Opening - No One Way: Transmasc Art as Activism

Friday, Apr 3

5:00pm – 8:00pm

HTGMT

Hosted by

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Queer Arts Featured is proud to present No One Way: Transmasc Art as Activism in the Bay Area, a group exhibition bringing together photography and paintings that honor transmen and transmasculine non-binary artists and activists whose lives and work have helped shape one of the world’s most vibrant and resilient 2SLGBTQIA+ communities. On view from April 3 through May 31, 2026, the exhibition is curated by Queer Arts Featured and made possible through partnership with the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. No One Way takes its name from a truth that trans people have always known and lived: there is no single story, no prescribed path, no one way to inhabit a body, a community, or a life. Trans people have existed across every culture and every era of human history, and the transmasculine community of the Bay Area is no exception — they have been here building, creating, and sustaining this place for generations. This exhibition introduces visitors to four artists who celebrate themselves and their community, on their own terms. Together, their works affirm that visibility is not merely survival — it is art, expressed boldly, tenderly, and defiantly in a culture that attacks and seeks to deny their existence. The exhibition is anchored by a work from Catherine Opie, one of the most celebrated photographers working in America today, featuring Bay Area icon and Transgender Film Festival co-founder Christopher Lee. Opie’s practice has long stood as a testament to the dignity and complexity of lives lived fully and authentically, and her presence in this exhibition grounds No One Way in a rich, decades-long tradition of Bay Area queer visual culture. Alongside Opie, the exhibition presents recent work by Marcel Pardo Ariza, a San Francisco-based artist and activist whose photography centers trans bodies with extraordinary intimacy and political clarity. Pardo Ariza’s work invites us to look carefully at those who have been rendered invisible — and to reckon honestly with what that invisibility costs us all. Luka Amaru Fernández brings a painterly vision that is lyrical, layered, and deeply felt — work that holds complexity without demanding resolution. Rooted in his own experience of beautiful ambiguity in racial and gender identity, his practice weaves together fantastical landscapes, magical realism, luminous color, and spiritual imagery to illuminate a nuanced, tangled, and deeply personal relationship to selfhood and belonging. Éamon McGivern uses oil paint to document and reimagine transmasculine and queer experience with warmth and formal intelligence. His works in this exhibition, commissioned by The Castro LGBTQ Cultural District, honor four local transmasc heroes who create change in their own right. The work reaches toward community — bridging past and present, building continuity across queer generations. Together, Fernández and McGivern represent the next wave of Bay Area queer art, and Queer Arts Featured is honored to share their work with the community that shaped them. The opening reception is free and open to all. The community is warmly invited to celebrate these artists and connect with one another in the heart of the Castro — a sacred and living space that once housed Harvey Milk’s Castro Camera, and continues to be a home for queer life in all its forms.

Guest List

15 Going · 16 Interested · 8 Maybe

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