Grant provided by the Kenneth Rainin Open Spaces Program
We’re proud to announce that 500 Capp Street and visual artist Marcel Prado Ariza (they/them) are the recipients of a grant from The Kenneth Rainin Foundation’s Open Spaces Program. 500 Capp Street will be supporting Ariza’s work Orquídea/Orchid through their engagement with the history and activities of the trans-community here in San Francisco’s Mission District in collaboration with translatina advocacy group El/La Para Translatinas.
500 Capp Street will become an inviting and inclusive space for the trans community to gather intergenerational stories, visual image making and ephemera that are focused on trans joy and artistic resilience.
The Open Spaces Program by The Kenneth Rainin Foundation supports public art projects in their early development or production phase. Grants support nonprofits to partner with artists to create temporary, place-based public art projects that reflect and engage the diverse communities of San Francisco and Oakland.
The project, Orquídea/Orchid will be on view and open to the public in the fall of 2023 with public programming called Café Porno, a safe space for dialog, conversations, archive and movement building inviting the sex work community that have been historically present in the neighborhood. Orquídea/Orchid will also host a culinary event and dinner celebrating trans leaders, trans history and movement making in the Bay Area.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Marcel Pardo Ariza (b. Bogotá, Colombia) is a trans, nonbinary visual artist, curator, and cultural worker whose work explores the relationship of representation, intergenerational kinship, and queerness through constructed photographs and site-specific installations. Through staging and collaboration, Ariza deploys sets as a site of possibility for (re)building a story and materializing alternative and attainable present and future narratives. Ariza enjoys playing with the arbitrary rigidity that is often present in the photographic medium and the work is invested in creating long-term interdisciplinary collaborations and opportunities that are nonhierarchical and equitable. Marcel is the current recipient of the SECA Art Award.