The Prince of Homburg: A Solo Exhibition by P. Staff | January 17 - June 14, 2026

On view for the first time in the United States, The Prince of Homburg explores freedom, repression, desire, and the queer body through prints, sculpture, and a dream-like video installation.

Loosely inspired by Heinrich von Kleist’s 1810 play of the same name, the work explores exhaustion as a response to structural oppression. The centerpiece of the installation is a 23-minute video, which alternates between nighttime scenes of a sleepwalking protagonist in a dystopic landscape, and daytime clips of scholars, activists, and artists reflecting on contemporary queer and trans identity.

The video is projected within an intimate, cabaret-style gallery, with visitors seated at café tables. The immersive installation also includes photograms and a security fence sculpture with impaled objects, both featuring items related to the video.

Originally commissioned by Dundee Contemporary Arts in Scotland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, YBCA is proud to present The Prince of Homburg at a moment when questions of identity, autonomy, and social control feel especially urgent.

Curated by Jeanne Gerrity.

Conjuring Power: Roots & Futures of Queer & Trans Movements | March 13–August 23, 2026

Presented by YBCA in collaboration with the GLBT Historical Society

Conjuring Power is a multimedia exhibition exploring the resilient beauty, cultural richness, and fierce resistance of Bay Area queer and trans communities.

Broadly organized as a journey through time, this multimedia exhibition explores how queer and trans communities harness creativity to build culture, sustain one another, and strengthen movements across generations. Across epic murals, rarely-seen documentary photography from the 1970s and 80s, and queer-futurist contemporary video work, Conjuring Power is a potent blend of art, archive, and imagination.

The exhibition will include work by Ester Hernández, Serge Gay, Jr., Tanya Wischerath, and Crystal Mason, and emerging artists from the Queer Ancestors Project, as well as archival material from the GLBT Historical Society and audio clips from Caro De Robertis’ oral histories with the groundbreaking Elders Project. Accompanying public programs such as panel discussions, gallery talks, and live performances will be announced in early 2026.

An alchemy of legacy and imagination, joy and defiance, Conjuring Power is a timely exhibition that will inspire, provoke, and revitalize communities across the Bay Area.

Diedrick Brackens: gather tender night | March 13 - August 23, 2026

Diedrick Brackens: gather tender night is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the Bay Area, featuring fifteen weavings created since 2020, that consider tenderness, migration, and connections with the natural world.

Executed on the loom in hand-dyed, cotton fiber and acrylic yarn, Brackens’s works convey a masterful and meditative process of physical discovery and storytelling. For the artist, the outdoors is an important space for queer folks to be themselves and participate in spaces of desire and sensuality freely. Throughout the exhibition, single and paired figures exist in resplendent depictions of water, flora, and fauna, launching the viewer’s imagination.

Organized by guest curator Eungie Joo, the exhibition includes three new works that explore Brackens recent impulse to arrive home—to bring things inside to rest and ruminate, inhabit space, and be cared for.