"David Antonio Cruz: stay, take your time, my love" May 16 - December 7, 2025

Opening May 2025 is stay, take your time, my love, site-specific solo exhibition by David Antonio Cruz, including newly commissioned paintings and drawings created in response to the queer histories of San Francisco. Visitors will experience select works from Cruz’s chosenfamily series in an intimate, tactile space, mirroring the plush interiors of his compositions. The exhibition celebrates the power of non-biological bonds between queer, trans, and genderfluid people, particularly communities of color. Figures in Cruz’s group portraits lounge together in loving, nonhierarchical arrangements, defying the heteropatriarchy of traditional European and American colonial portraiture.

In the face of discriminatory policies and rising violence around the nation, Cruz’s new paintings will act as a “love letter” to the Bay Area queer community—uplifting local figures and capturing intimate moments of touch, support, and empowerment. His intricately detailed work will layer references to art history, the handkerchief code, leather culture, and iconic sites around the San Francisco landscape. “Chosen family are the folks that love you undeniably, unconditionally. They don’t come with restrictions or rules. This is our safety net, this is how we create home.”

"Masako Miki: Night Parade" May 16 - December 7, 2025

The first fully site-responsive exhibition in the new ICA SF at The Cube, "Night Parade (working title)" will present Masako Miki’s work as never seen before in her largest presentation to date. The exhibition will collapse Miki’s two-dimensional and three-dimensional practices, bringing her paintings known as “Night Parades” to life in experiential form.

Visitors will descend from the upper level of the new ICA SF space to the lower level, encountering throngs of Miki’s signature felted character sculptures in a dramatically darkened environment. Here, we will be fully immersed in Miki’s world of riotous resistance. Dark indigo walls dotted with gold stars will echo the voids in her two-dimensional works, while theatrically lit characters will gather and disperse in complex relationships. Night Parade helps us understand deeper aspects of Miki’s “othered” figures and recognize difference as a positive force, even as we are unsettled by it.

Image:

David Antonio Cruz, "thesecretofremainingyoung isnevertohaveanemotion,thatisunbecoming; thosebarriokids", 2022. Collection of Green Family Art Foundation. Image courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery.