Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson’s stunning solo mixed-media exhibition has been on display at the Institute of Contemporary Art since March, but its run ends soon. This Saturday, as the exhibit enters its final weeks, ICA holds a curator-led tour of the exhibit, inviting people to indulge their imagination in Patterson’s florid mixed-media worlds. Using intricate fabrics, tapestries and jewelry, Patterson dazzles the eye with interwoven images of faces, expressions, nature and life. ICA’s Christine Koppes and Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Chief Curator of the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, lead the tour.

Editor’s note: Due to the resurgence of Covid in Santa Clara County, this event has been moved online. Click link below to RSVP.

Curator-Led Tour
Sat, 11am, Free
ICA, San Jose

A local institution in the art of photography, David Pace is known throughout the Bay Area as a passionate professor of the great medium, exhibiting and publishing a wide variety of work with a global focus. For a decade he visited a village in Burkina Faso to take biographical and loving photos of residents, structures and events. His “Velocity” collection—taken from bullet trains in Japan—plays with the effect of motion and the subject of architecture to terrific effect. The retrospective on his life and career also includes some of his earliest photos, taken as a boy.

David Pace Exhibit
Fri, 4pm, Free
Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose

As a prelude to the return of South First Fridays, SoFA art museums the Institute of Contemporary Art, Movimento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles are throwing a block party to celebrate their reopening with food, musical performances and plenty of art to experience. The museums are also celebrating a new neighbor, as community gardeners Veggielution set up shop on South First, giving the whole event a garden theme. Those looking to get their hands in mother earth or their eyes on some of the community’s visual marvels, shouldn’t miss it.
South 1st Block Party
Sat, 4pm, Free
Parque de los Pobladores, San Jose

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘portrait?’ Someone’s face? A head-and-shoulders shot, like the Mona Lisa? Or is it something more personal: a depiction of someone’s skin and body? LA-based artist Amir H. Fallah thinks it is exactly none of these things. In his portraits, Fallah depicts obscured bodies of hooded faces, defined by their environments rather than their skin tone or facial features. In a free online event hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Fallah discusses his work in the context of personal experience, veganism, allegory, film, and hip hop.

Amir H. Fallah
Wed, 6pm, Free (registration required)