1224 Harrison St, Oakland
May 31 - June 1 and June 7 & 8, 2025
The first good thing that happens as I enter the ARTogether space for the EastBay Open Studios is that I am offered fresh mulberries. The second thing that greets me is a painting by Ecuadorian-born painter Martin Rodrigues Serrano (pictured at top). Two self-portraits of the artist, one in light and the other in shadow, lay on the ground, mirroring one another.
The landscape wreathes the figures in mountains, fog, and fire. A horned bull seems to embrace the figure of light as it wards off an attacking condor. Behind them, a gold Sun Mask floats in the sky, seeing all. The dual faces in the mask offer opposing expressions and a sense of a battle ongoing, a long war.
“It’s an idea of, like, the syncretism, like the bull representing a more Spanish ancestry, which represents colonialism and the conquista, whereas, like, the condor actually represents the other side, which is very highly placed in the indigenous cosmovision in the Andes, where I’m from,” Serrano says of his work. He has just finished his BA at UC Berkeley.
Surrounding the painting are Serrano's smaller cyanotypes. Eyes peer out faintly above urban scenes that create geometric patterns. It as if one is viewing the city through the eyes of a dreamer. The scenes in blue, not quite realized, dash in and out of focus. Their ephemeral nature draws the viewer in, and the tight spacing on the walls left the eye unsure where to land.
Serrano's work holds true to the mission of ARTogether's Artist Mentorship Hub. A multidisciplinary art program for emerging refugee, immigrant, diasporic, BIPOC, and underrepresented artists in the Bay Area, it hosts a curated group of like minded creators.
The program centers wellness, collective power building, and peer connection while providing mentorship, guidance, and professional development led by local artists established in the field, rooted in their diasporic communities. The work hales from all corners of the globe and covers themes from ancestry to the effects of colonization.
A print by Jackie Romero catches my eye. It reads, “The Sun is Setting on Empire. Gaza will be free.” “Most of my work centers around Palestine and Palestinian liberation. I try to make art that is empowering and makes people feel like they have a role in the movement for the liberation of Palestine, and not only Palestine, but all colonized people,” says Romero, a San Francisco raised Mexican and Palestinian artist.
As a community organizer and artist, it is important to Romero to connect the relationship that people have to the earth. A multidisciplinary artist, she makes prints and continues the centuries-old practice of tatreez (Palestinian embroidery).
Throughout the show, this theme of displacement appears many times. In these works, the longing for home and ancestral knowledge from those who have been displaced throbs like a heartbeat. Though the mediums vary, the story told is the same. That they all sit in ARTogether’s studios side by side, the works become a conversation that will hopefully provide a greater awareness of the effects diaspora has on the public psyche.
The ARTogether studios will be open again this weekend, June 7 and 8.
