Opening Reception: “Will You Still Hold My Hand?” at the Front Arte y Cultura
Young artists from our Community ARTS summer program participated in another successful Youth Gallery Takeover, curating an all-youth art show at the Front Arte y Cultura gallery in San Ysidro. Guided by Community ARTS Program Coordinator Anna Mia Ruiz, artists from the South Bay and Tijuana curated, designed, and installed Will You Still Hold My Hand?, showcasing work by transborder artists ages 5 to 18 from the last season of ARTS programming.
The exhibition invites audiences to reflect on what it means to grow up, be understood, and remember. Through painting, sculpture, and photography, the audience is invited to remember what it feels like to be young, making space for young voices that are still becoming. After a summer of preparation, learning about curation, exhibition design, and accessibility in the arts grounded in social justice and decolonization, family, friends, mentors, and teaching artists were finally able to come out to the opening reception to celebrate all of their hard work and efforts.
Special Thank You to Our Partners and Collaborators
We are grateful for support from community partners like Casa Familiar, which offers spaces like the Front Arte y Cultura that make it possible for young people to explore and express their creativity. Additionally, a huge shoutout goes out to the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center, the Athenaeum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, Balboa Park, and the Art Hub in Barrio Logan. A special thank you to Viet Voices and the AAPI Emerging Artist Fellows for bringing their contemporary works to the ARTS Center Gallery, where youth can be inspired and reflect. These community partners and collaborators supported the work the young artists completed during the summer, giving them the foundation and confidence to put on such a thoughtful exhibition.
Alongside the wonderful, curated work, a notable moment of the evening was the artist and curator panel. With Community ARTS interns Kim and Kira helping moderate the panel, we heard directly from the artists and curators about their experiences with the work, what they learned, and what the exhibition meant to them. On top of that, this year’s takeover was made special by the inclusion of works by ARTS 4 Justice teens at Global Academy, demonstrating how their installation represented daydreaming about good memories from the past, inviting viewers to reflect on how those memories can be used to help us achieve our dreams for the future.
Family Support
Interwoven throughout the evening were special moments happening between family members and the young artists they came to support –parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, and best friends were all present, holding space for their loved ones, sharing laughs, even tears, and definitely cheers of pride as the student curators and artists spoke about the culminating works of art before them. Programs like Community ARTS are so successful because of these pillars of support that hold up young people as they come to express their creativity. It becomes even clearer when these expressions take shape in exhibitions like this.
To learn more about the behind-the-scenes work that went into such a successful youth-designed and youth-curated exhibition, be sure to check out our blog post: https://www.areasontosurvive.org/the-state-of-arts/youth-gallery-takeover.
Creative opportunities like this for young people are made possible with support from:
