director of Conduct & Access
This exhibition is part of the second annual Disability is Diversity Week at CCA. This week is meant to engage the CCA community in acknowledgement, visibility, and celebration of disability. Disability is Diversity Week is named to represent that disability should be present in our conversations on diversity, social justice, and inclusion. Because disability touches and intersects with every identity under the umbrella of diversity, we believe offering space for community building, sharing experience, and discussing ways forward while specifically highlighting disabled identities is essential towards growth for our community.
March 4–8, 2024 | The Creative Citizens in Action Exhibition
Organized by Michael Wertz and students in ILLUS-2110: Illustrated Poster
The Bay Area has a rich history of pre-internet political discourse, direct action and positive cultural change based on the experience of posters plastered on street signs and on buildings. In San Francisco, in 2024, we are exploring the poster as a tool to imagine, promote, and enact resistance to the status quo in America (and beyond). We asked the artists in the Illustrated Poster class to consider the theme of Resistance as inspiration, and then asked them to deepen their investigations: “What do you stand for instead of against? Can you harness your power as Designers, Illustrators and Printers to advocate for marginalized communities and individuals? What happens when you encounter one of these posters on the street?”
Participating students include Adora Ozieblo, Asa Kittner, Dartagnan Parsons, Dominique Du, Hiromi Lee, Kaelie Taylor, Kelly Young, Maya Makino, Mo Diedrich, Ruichen Yang, Sayuri Bronstein, Thalia Martinez Bobadilla, and William Choi.
March 26–April 4 | Nature: Holding Space for Celebration and Grief
Organized by Nicolette Reinsmith (BFA Painting and Drawing)
Through these works, we aim to create a dialogue around humanity’s connection to the natural world. How are we as human beings affecting and interacting with the physical world around us? This exhibition explores both the ways our environment brings us joy and comfort and how our actions negatively impact our climate. These two central themes united as one through the collection of these works show how human’s relationship with nature does not operate on a good/bad binary, but instead is a convoluted gray area in which there is room for both celebration and grief.
Participating artists include Nicolette Reinsmith, Gabriella Myres-Lipton, Malcolm Christie, Arwen Creswell, Aiden Paul, Laz Geddes, Robin Larisch, Nya Serano, and Michaela Sampas.
Organized by Giorgie O’Keeffe DePaolis and Chloe King (MA Visual and Critical Studies)
In a metropolis rife with liminal identities and experiences, NEBULA asks how spiritual creative expression plays a role in and across this liminality. The concept originated as a space-making project to recognize the hybrid, yet whole, status of mixed-race artists. Simultaneously, it recognizes the hybrid and whole body of emerging artists in the Bay Area. In concert, the works of NEBULA represent how spirituality and creativity can serve as a temporary container for otherwise liminal identities and experiences. NEBULA references a stellar nursery galaxy, emphasizing: (1) the experimental potential of hybridity/cross-cultural connection as a topic, (2) the cosmological aspect of some metaphysical traditions, and (3) the likening of emerging artists to new stars.
Participating Artists: Amalee Beattie, Angel Ash, Chinda Stance, Chloe King, Grace Jin, Josie Livacoli, Lucile Henderson, Nibha Akireddy, Ruby Jay, and Suzanne Kathaleen Stroebe
Contact PLAySPACE
For visitor information, please see CCA.edu/exhibitions
For information on current and upcoming events, visit the CCA Events Calendar, instagram, or facebook, or contact exhibitions@cca.edu.