2022 SECA Art Award Exhibition

The 2022 SECA Art Award Exhibition celebrates Bay Area artists Binta Ayofemi, Maria A. Guzmán Capron, Cathy Lu, Marcel Pardo Ariza, and Gregory Rick. Each artist fills a different Floor 2 gallery with new, site-specific work showcasing their distinctive and exciting practices.

Ayofemi retunes the museum through material interventions and activations culminating in an immersive installation within the Floor 2 Learning Lounge to illuminate the influence of Black abstraction. The project expands her work with urban spaces to highlight Black and Indigenous presence and legacies of Black joy.

Constructed from a vibrant patchwork of hand-sewn textiles and applied paint, Guzmán Capron’s three-dimensional giantess descends from the ceiling and invites us into her dreamscape, where a series of powerful and vulnerable figures exist in a perpetual state of transformation.

Inspired by Nüwa, a Chinese creation goddess, Lu’s installation cascades from the ceiling in garlands of long-nailed hands and corner-store fruits, all deftly shaped from clay. The work extends Lu’s interest in manipulating Chinese cultural references to deconstruct assumptions about Asian American identity.

Pardo Ariza will honor Bay Area trans leaders in photographic portraits that appropriate Catholic altarpieces featuring saints. Exploring the relationship between kinship and queerness, the tender images hang on walls saturated with color and jeweled patterns.

Rick’s large-scale paintings depict complex scenes of racial conflict and community with vibrant, layered imagery. Figures battle, protest, and commune across canvases exploring the 1992 LA Riots, Black incarceration in the U.S., and other endemic cultural issues that remain fiercely relevant.

Since 1967, SECA has honored recipients of the SECA Art Award with an exhibition at SFMOMA and an accompanying publication. The award distinguishes Bay Area artists whose work has not, at the time of nomination, been accorded substantial recognition from a major institution. Recipients are chosen by SFMOMA curators after a series of studio visits attended by SECA members.