“All This Soft Wild Buzzing,” a new group show at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco’s Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, considers the relationship between artists and the natural landscape through a lens of collaboration, of listening, and of reciprocity. Professor Young Suh and eight artists who live now or have lived in northern California present work that resonates with the specificity of the Bay Area terrain and the people who inhabit it. 

The title of the exhibition is drawn from the final line of a poem by Camille Dungy that draws parallels between the soft, protected soul of her partner and the untouched, pre-colonial coastline of California. The artists in the show engage with the effects of forest fires, the Land Back movement, the carceral system, belonging, climate change, and the resiliency of Indigenous life, among other topics.  In these works, the artists — Young Suh, Saif Azzuz, Teresa Baker, Christopher Robin Duncan, Nicki Green, Bessma Khalaf, Dionne Lee,Stephanie Syjuco and Zekarias Musele Thompson — invite viewers to also consider site, place, and the land beneath and around them. 

“All This Soft Wild Buzzing” inaugurates the Wattis galleries on the newly expanded CCA campus.

“All This Soft Buzzing” is on view from Oct. 18-Dec. 14, 2024 with an opening reception on Oct.19 from 5–8 p.m.