Galeria de la Raza

On view: Our Language, Our Story
2025-10-18 00:00 - 2026-01-31 23:59 (America/Los_Angeles) | Galería de la Raza Studio 24, 2779 Folsom St. Suite A, San Francisco, California, 94110, United States
Galería de la Raza presents Our Language, Our Story, a powerful photographic exhibition by artist Joyce Xi in collaboration with the Asian Law Caucus. Through striking portraits and deeply personal narratives gathered from immigrants across the Bay Area, the exhibit asks: What does it mean to be seen, heard, and understood in the language of your heart?

Conceptualized in 2023, this project was initially created to document immigrant experiences and highlight the need for language access in everyday life. Expanding from the first six stories exhibited at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2024, the project now encompasses more than 20 cultures throughout the Bay Area that are reflected through their language and stories. In today’s political and social climate, this body of work celebrates and centers the fullness of these community members and leaders; friends, family, elders, neighbors, co–workers, teachers, entrepreneurs, artists, students, vendors, and people of faith. Together, they represent the backbone of our communities and an essential part of our social fabric. These images highlight the deep relationships we foster, and the joys and hardships immigrant communities face living in an English-dominant society.

Over several months of interviews and visits to community centers, family celebrations, neighborhood hangouts, and organizing meetings, Xi built relationships with these individuals and listened to their aspirations, struggles, dreams, love, and resistance. Visitors are encouraged to consider the experiences of immigrants and refugees by reading their stories, listening to their language, and witnessing their day to day lives. Our Language, Our Story affirms that language is far more than a means of communication. It is a vessel of memory, a source of cultural continuity, and a powerful assertion of self. To speak in your native language is to resist erasure, to demand dignity, and to claim space.

“Language helps you identify your people in a new place, it fills your ears with familiar warmth.”

– Alejandra Oliva, Rivermouth

Read the individual stories featured in the exhibition below.

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Bay Windows: Illuminating Immigrant Women’s Perspectives
2025-12-05 00:00 - 2026-03-11 23:59
Logo by Christine Wong Yap.

Galería de la Raza is proud to partner with artist Christine Wong Yap to present Bay Windows: Illuminating Immigrant Women’s Perspectives from December 11, 2025 through March 11, 2025, a decentralized public art display featuring fifteen sculptural lanterns. The lanterns will be exhibited in the storefronts of five community-facing organizations in Chinatown and the Mission District. Each lantern is based on a papercut by a working-class, Chinese or Latina immigrant woman with limited English proficiency and limited access to the arts. Their imagery conveys narratives at the intersection of lived experience and social and political issues—including immigrant’s rights, worker’s rights, the cost of living, affordable housing, public safety, and mental health—as well as what the women have done or could do to address those issues.

The lanterns are the culmination of Bay Windows / Ventanas en saliente / 窗花, a trilingual, cross-cultural social practice project led by Yap, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. For this project, Yap received a 2025 Creative Capital Award, as well as additional support from the Zellerbach Family Foundation and others. This is Yap’s second project engaging this multigenerational cohort of women. Her first, in 2023, was the first contemporary art project in the history of the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade, which dates back to the 1850s.

Each lantern will be accompanied by a trilingual statement by its designer, along with a link to a subtitled video interview, so that audiences can see and hear the participant speaking in her native language about what her papercut represents and how the process was for her. By creating and displaying lanterns and papercuts, Yap aims to bridge the two largest immigrant groups in San Francisco, who together comprise nearly 40% of the City’s population.

In addition to the lanterns—which will be visible for free to passersby 24/7 for three months—Galería de la Raza is slated to host a display about the project in its foyer beginning in December 2025, while the original paper cuts will be shown at the Chinese Culture Center’s Design Store starting in January 2026.

Yap, the five partner organizations, and the 15 collaborating designers will co-host a free scavenger hunt during the day on Saturday, January 24, 2026 between 11 am and 2pm. On that day, the public will be invited to visit the 15 lanterns for the chance to win prizes.

ABOUT THE LEAD ARTISTChristine Wong Yap (she/her) is a visual artist and social practitioner who gathers and amplifies grassroots perspectives on belonging and mental well being. Her project, “How I Keep Looking Up / Como Sigo Mirando Arriba / 仰望,” resulted in the first contemporary art project in the history of the 150-year-old San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade.

COLLABORATING DESIGNERSAiLan Xie 謝愛蘭, Cammi XingYu Huang 黃幸瑜, ChunMei “Amay” Cao 曹春梅, DanLi Xu 許丹麗, Lidia “Lupita” Iraheta, Marcela Escamilla, Mayra Alfaro, MiaoFen Guan 關妙芬, Nadia Rodriguez, Selina Luo 羅玉蓮, Tomasa Ramirez, YongYu “Ah Yu” Lei 雷泳瑜, YongYu “Yoyo” Situ 司徒咏瑜, YuJuan “Ah Juan” Chen 陳玉娟, Yurisma Gonzalez

MADE POSSIBLE WITH SUPPORT FROMCreative CapitalZellerbach Family FoundationNational Endowment for the ArtsA Blade of GrassAsian, Inc.
