CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts
145 Hooper Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
Potrero Hill
Monday | Closed
Tuesday | Closed
Wednesday | 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Thursday | 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Friday | 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Saturday | 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Sunday | Closed
Friday, April 11 | 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
'Does the sun have a translucent shell?' Book Launch Party:
Does the sun have a translucent shell? is the fifth book in A Series of Open Questions, which is published by the Wattis and Sternberg Press, and distributed by MIT Press. Each reader includes newly commissioned texts and an edited selection of perspectives, images, and references related to the Wattis’s year-long research seasons. The title of each book comes in the form of a question.
The fifth issue, edited by Jeanne Gerrity and Diego Villalobos, is informed by themes found in the work of Anicka Yi, including AI, umwelt, scent and taste, the anthropocene, decay and rot, the animal world, feminism, and Asian American experiences.
We are celebrating the launch of the book with drinks, snacks, and music.
At 7pm we will have a brief interlude with short readings by contributors.
"STEADY: Michelle Lopez and Ester Partegàs" January 21 - April 12, 2025
The word "steady" implies a continuous state of becoming balanced, developed, and supported. The act of steadying requires a physical, structural, and conceptual interdependence. In this two-person exhibition, Michelle Lopez and Ester Partegàs's precarious, playful, and powerful sculptures harness physical and material components –– even using the ground below and the air above. Instead of separation and assertion, there is a counterbalance.
The sculptures in STEADY ask us to question how the world is built the way it is, and why. They offer a broader reflection on the balance of power through form, as it extends into the world at large. As the Wattis welcomes audiences to its new galleries on the CCA expanded campus, the works propose ways of inhabiting, holding, sharing, and gathering in space.
This exhibition comes to the Wattis from Ballroom Marfa, and is curated by Daisy Nam and organized by Diego Villalobos.
Group Exhibition: "Viaje a la Luna" June 12 - October 11, 2025
The exhibition Viaje a la luna (A trip to the moon) is inspired by and takes its name from the only film script written by the renowned Spanish Surrealist poet, playwright, and artist Federico García Lorca. Featuring both national and international artists, the exhibition builds upon themes explored in the script, as well as the social and political context of its creation in the late 1920s. The exhibition draws a parallel to the present, the 2020s, with politically far-right nationalist movements and fascist ideologies once again on the rise, causing the world to become more insular and uncertain.
Lorca wrote the script in New York in 1929 after a series of conversations with the Mexican artist Emilio Amero. Production began in Mexico City in 1932, with a crew that included notable Mexican artists of the time, such as Lola Álvarez Bravo and her husband, Manuel Álvarez Bravo. However, filming was halted after Lorca’s murder by the Spanish Nationalist army in 1936. The project faded into obscurity, becoming yet another unfinished work and enigma in history.
The exhibition speculates on what the film might have been, establishing a dialogue between a group of contemporary artists and the fragments of Lorca’s life and screenplay. For Lorca, art was both a refuge and a means to forge an identity, expressing his politics and his deeply personal, often distressed search for love—an indirect reflection of his homosexuality. Through archival materials and contemporary works, the exhibition revolves around the question: What would the film have been like?The exhibition is curated by Diego Villalobos and Rodrigo Ortiz Monasterio. More information coming soon.