Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, Oakland Museum of California
Cecilia Chia
Founder and Director, Glass Rice Gallery
Alison Guh
Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Introductions 2025 was presented at Root Division, San Francisco in August/September 2025 as part of the 2nd Saturday Exhibition Series.
EXHIBITING ARTISTS :
Paloma Bondi
April Camlin
Javier Roberto Carlos
England Hidalgo
Megan March
Lorena Molina
Katie Murken
Elaine Nguyen**
Meghna Sharma
Siana Smith
Zoe Spikerman
Amy Yoshitsu
** Root Division Studio Alum
Introductions 2025
Root Division is thrilled to present Introductions 2025, the 18th iteration of our annual juried exhibition.
Established in 2007, Introductions is one of Root Division’s signature exhibitions, showcasing the talents of twelve emerging Bay Area artists not currently represented by a gallery. Each year, artists are selected through a rigorous review process by a panel of three prominent arts professionals representing commercial, non-profit, and educational venues based on the aesthetic and conceptual strength of their work. The resulting exhibition provides a snapshot of the Bay Area’s vibrant artistic landscape featuring a diverse range of media and subject matter, including but not limited to video, installation, sculpture, photography, ceramics, textiles, and painting.
A key pillar of Root Division’s gallery program, Introductions connects emerging artists to the Bay Area art community, and the public at large.
MAKEDA BEST
Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs,
Oakland Museum of California
Serving on this journey presented the opportunity to gain perspective on the artists and arts communities of this region, and on what drives them. The hundreds of submissions included large scale videos, rice paper, images of faces and bodies going about their everyday lives, objects that integrated wood and plastic, screens, and immersive installations. There were surprises in the materials like bedsprings, but also the simple and humble binder clip. Of course, there were plenty of paintings and drawings and prints, but the artist’s statements often spoke with the urgency and vulnerability of why these mediums mattered right now. Collectively, the submissions telegraphed what matters to our local artists right now, such as: personal autonomy, politics, everyday intimacy and connection, history and generational change (or generational trauma), the intersection of the global and the local, nature and environmental degradation, the ongoing impacts of technology. Each submission resonated as having particular meaning in the Bay Area because of the region’s own histories, cultures, and demographics. I was struck by a painting of a young woman lying on a blue rug, portrayed from the waist up - an open book beside her, staring out at the viewer. A curious and delightful detail: the back of the book positioned near her head is blank except for an image of the bottom half of a standing figure. At other times, a work encourages me to meditate on
the artistic interpretation of a historical detail – in one case, the indigenous people of the Cordillera Region of the Philippines brought to San Francisco in 1905 for display.
To open another portfolio submission was to add another layer to a collective tapestry of this place and this time, and a conversation emerged among strangers. Representing a range of places across the Bay Area, submissions were intensely local, but their methods, content and subjects often reflected complicated personal geographies decades in the making. Artists often referenced the role of other places in their artmaking. These other places were vivid and present to them, even if they had never been. As jurors, we learn about the personal significance of this place and places in shaping artistic identities and visual storytelling. Some of the places are our local arts institutions and organizations. The submissions expanded the idea of an “introduction.” These artists metaphorically and sometimes literally record and interpret the world around them – “introducing” us to new ways of seeing the world, and prompting us to notice, to trace and to pull the common threads. In the end only a handful of artists are able to present their work to the wider public, but embedded in this small selection is a complex dialogue with the wider whole. It’s through this whole that this selection comes into view, but we shouldn’t lose sight of its role and significance nonetheless.
From The Jurors
CECILIA CHIA
Founder and Director, Glass Rice Gallery
Since its founding, Glass Rice has remained steadfast in its commitment to championing emerging artists - offering a platform for experimentation, visibility, and sustained development. As the gallery’s founding director and a native of San Francisco, I’ve spent the past nine years nurturing this vision - not only through thoughtful programming, but by cultivating meaningful, long-term relationships with the artists we support. This ethos of care and community— particularly within the Bay Area’s ever-evolving cultural landscape—sits at the heart of everything we do.
When invited to serve as a juror for Root Division’s 2025 Introductions exhibition, I welcomed the opportunity to immerse myself in a wider spectrum of artistic voices in the Bay Area. Reviewing more than 200 submissions alongside my fellow jurors, it quickly became clear that narrowing the selection down to just twelve artists would be a difficult task. The strength and diversity of the work spoke volumes not only in terms of artistic capacity, but in the urgent questions the artists posed through their practices.
From intimate realist paintings informed by the perspective of an artist shaped by post-Cultural Revolution China, to work that transmutes injustices to women into a source of power, and more, this year’s selected artists offer layered reflections on
identity, gender, place, and the socio-political currents that shape our lived experiences. Their work articulates what it means to create and persist as an artist navigating the complex and multicultural fabric of the Bay Area and beyond. It has been a privilege to learn from these voices through Introductions, a program that continues to highlight the importance of early support and visibility. Root Division remains a vital force in our arts ecosystem - a space where artists are not only seen and heard, but genuinely supported by a community and staff committed to their growth. Thank you to my fellow jurors and to the Root Division team for their unwavering thoughtfulness. I am eager to watch the artists in this exhibition continue to flourish!
ALISON GUH
Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Over the years, I’ve revisited the idea that the physical and metaphorical act of gardening— of overturning roots, of planting seeds, and of dedicating care over time to tending to new and old growth alike—can be a model for radical acts. The artist Mariam Ghani writes that “it may seem contradictory that a radical can be both a root part and founding principle, and an extreme agent of change and reactions, simultaneously basic and new; but all this contraction resolves at the root, which is both the foundation of the status quo and the natural starting point for its reform.”
Introductions 2025 gathers a group of artists that embody this tension between caring for our histories and lineages while disrupting existing ways of thinking, relating, and making in their work. From literal acts of tending to living plant matter, to imbuing found and inherited materials and memories with new life, to utilizing research, archival, and documentary methods to explore personal and shared landscapes, they use their practices to acknowledge and reshape the world around us. Their works challenge the sociocultural and environmental devastation of late-stage capitalism, highlight migratory journeys and colonial pasts, and celebrate forms of love, relation, and grief. Witnessing the diverse range of these practices brought together reminds us of the foundational importance of organizations like Root
Division that allow emerging artists to experiment, grow, and find a platform—to borrow Ghani’s words, a space that is both the foundation of our shared arts ecosystem and the natural starting point for its reform.
Paloma Bondi
Hard Drive, 2024
Fabric, screen print, embroidery, flowers, found objects Dimensions variable
Spirit House, 2024
Handmade rope, salvaged lumber, ceramics, chain, TENS electrodes, iron oxide, beeswax 9’ x 8.5’ x 5’
Javier Roberto Carlos
A Move to Innocence (Part I), 2023
Two-channel video 12:45 min
England Hidalgo
Portrait of Agpawan, 2025
Lithographic crayon and LED on watercolor paper
84 x 84 in
Megan March
VENA CAVA, 2025
Ceramic and creek stone (primarily blueschist and serpentine)
Shipping pallet, inkjet print, bed sheets, cyanotype, acrylic, dirt
40 x 24 x 4.75 in
Crisis, 2024
Shipping pallet, inkjet print, bed sheets, cyanotype, acrylic, dirt
35.75 x 44 x 4.75 in
Whose Water, 2024
Shipping pallet, inkjet print, bed sheets, cyanotype, acrylic, dirt
47.5 x 40 x 5 in
Done Run Dry, 2022
Cut cast iron pipe
7 x 8 x 4.5 in
Elaine Nguyen
Two-channel video
32:03:00 min (top)
34:47:00 min (bottom)
Left page, from left to right:
Ngoại ăn, Ngoại có sức khỏe, 2024
Ngoại ăn, Ngoại có sức khỏe, 2024 Porcelain and cyanotype on canvas 144 x 144 in
Meghna Sharma
Memory, 2024 Oil on canvas
36 x 48 x 1 in.
Ennui, 2024 Oil in canvas
36 x 24 x 1 in.
Let Me In, 2024 Oil on canvas
24 x 20 x 1 in.
Left:
Family Time 2, 2025
Oil on canvas
36 x 48 x 1.5 in
Devirtualization, 2025
Oil on canvas
24 x 48 x 1.5 in
Zoe Spikerman
Hō’ailona, 2025 Cotton fabric naturally-dyed with indigo, onion skins, and madder root, screen-printed with naturally-derived pigment pastes made from rust, onion skins, madder root, and logwood; thread; buttons; found driftwood
30 x 1 x 48 in
From left to right:
Re-trod Scrawl, 2022
Paper, ink, thread, chain, carabiner
47 x 27 x 30 in
Unhiding, 2022
Paper, ink, thread, chain, carabiner
57 x 46 x 37 in
Tangled Walking, 2024
Paper, ink, thread, chain, carabiner
49 x 61 x 41 in
Amy Yoshitsu
Detail image of:
Tangled Walking, 2024
Paper, ink, thread, chain, carabiner
49 x 61 x 41 in
shot of Introductions 2025
Installation
STAFF
Demetri Broxton
Executive Director
Rachel Welles
Managing Director
PJ Gubatina Policarpio
Curator
Tamara Berdichevsky-Ovseiovich
Education Programs Manager
Ana Bedolla
Studios Program Manager
CATALOG PRODUCTION
Michael Nguyen
Catalog Design
Marky Enriquez
Marketing & Communications Manager
Anisa Esmail
Marketing Coordinator
Wally Corona
Facilities Coordinator
Hunter Ridenour
Visual Media Specialist
Hunter Ridenour
Exhibition Documentation
ABOUT ROOT DIVISION
Root Division is a visual arts non-profit in San Francisco that connects creativity and community through a dynamic ecosystem of arts education, exhibitions, and studios. Root Division’s mission is to empower artists, foster community service, inspire youth, and enrich the Bay Area through engagement in the visual arts.
SUPPORTERS
Root Division is supported in part by a plethora of individual donors and grants from San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, California Arts Council, Walter & Elise Haas Sr. Fund, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Kimball Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, Redtail Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation, Fred Craves Family Foundation, Violet World Foundation, Deutsche Bank, and Bill Graham Memorial Fund.
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rootdivision.org/giving
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