FRANK-RATCHYE PROJECT SPACE
Wally A. Corona: The Things We Lay to Rest
Curated by Vanessa Perez-Winder, Exhibitions Fellow
Exhibition Dates: April 12 - May 3, 2025
2nd Saturday Reception: April 12, 2025
The Frank-Ratchye Project Space is pleased to present The Things We Lay to Rest, an exhibition by Studio Artist and Latinx Teaching Fellow Wally A. Corona.
Through intricate ballpoint pen drawings on spontaneously found materials—wood, metal, and shipping pallets—Corona explores themes of emotional turbulence, disillusionment, and the shifts in perception that accompany loss and change. Rooted in the artist’s own experiences and immediate surroundings, these works emerge from the rawness of everyday life, embodying a gritty sense of resilience as discarded materials become artifacts of story and memory. Meanwhile, Corona’s labor and time intensive approach to mark-making—often spending months at a time on a single piece—becomes a meditation on the effort needed to discern what to hold on to and what to abandon. Through this process, Corona reflects on the quiet, often unseen acts of cultivating meaning from chaos.
MAIN GALLERY
Cian Dayrit: Liberties Were Taken
Curated by PJ Gubatina Policarpio
Exhibition Dates: January 22 – April 12, 2025
Root Division is proud to present Liberties Were Taken, the first solo exhibition in the Bay Area of Philippine-based artist Cian Dayrit. Known globally for artworks rooted in activism and a thorough study of history, Dayrit investigates notions of power and identity as represented and reproduced in monuments, museums, and maps. His work unravels the layering of complex power structures, oppressive systems, and the legacies of colonialism that continue to dominate Philippine society. The exhibition brings together embroidered textiles, elaborate paintings, and multimedia works created over a decade of participatory actions and solidarity work with landless farmers, Indigenous, and marginalized groups in the Philippines and around the world. Deploying visual tools, such as text, maps, and symbols, the artist positions land as a site of struggle through historical references, protest imagery, and grassroots counter-cartography.
