SHIFT: Three Projects Constructing a New Dialogue about Race in America

Curator. San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries: Main Gallery + Grove St. September - December 2011.

Artists: Elizabeth Axtman, David Huffman, Travis Somerville

SHIFT presents newly commissioned solo projects by Bay Area artists Elizabeth Axtman, David Huffman, and Travis Somerville, each engaging with the complexities of race in contemporary America. The exhibition considers how historical and ongoing racial structures inform perception, identity, and social interaction, pressing viewers to confront the legacies of injustice, exclusion, and denial that continue to shape lived experience. While the artists’ approaches diverge aesthetically—from Axtman’s platform for discussion, to Huffman’s immersive and object-based installations, to Somerville’s socially grounded narratives—they share a commitment to interrogating the ways race circulates through culture, memory, and public consciousness.

Axtman’s work explores intimate, personal histories that illuminate broader societal patterns, using documentation and narrative to trace the intersections of family, love, and racial identity. Huffman’s sculptural and multimedia pieces challenge conventions of representation, collapsing the symbolic and material to reveal how race operates in visual and cultural registers. Somerville situates his practice within historical and civic contexts, creating works that link past episodes of racialized conflict to contemporary urban experience. Together, these projects create a dialogue across time, media, and perspective, offering viewers a multifaceted exploration of race, power, and possibility. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, featuring essays by Kymberly N. Pinder, Derek Conrad Murray, and Post Brothers, alongside artist conversations with W. Kamau Bell, Ishmael Reed, and Enrique Chagoya, extending the critical discourse beyond the gallery walls.