By Noma Faingold
The new exhibition “About Place,” opening August 10 at the de Young Museum, has an adaptable theme that could mean anything for the ten Bay Area artists featured.
“We tried to find a common thread between these very different artists with very different backgrounds using very different media,” said Janna Keegan, assistant curator of contemporary art and programming at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, who organized the exhibition.
“These artists are thinking about notions of place and identity and a more balanced relationship between the land and the people who live on it,” Keegan said. “Common care, self-preservation – really looking at the land as part of ourselves, not something we can make something out of. These artists are asking important questions.”
The work of 36-year-old Saif Azzuz, a Pacifica-based artist featured in the exhibition, is influenced by his Yurok and Libyan heritage, his family roots in Eureka, California, and his immediate studio environment at Hunters Point Shipyards.
The abstract mixed media piece is titled “Lo’op’ (It’s Burning)” and was acquired in 2022 along with 41 other contemporary artworks by 30 emerging artists by FAMSF with a $1 million grant from the Svane Family Foundation, which focuses exclusively on Bay Area artists.
Created in 2021, “Lo’op’ (It burns)” is part of the artist’s ongoing “Invasive Species” series, which he describes as portraits rather than landscapes. The work, “About Place,” consists of hues of burnt orange, mauve, purple, and ochre sprayed onto invasive plant species and bouquets of flowers found near Azzuz’s studio and placed on the canvas.
“This palette was taken from the current fire maps, with red being the worst,” he said.
Themes of colonization, gentrification, culture, community resilience and environmental heritage shaped Azzuz’s work even before he earned his bachelor’s degree in painting and drawing from California College of the Arts in 2013.
Below: “Lo’op’ (It burns)” by Saif Azzuz. Image courtesy of the artist and Anthony Meier, Mill Valley. Photography by Chris Grunder, San Francisco.
“I think a lot about the country,” said Azzuz. “The country has so many stories.”
The husband and father of two children often asks himself: “What am I doing to protect the country?”
“It captivates me and raises questions for the viewer,” said Azzuz. “The beauty of being an artist is that our job is to ask questions, not give answers.”
According to Keegan, Azzuz does not believe there is a separation between land and self.
“It’s part of a mutually influencing identity,” she said. “His abstractions are visually appealing, but it’s the conceptual underpinnings that connect to the Indigenous community. This approach to art and nature challenges the dominant narrative we’ve heard for so long.”
“About Place” is the second in a series of three exhibitions that have emerged from the Svane acquisitions. Last summer’s exhibition was called “Crafting Radicality.” This year’s exhibition features 10 artists, including Azzuz, Chris Johanson, photographer/filmmaker Katy Grannan, Ruby C. Tut, and the artist collective Postcommodity.
A multi-channel video and sound installation called “Going to Water” (2021) by Postcommodity will be prominently featured in the de Young’s central atrium, Wilsey Court. Surveillance video of the drying Lake Owens (east of Los Angeles) will be combined with an experimental soundtrack.
“It was drained (in 1926) to provide water for the people of Los Angeles. When it was a lake, it was an important gathering place for indigenous communities,” Keegan said. “The way the piece is put together conveys a sense of what happened there and the loss.”
There will also be a collaboration with the SFJAZZ Collective at the music venue’s Miner Auditorium from October 24 to 27. The collective’s seven-member musical ensemble will compose new material and arrange well-known songs inspired by selected works from the Svane acquisition. Videos of the artworks will be shown to accompany the live performances.
““About Place” is a showcase for 10 emerging Bay Area artists from August 10 to September 28, 2025 at the de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr. For more information, visit famsf.org.
