HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:
The Filipino community’s history in San Francisco spans over 120 years, and throughout that time, generations of community activists and unsung s/heroes laid the foundation for a cultural heritage home rooted in a shared legacy of homeland and migration, mobilized by love, pride and people power.
At the start of the century, San Francisco served as the launching pad for the Philippine-American War, resulting in the colonization and militarization of the Philippines. San Francisco became the City of broken dreams for thousands of first-wave Filipino agricultural workers, our Manongs , who were eventually pushed out with the erasure of Manilatown and the fall of the I-Hotel. Urban redevelopment to construct Yerba Buena, Metreon, and Westfield uprooted Filipino residents and erased long-standing Filipino enclaves to usher in the expansion of San Francisco’s Downtown and Financial District focused on profit centered urban growth. The first and second tech (or “dot com”) booms decades after saw mass evictions and the rapid transformation of the South of Market, where hundreds of Filipino WWII Veterans and generations of Filipino migrants landed.
Despite displacement throughout the decades, SOMA Pilipinas has become a people-centered home and artistic and cultural hub to honor our history and build community because of the leadership of women, workers, artists, youth, seniors and immigrant families. However, the Filipino community continues to fight against displacement and to preserve our language and culture. To this day, many Filipino and multi-racial coalitions of activists are engaging in the struggles against market forces and the use and purpose of urban space, to protect key cultural, commercial, and residential spaces in SoMa, while new generations of migrant workers and immigrant families continue to form the lifeblood of the South of Market.
EXHIBITION OPPORTUNITY:
SOMA Pilipinas invites artists to submit artworks that:
Pay homage to the generations before us that forged the Filipino community’s living legacy of building community through the bayanihan spirit throughout San Francisco, with special focus on the South of Market neighborhood
Document our community’s lived experiences and efforts to re/claim space and
Imagine Filipinx futures amidst a gentrifying South of Market neighborhood.
SOMA Pilipinas invites artists to submit artworks that respond to the exhibition themes: SOMA Pilipinas past, present, and future. The call is open to visual artwork (2D work including: painting, mixed-media, photography); 3D sculptural objects; and short-form video works. Selected artworks will be exhibited in an upcoming historical and community-arts based exhibition to be presented at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts from August 1 - December 14, 2025.