SOMArts Día de los Muertos 2025: We Love You!

Curated By Rio Yañez and Bridgètt Rex

October 11, 2025 thru November 7, 2025

Now in its 26th year, SOMArts’ annual Día de Los Muertos exhibition is one of the most internationally diverse Day of the Dead celebrations in the United States. Founded by beloved San Francisco artist and curator René Yañez, Día de Los Muertos at SOMArts continues to be a multigenerational gathering of remembrance while affirming the importance of arts & culture in shaping our worlds.

Continuing the legacy of René’s work are co-curators Rio Yañez and Bridgètt Rex who envision a Day of the Dead presentation that celebrates the tradition’s Mexican roots while calling for all cultures around the globe to honor the dead together in solidarity.

Día de Los Muertos 2025: We Love You features self-identified women, trans, and gender nonconforming artists, including lead artists of group or collective projects. We Love You cultivates a safe and welcoming environment where altars–whether rooted in Mexican tradition or expressed through conceptual art–serve as a response to the challenges posed by the current administration. In keeping with the tradition of Día de los Muertos, the exhibition also includes personal altars dedicated to loved ones who have passed.

Almas sin nombre / Souls Without Names - Altar by La Familia Brown

Artists:

Elizabeth Cnidaria Brown, and her collaborators Emma Timberlea Brown and Mara Lea Brown have been engaging in artistic practices since they can remember, both individually and collaboratively. They are Las Mujeres de la Familia Brown. Elizabeth's expresses herself artistically through intricate drawings and powerful singing, challenging assumptions and breaking with expectations, exploring the fine line between life's intense beauty and visceral ugliness. Emma is her sister. Her art can be meditative, as she uses patterns from nature and sensual textures in both her representational and abstract work. Mara Lea, their mother, often includes expressive representations of the human form in her work as she continually explores identity, belonging and connection.​​

Statement:

Our installation Almas Sin Nombre/Souls Without Names is an altar dedicated to the countless unnamed transgender women in history who were unable to live their true lives, our sisters who were buried under false names and lived false lives. These women are a constant source of sorrow, wonder and yearning for me. Every social force renders transfemininity invisible, impossible, other, such that even we are unaware of our own potential. The attacks against transgender rights we are seeing now mean that more and more people will be severed from their full potential, unable, unwilling, and unaware of transition.The piece centers around the metaphor of the hatched egg, a symbol of actualization and destructive change. We trans women use the word egg to describe someone who is unaware that they are transgender, a woman who is yetto hatch. It is a symbol that invokes pain and loss while also being associated with birth, new life, and change.We and hope to create a space that mourns their loss while extending a message of love and acceptance towards them, acknowledging their place as sisters, mothers and queer ancestors. While the piece is dedicated to a space for these souls, it is also a space for the audience to consider the vast unknown dimensions of queerness, the role of historical oppression in the diminishing of the trans woman, and create a safe space for gender exploration and wonder.