Whitney Aguiniga has launched a new art venue and show. She puts emphasis on the venue, You + Me Project Space (a pop-up she calls a “concept in space”), which is her home studio where she’s showing her own work and those of two other artists.
She first did something like this in 2011, when she launched a pop-up in Monterey called Welcome Home Gallery. She took that concept with her to Ecuador then to Oakland, where she earned an MFA from Mills College.
She says there needs to be more infrastructure to support art: “The more spaces the better. There needs to be spaces, events, dialogues around art.”
Her venue isn’t the whole message. The exhibit, called You Will Enjoy the Circus, stands on its own. “It’s a response to the social, political, cultural place the U.S. is in right now,” she says. “Gun violence, inequity, anger and politics.”
By day, Aguiniga is an adjunct lecturer at CSU Monterey Bay’s Visual and Public Arts Department. The other two artists are Paul Van de Carr, curator at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, and Maureen Halligan, operations coordinator at the Monterey Museum of Art.
People can view the exhibit by emailing Aguiniga, but they have to do it soon. There’s going to be a walk-through and barbecue before it closes on May 19. Then she moves the operation to another location with a new show.