the air we share: The 2024-2025 CCF Fellowship for Visual Artists Exhibition
Craft Contemporary, May 30, 2025 — September 7, 2025
Curated by Joseph Valencia
The exhibition is generously supported by the California Community Foundation and the J. Paul Getty Trust.
For more than 35 years, the California Community Foundation’s Fellowship for Visual Artists (FVA) has provided financial support and professional resources to hundreds of mid-career artists in Los Angeles County. This exhibition highlights the vibrancy of the 2024–25 FVA cohort, a dedicated group of artists whose practices reflect the histories, cultures, and geographies of Los Angeles.
Eleven fellows—Ray Anthony Barrett, Salvador de la Torre, Mercedes Dorame, Leslie Foster, Maria Maea, Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza, Genevieve Erin O’Brien, Felix Quintana, Gabriela Ruiz, Bumdog Torres, and Raymundo Tonatiuh Reynoso—work across a range of media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, and performance. While varied in form, each artist shares a deep commitment to storytelling rooted in personal and collective histories, ancestral memory, and the rapidly changing city around them. Whether honoring Indigenous presence, confronting colonial legacies, or imagining brighter futures for Black, queer, and immigrant communities, these artists transform lived experiences into powerful counter-narratives.
Guided by Craft Contemporary’s elemental focus, this exhibition takes air as its inspiration. Like air, the stories embedded in these artworks move freely across borders, bodies, and generations. the air we share connects these artists in this unique moment of their fellowship journey, offering a communal space to reflect, create, and be witnessed. Together, the fellows remind us that even the most intangible forces—breath, spirit, and story—can ground us in who we are and where we come from.