Join artist Nazafarin Lotfi and Co-curator Erin Joyce for a conversation about their work as part of the exhibition Mending Across Borders & Boundaries. Nazafarin Lotfi is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tucson and Chicago whose work spans sculpture, drawing, and performance to explore identity, place, and absence. Born in Iran, she holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from the University of Tehran. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at MOCA Tucson, Phoenix Art Museum, and Artpace. Erin Joyce is a curator, scholar, and arts writer based in Phoenix, currently serving as Vice President of Public Affairs for the Native Arts + Cultures Foundation and Faculty Associate at Arizona State University. She has organized over 35 exhibitions across the U.S.—including notable projects like Still Life No. 3: Raven Chacon (Heard Museum, 2019) and Crafting Resistance (ASU Art Museum, 2023)—and has been recognized with the 2023 Rabkin Prize for arts journalism. Through her curatorial and written work, Joyce focuses on decolonizing institutions, interrogating power structures, and advancing Indigenous arts and land sovereignty.

Join SVMoA for a conversation with artist Arleene Correa Valencia and Ali Gass, the Founding Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco. Correa Valencia, whose work is part of Mending Across Borders & Boundaries, explores migration, family, and the visibility/invisibility of people. Working with materials including Amate paper, textiles, and thread, she creates images based on photographs of her family and other migrants. Gass arrived at the ICA San Francisco with curatorial and leadership experience at institutions across the United States and has held positions at the Jewish Museum in New York City, SFMOMA, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, and, most recently, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. Correa Valencia and Gass will discuss the artist’s practice as well as its place within the larger context of the Bay Area contemporary art scene.