Annette Jannotta and Olivia Ting: Coalescence
Curator. San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries: Main Gallery. January 2016 - March 2017
ENTER126 launches as a new annual program at SFAC Galleries, commissioning a site-specific work for the gallery’s entryway to mark each year. The inaugural installation, Coalescence, is created by Bay Area architect Annette Jannotta and media artist Olivia Ting. Together they repurpose materials from the gallery’s renovation and merge them with video imagery of the transformed Veterans Building, creating a work that embodies both the construction process and the shifting identity of the institution.
As the first piece to greet visitors entering the new space, Coalescence sets the tone for the program and underscores the gallery’s commitment to experimentation. The suspended forms and layered projections capture a moment of transition, offering a visual meditation on the passage from past to present. In doing so, Jannotta and Ting turn the threshold into an active site of reflection, signaling the gallery’s renewed role as a place where architecture, history, and contemporary art intersect.
About Annette Jannotta and Olivia Ting
Annette Jannotta: Annette is an architect and artist whose work balances order and imagination, creating meaningful projects that inspire engagement, transformation, and emotional connection. Sensitive to how environments shape experience, she has led award-winning interior design projects for clients including Stanford University, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, Genentech, Singapore Changi Airport, and the late Feng Shui master Liu Ming. Her leadership has been recognized with multiple honors, including IIDA Northern Pacific INAwards and an AIA San Mateo Interior Architecture Award, celebrating her ability to guide teams with vision and joy. In 2020, she founded Urban Shrine, a collective of socially engaged participatory art projects exploring myth and modern emotional challenges such as grief, hope, and comfort, with her current project Drops in the Ocean in a Drop nearing completion. Annette is a licensed architect in California, NCIDQ certified interior designer, LEED AP ID&C, and a member of IIDA.
Olivia Ting: Olivia Ting is a San Francisco–based artist and designer whose fascination with moving images is deeply shaped by her hearing impairment—deaf in one ear and with limited hearing in the other, she often experiences motion as a substitute for sound. Trained in both pre-med at Pomona College and graphic design at Art Center College of Design, Ting built a career in New York as a brand and graphic designer before returning to the Bay Area, where her practice expanded into video projections for dance, theater, and museum installations. Her work has been commissioned by institutions including the San Francisco Dance Center, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum, and the Oakland Museum of California, where she created a permanent projection for the Natural History Gallery. In 2016, she collaborated with architect Annette Jannotta on a San Francisco Arts Commission commission for the War Memorial Hall Gallery, and she continues to develop new projects that connect her visual sensibility with her musical background. Ting holds an MFA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and works as both a freelance designer and independent artist.