Galería’s fellowships are an opportunity for local Bay Area emerging and established artists to work in collaboration with us to develop community based art projects with a social practice focus that underline the artists’ deep understanding of local community needs, ideals and dreams. By providing financial resources, studio space, and networking opportunities artists evolve their art practice and push boundaries for social change.
R.A.I.C.E.S. FELLOWSHIP
The Reimagining Art In Community Education Spaces (R.A.I.C.E.S.) Fellowship is an initiative to support Latinx artists living and working in the City and County of San Francisco.
In its first year, the fellowship hired four (4) individuals to be hosted at four (4) historical Latinx led art & culture organizations. The initiative’s goals are to:
- Cultivate the Latinx creative sector by providing job opportunities and
- Support historical cultural organizations that have been at the center of social services and want to provide dedicated jobs to artists.
This twelve month fellowship requires artists to develop a community informed art project within their practice that will culminate in a public presentation at the end of the fellowship. We define community informed as a listening process where artists will participate in community dialogue (e.g., community meetings, city hall advocacy and policy recommendations, actions, and protests).
R.A.I.C.E.S. is composed by San Francisco Latino Parity & Equity Coalition’s Art & Culture based organizations that represents more than 100 years of cultural and social service engagement in the city of San Francisco and beyond.
Each partner’s emergence can be traced to a direct result of grassroots organizing, which has historically informed and influenced the district’s political and cultural legacies. To date, our collective work continues to be rooted in those same models and values of community engagement through collaboration, public meetings, partnerships and door to door outreach.
2024 – 2025
R.A.I.C.E.S Fellows & Cohort Organizations
Alejandra Rubio – Galería de la Raza
Alejandra Rubio is a printmaker, cultural curator, and community advocate from San Francisco. She is critical of societal norms and their impact on marginalized people and is fascinated by the power of radical imagination through the act of dreaming and creating art. This has led her to pursue a career in youth arts education while pursuing several independent projects centered in cultivating community and connection.
Current
Find me on 22nd and Mission! A memory collection archive.
Galería’s R.A.I.C.E.S. Fellow, Alejandra Rubio, is looking to document and archive memories, dreams, and acts of resistance related to the Mission Market that was formerly on 2588 Mission St. This archive will be used to inform her next print where she reimagines what the property of 2588 Mission St. could look like instead of the current proposed 10 story market rate building.
In exchange for your memory Alejandra will send you a 5×7 postage sticker- which will be the last of these stickers with the design of the previous building. Deadline to submit your memories will be April 10, 2025– the same day as the next planning commission meeting that will determine if the 10 story project gets passed.
Contribute to the 22nd and Mission Memory Collection Archive through the form below.
Recent
Sweeps kill, Housing heals – Art Build
First public event as part of Alejandra Rubio’s R.A.I.C.E.S. Fellowship held at Galería de la Raza’s Studio 16 in collaboration with Coalition on Homelessness.
Over the last year I have had the chance to support in a few art builds which inspired me to facilitate one myself as part of my fellowship. Since August, I have been collaborating and supporting the Coalition on Homelessness with their campaign to end sweeps and advocacy for the RV community here in SF.
It never seizes to amaze me what WE as a community are able to accomplish when we come together. We printed shirts, patches, and posters totaling to over 300 printed materials. We had about 40 folks throughout the time the art build took place that supported with printing, drying, and “loading” for the next print. Every person playing a vital role in being able to accomplish our goal.
In honor of day of the dead, the COH held a procession at city hall where materials made from the art build were distributed. Now these prints can be found out in the world
View more of Alejandra’s process
Alexa “LexMex” Treviño – Accíon Latina
Alexa “LexMex” Treviño is a first-generation Mexican American photographer and artist based in the vibrant Mission District of San Francisco. Her artistic practice focuses on storytelling through photography, where she pays homage to her ancestors, celebrates her culture, and advocates for the dignified representation of marginalized communities.
Danielle Revives – Marigold Project
Danielle Revives is a San Francisco born, Hawai’i raised self-taught altar maker and artist. Her chosen mediums are flowers and other naturally sourced materials. She hasn’t met a tree she hasn’t adored nor a landscape that she hasn’t found beautiful. Her art is in the details. Altar making brings her preferred art mediums and her appreciation for ceremony and ritual together as one. Danielle has been able to dig deeper into her foundation as a mixed-race woman through ancestral connection thanks to Day of the Dead.
XEMARA – Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
With an artistic practice ranging from singing, songwriting, production, and audio engineering, XEMARA (Jess Maria Ramirez) explores preserving queer testimonies and reclaiming public spaces using sound. Growing up in Sonidero culture, a sound system subculture in Mexico, the vibrant, communal practice inspired them to learn these audio and visual technologies. After receiving a full scholarship to a live sound engineering program in Nashville, they eagerly came back to The Bay to practice and share what they learned. Their R.A.I.C.E.S. Fellowship project combines their artistic and technical skills, queering audio/visual technologies for historical preservation and resistance.
2023 – 2024
R.A.I.C.E.S Fellows & Cohort Organizations
Ariana Martinez-Cruz – Galería de la Raza
Ariana Martinez-Cruz is a fiber, textile, embroidery artist. Her textile and visual art work has been featured at Brava Theater, the Annual SF Carnaval parade, Latino Cultural Center in Dallas, TX as well as many artisan markets throughout San Francisco. Sewing and creating since the age of six exploring and pursuing knowledge in all forms of fashion, design, garment construction, textile creation and embroidery art. Current creator of Sew Frisco a wearable thread art brand inspired by memories and life growing up in the 7×7 through hand embroidered iron on patches and pins. She shares her love of sewing through various community workshops from hand sewing to creating costumes.
The R.A.I.C.E.S. Fellowship culminated in the project
Essential Threads: La Mano de Obra
Learn more about the project
Essential Threads: La Mano de Obra, part of the 2023-2024 cycle of the R.A.I.C.E.S. Fellowship, created by artist fellow Ariana Martinez- Cruz.
Essential Threads reclaims elements used to elevate and serve as societal currency by haute couture houses, and rather, offers an homage to the essential worker, rightly honoring their contributions and humanity. In the reclamation process, Martinez-Cruz plays with tailoring, atelier sewing techniques, and Tambour embroidery to redefine traditional uniforms. By incorporating historical designs and haute couture elements, these designs confront and subvert societal perceptions of the working class.
Process
Sew-cial Media Takeovers
Runway
Exhibition
Workshops
Yano Rivera- Accíon Latina
Yano Rivera is a mural restorer working in the Mission District since 2008. Alongside his work on murals, he has been writing comics in personal notebooks, which evolved into professional communication tools. Having witnessed the power of comics to amplify his mural restoration work, he is eager to bring comics to amplify journalism at Acción Latina. The parallel between journalism and art conservation is this: holding space for the voices of others. The 90s Matter in the Mission, and this year, with comics, he’ll show how!
Lila Maes-Shah- Marigold Project
Lila Maes-Shah was born in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in Sculpture and her BA from San Francisco State University in Textile and Design. She is an artist, digital designer, educator, and healing arts practitioner. She is currently cultivating her work in social art practice, large-scale sculpture, and site-specific installations.
She has exhibited with SOMARTS, Yerba Buena Sculpture Walk, The Mission Cultural Center, FiveTen Gallery, The Lab, Big Sur Spirit Garden, and El Vagabundo Gallery in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her present work examines the human experience and often offers “options” for remediation.
Calixto Robles- Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
Calixto Robles is from Oaxaca Mexico and moved to San Francisco in 1983. He is a painter, printmaker and ceramic sculptor who is inspired by Meso-America and First Nation people’s culture , as well as sacred imagery of ancient Eastern and Western cultures. He uses natural and supernatural figures such as angels, eagles, jaguars, bisons, hearts and moons.
He creates work around issues that he is personally invested in his entire life: social justice and climate change. He makes art to empower people to find strength to fight for justice. His work is positive and shows symbols of cultural history, survival, and strength.
Select exhibits include The Legion of Honor in San Francisco, The de Young Museum in San Francisco, The Oakland Museum and Museo de la Estampa, Mexico City. His work is in the collection of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Museum.