Matthew Villar Miranda

Only two weeks left to see White Cubes! Open hours are Saturdays 12-5pm, and by appointment. Exhibition closes May 16th. Books are also still available to purchase through the link in our bio! Essay contributions by Jaysen Hohlen, Taylor Jasper, Matthew Villar Miranda, and Laurel Rand-Lewis White Cube features works by artists Aaron Van Dyke, Bade Turgut, Briar Marsh Pine, Candice Davis, Casey Deming, Chase Barney, Emma Beatrez, Erika Terwilliger, Jay Heikes, Jaysen Hohlen, Jonathon Rosemond, Kathryn Kerr, Kristina Johnson, Lee Noble, Leslie Grant, Lucas Page, Maddie Butler, Michael Caudo, Patrick Keville, R Yun Matea, Sarah Sampedro, Wyatt Lasky, and Xavier Tavera. This project is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Project support provided by the Visual Arts Fund, administered by Midway Contemporary Art with generous funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York.

‼️Today is the Final Day of “Dream Jungle” at SFAC Main Gallery! As extra incentive, we’re delighted to invite you to join us for “Tea. Dance,” presented by SFAC Galleries and UC Berkeley Art Practice Department beginning at 4:00 P.M. until 6 P.M. Join us for a lush retirement party in honor of artist and educator Al-An deSouza at SFAC Main Gallery, featuring a special performance by exhibiting artist adrian clutario! 🥭The exhibition is curated by Matthew Villar Miranda, features new commissions and key loans by Alexa Burrell a.k.a. LEXAGON, adrian clutario, Al-An deSouza, Astria Suparak, and Carlos Villa, along with archival holdings from The Center for the Study of the Study of the Tasaday and the Jessica Hagedorn Papers at The Bancroft Library. 🌴Together the exhibiting artists wield elements of performance to explore counter-ethnographies of the tropics, subverting colonial notions of the other. Link in bio for more info 🌟

One more day until Tea. Dance., presented by SFAC Galleries and UC Berkeley Art Practice Department on Saturday May 2 at 4:00 P.M. 🍵💃🏽 🪩 Come celebrate the closing of “Dream Jungle,” while enjoying a lush retirement party in honor of artist and educator Al-An deSouza at SFAC Main Gallery! 💫 DeSouza’s decades-long career across pedagogy, fiction, and multimedia art has profoundly shaped contemporary discourse with wit, depth, and provocation. The party takes the form of a tea dance, once a genteel ritual of Victorian high society, that has since been reclaimed by queer communities as a celebration of daytime pleasure, collective joy, and radical visibility. 🗓️The evening opens with a live reading by deSouza, a special performance by adrian clutario, and a closing celebration inspired by the tea dance, an invitation to sip, swirl, and sway in a space where old-world frill meets raucous delight. This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at SFAC Main Gallery. It also marks the final day of “Dream Jungle,” our current Main Gallery exhibition! 401 Van Ness Ave. Suite 126 San Francisco, CA, 94102 Link in bio for more info

Snake details from my installation on view through Saturday, May 2, at @sfac_galleries (next to City Hall, Civic Center). An ominous pattern of tropical snakes capturing, eating, and digesting prey, like a macabre version of a European luxury scarf. Sourced from 18th- to 19th-century paintings, drawings, and prints by white colonists, naturalists, and elites — some relying on ensl.aved labor in Dutch colonies, others in service of the bru.tal East India Company — the banner evokes white nativist fears of immigrants as predators taking away resources. 🐍 “Welcome to the Taro Dome” Astria Suparak Cotton prints, artificial fruits, sandbags, sand, and photo backdrop kits, 15.5 x 10.5 x 13.5 feet 2026 Commissioned by San Francisco Arts Commission for the exhibition "Dream Jungle" curated by @genericmatt

This was a smashing success. Participants told us it was the most interesting event they’ve attended, that art spaces should do more programming like this, and that they learned so much but also had lots of fun. It’s so special to work with a collaborator who is as enthusiastic and organized as Matthew Villar Miranda. The seeds for this event started as food-based hang out ideas that I pitched to @genericmatt as part of our burgeoning friendship (slide 9). A few months later, he began working on the “Dream Jungle” exhibition for San Francisco Arts Commission, and invited me to be a featured artist. When we were thinking about possible public programs to compliment the exhibition, he brought up my earlier food hang-out suggestions, I added a tropical fruit section, and it was a perfect match. 🍍 Thank you to Maysoun Wazwaz @picklesthecat__ and @theo_lau from @sfac_galleries for their key assistance in pulling off this juicy event. And thank you to all the attendees who trudged out on a rainy and windy day. Sorry to those who couldn’t make it — the event filled up quickly! 🍌 Check out the final Dream Jungle event with Al-An deSouza and adrian clutario this Saturday, May 2, 4-6pm! I’ll be there, and it’s the last day to view the exhibition. Photos: 1, 7 by me; 5, 8 courtesy of SFAC; 2, 6 Flavor-Tripping menu designed by me with fonts selected by @aaaaadriiiannnnn (who designed the Dream Jungle poster in slide 11); 9 message between Matt & me shared with permission.

We’d love to see you next Saturday at “Tea. Dance.” presented by SFAC Galleries and UC Berkeley Art Practice Department on Saturday May 2 at 4:00P.M. Join us for a lush retirement party in honor of artist and educator Al-An deSouza at SFAC Main Gallery! DeSouza’s decades-long career across pedagogy, fiction, and multimedia art has profoundly shaped contemporary discourse with wit, depth, and provocation. The party takes the form of a tea dance, once a genteel ritual of Victorian high society, that has since been reclaimed by queer communities as a celebration of daytime pleasure, collective joy, and radical visibility. The evening opens with a live reading by deSouza, a special performance by adrian clutario, and a closing celebration inspired by the tea dance, an invitation to sip, swirl, and sway in a space where old-world frill meets raucous delight. This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at SFAC Main Gallery. It also marks the final day of “Dream Jungle,” our current Main Gallery exhibition! 401 Van Ness Ave. Suite 126 San Francisco, CA, 94102 Link in bio for more info

“Dream Jungle,” on view now through May 2 at SFAC Main Gallery, features work by The Center for the Study of the Study of the Tasaday (CSST) a meta-archive devoted not to the Tasaday themselves, but to the vast machinery that formed around them. Following the highly publicized “discovery” of the Tasaday in the Philippines in 1971, a global network of anthropologists, politicians, journalists, and celebrities mobilized to study, protect, and narrate a so-called Stone Age tribe, producing an overwhelming archive of images, reports, theories, and speculation. Rather than resolve debates about authenticity or hoax, the CSST flips the lens to examine the cruelty embedded in such arbitration: the power to decide who is “real,” who is modern, and who is allowed to exist on their own terms. Materials are layered and juxtaposed to mirror archival research itself—partial, excessive, and prone to associative leaps—while insisting that questions of representation be held alongside the Tasaday’s right to live, self-determine, and remain unknowable. Connections emerge through proximity, repetition, and obscuration, producing a field that feels investigative and conspiratorial at once. Conceived and directed by artist Stephanie Syjuco, the CSST treats the archive not as neutral evidence, but as a site where power and myth-making quietly merge. Dream Jungle is up for two more weeks at SFAC Main Gallery! Link in bio for more info.

Two weeks left to visit "Dream Jungle" at @sfac_galleries ! Located 3 blocks from the Civic Center BART station and @asianartmuseum , on the same block as @sfopera @sfsymphony @sfballet . "Through installation, video, literature, and archival assemblage, the artists enact what curator @genericmatt calls 'tropical counter-ethnographies': practices that seize the tropes of scripting, scoring, costuming, drag, fabrication, fore- and backgrounding, character building, scene-setting, and tableau to unsettle colonial modes of capture." 🥭🌺🦜🌴🐍 Dream Jungle @ San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Main Gallery 401 Van Ness, Ste. 126, San Francisco, CA Through May 2, 2026 Free and open to the public sfartscommission.org/experience-art/exhibitions/dream-jungle Featuring new commissions and key loans by @adesouza64 @astriasuparak @aaaaadriiiannnnn @fogapocalypse @ssyjuco #CSST @carlosvillaart @bancroftlibrary #JessicaHagedorn #DreamJungle Video courtesy of SFAC.

Join SFAC Galleries and UC Berkeley Art Practice Department on Saturday May 2 4:00P.M. for a lush retirement party in honor of artist and educator Al-An deSouza at SFAC Main Gallery! DeSouza’s decades-long career across pedagogy, fiction, and multimedia art has profoundly shaped contemporary discourse with wit, depth, and provocation. The party takes the form of a tea dance, once a genteel ritual of Victorian high society, that has since been reclaimed by queer communities as a celebration of daytime pleasure, collective joy, and radical visibility. The evening opens with a live reading by deSouza, a special performance by adrian clutario, and a closing celebration inspired by the tea dance, an invitation to sip, swirl, and sway in a space where old-world frill meets raucous delight. This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at SFAC Main Gallery. It also marks the final day of “Dream Jungle,” our current Main Gallery Exhibition! 401 Van Ness Ave. Suite 126 San Francisco, CA 94102 Link in bio for more info

Sneak peak of the menu for our 4-part Flavor-Tripping event today at @sfac_galleries . We are currently at capacity but if any seats open up we *might* be able to add a couple walk-ins. Health precautions: Please stay home if you are sick. Space has good HVAC system, and we will be running 3 air purifiers with HEPA filters and open two tall windows. This is part of "Dream Jungle" exhibition, on view through May 2, 2026. (Link in bio.)

How did Pacita Abad work through life’s pains and struggles through art? What did the circle signify in her practice, and why did she consistently return to this motif? Matthew Villar Miranda (@genericmatt ) explores these questions and more in this week’s print_screen article. Read more at our Link in Bio. Plus, view works from Pacita Abad at our booth at @IFPDA from now till 12 Apr. DM to enquire now. - Image credits: Slide 1: Photo by Willa Zakin. Courtesy of Pacita Abad Art Estate Slide 5: Photo by Michael Liew. Courtesy of Pacita Abad Estate

Works by the late Carlos Villa, including his cape “Waikiki (Little Wave),” (1972), sculptures “Artist’s Face,” (c.1980) and “Untitled (Feather Crown),” (c.1980), and documentation of a ritual performance from 1980, are presented as part of our current exhibition “Dream Jungle.” These works emerge from rituals, which Carlos Villa invented, staged, taught, and performed as a holistic practice of making and transmission. Deeply inspired by late-1960s Third World Liberation movements and their calls for interethnic solidarity, Villa understood ritual as a collective, embodied form of knowledge. The objects function as activated forms, worn, inhabited, and transformed through ceremony. Waikiki (Little Wave) evokes cycles of growth and decay, its vivid greens and organic materials shaped through bodily action. As Villa recalled, “I started painting with blood… after a while the blood kind of faded and kind of grew into the piece by itself, making a totally different color than you thought of before.” Sculptural works such as Artist’s Face and Untitled (Feather Crown) register direct physical contact: the mask was pressed onto the artist’s face, and the crown onto his head, collapsing portraiture into presence. Across painting, sculpture, and performance, Villa’s practice binds ritual, pedagogy, and resistance, rooting Dream Jungle as a ceremonial invocation of chaos, regeneration, and embodied community knowledge. Visit “Dream Jungle” Wednesday – Saturday, 12:00 – 5:00 P.M. through May 2nd at SFAC Main Gallery! 401 Van Ness Ave. Suite 126 San Francisco, CA 94102 Link in bio for more info