Art Gallery

Located on The Soraya’s Loge Level, this flexible gallery space features rotating exhibitions in varying mediums.

Exhibits are open to ticket holders one hour prior to The Soraya’s presented performances, during intermission, and by appointment.

Exhibitions are funded in part by the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication, Instructionally Related Activities Committee and The Soraya.

For more information or to make an appointment for viewing, please contact us at SorayaEvents@csun.edu.

Current Exhibit

People Watching: A Look Through The Lens Of Andy Warhol

September 28 – December 19, 2024

People Watching features a collection of Andy Warhol’s polaroids and black & white photographs, produced from 1974 to 1986. Having carried a polaroid camera by his side for almost thirty years, Warhol took thousands of instant photos, many of which would become reference for his numerous drawings, prints, and silkscreen paintings. Here, he not only documents his muse in appearance, but also his conversations with them and a period of time in their lives.

This exhibition seeks to explore the subtleties of the human form through the view of Warhol’s camera. The lens discovers what it looks like when a person’s eyes grin above their lops or when their skin folds with their movement. It captures small moments of joy between friends or of love between parent and child – giving the people watcher a glimpse into who the subjects are or what the subjects’ daily festivities might entail, even if they’ll never truly know.

Credit: Andy Warhol, Kenny Scharf and unidentified man, undated. 10 x 8 inches, black & white print. CSUN University Art Collection, Gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Art Gallery Hours

The Soraya Art Gallery is open one hour prior to each of The Soraya’s presented performances, during intermission, and by appointment.

Rent the Art Gallery

The Soraya’s Art Gallery is an ideal space to host your next event. The enclosed 600-square-foot space can hold up to approximately 100 people when expanded to include the additional foyer space. Host your next meeting or reception in The Soraya’s Art gallery.

Plan Your Event

EXHIBIT highlights

Treelogy, the Exhibit

Co-curated by Addy Gonzalez of 11:11 Projects and Miles Lewis of Valley Art Workshop

February 23, 2023 – March 18, 2023

Burn Cycle, Green Return. By Ethan Turpin

What can art say for nature?

Images can help us to focus, build affection, and to reimagine things that maybe never even captured our attention.

Fire and flora have old secrets, infinitely subtle inspiration, and fresh perspectives to provide. As we mourn what we’ve lost, dedicate ourselves to what we can steward, and reform our laws, society, and our minds, art and culture are the oxygen for new growth.

It’s in this spirit that Treelogy was conceptualized. Three original musical compositions were commissioned by The Soraya. They are dedicated to three of California’s most iconic tree species: the giant sequoia, coastal redwood, and Joshua tree which were all hard hit during the wildfires of 2020. Fires consumed much of the state’s beloved natural space, and disrupted environments that took thousands of years to develop.

Treelogy, the exhibit, co-curated by Addy Gonzalez of 11:11 Projects and Miles Lewis of Valley Art Workshop, explores the shared experience of fire and the trees’ function as ecological cornerstones. The featured artworks address fire’s various roles as creator, destroyer, and regenerator. Viewers are invited to revisit the images and understandings of this phenomenon as we all strive for a more complete and symbiotic relationship between humans, landscapes, and fire.

The Treelogy exhibit features an oil-on-canvas triptych by alumnus Miles Lewis (above), depicting the three subjects of the program: Sequoia, Joshua Trees, and Redwoods. Transitioning from Overwhelm, to Heartbreak, to Integration, the paintings function as a functional meditation before and after the concert.

Featured Artists:
Patrick Barwinski
Laishan Ito
Miles Lewis
Ethan Turpin
Ahlise Vela

For more information on the exhibit, please visit 1111projects.art/treelogy.

Triptych Final Digital Sketch By Miles Lewis

Hope and Dignity for Farmworkers

November 9 – December 17

Children in the Field: with permission from CSUN Tom and Ethel Bradley Center

People raise the question: Is this a strike or is it a civil rights fight? In California, in Texas, or in the South, anytime you strike, it becomes a civil rights movement. It becomes a civil rights fight.

– César Chávez’s speech, Calvary Episcopal Church in Manhattan, May 1968

The photo exhibition “Hope and Dignity for Farmworkers” attempts to capture the duality of the struggle faced by farmworkers: hope for a better economic future for themselves and their families by creating a strong union, and dignity in their quest for being recognized as human beings and citizens. A union and a civil rights struggle, as described by César Chávez during his speech of May 1968 in New York—only a month after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in Memphis, where he supported sanitation workers who marched with signs that said, “I Am a Man.”

The exhibition focuses on the early years of the farmworkers’ struggle, marked by the grape strike, the boycott, the first march/pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento, the early efforts to organize workers in Texas, and César Chávez’s fasting calling for nonviolence and sacrifice. It highlights portraits of some of the founders that came from the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA, 1962) and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC, 1960). Both organizations merged in the fall of 1966 into the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) and became the United Farm Workers of America (UFW, 1972) we all know today.

Four of these early founders—César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, Gilbert Padilla, and Julio Hernández—started as organizers or officers for the Community Service Organization and then decided to use their skills to organize one group of workers among the most vulnerable in California and the nation—farmworkers. One of these founders—Larry Itliong—came with a history of union organizing among Filipino farmworkers since 1956, together with Ben Gines, and Philip Vera Cruz.

The energy and enthusiasm these and other organizers and supporters infused into the union and La Causa is reflected in images of marching, picketing, organizing, negotiating, and union meetings. Other images reflect the dignity of the work performed in many cases by entire families, including children, and the indignity of their labor conditions and the housing they were forced to live in.

Photographer Emmon Clarke (1933) served seven months as a photographer for the union newspaper, El Malcriado, starting in October 1966. John Kouns (1929-2019) documented the Civil Rights struggle in the South and the Farmworker Movement.

Curators: Dr. Kent Kirkton and Joseph Silva. CSUN Tom and Ethel Bradley Center.

Woman with Candle: with permission from CSUN Tom and Ethel Bradley Center

The Soraya: A Photographic Exhibition

By Luis Luque, Luque Photography

January 19 – March 31, 2019

Luis Luque is a Los Angeles-based photographer who earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Photography from California State University, Northridge in 2016. He started working professionally in 2010 as Luque Photography. From his background as a wedding photographer to his dynamic images of performances, Luque is a versatile artist with a sensitivity for his subjects. Using his photography skills as a way to make people feel valuable, Luque has been working as a performance photographer with The Soraya since 2015. He has also photographed performances at Dodger Stadium and the Music Center, as well as at private events. For additional information about the artist, visit luquephotography.com

The art gallery opening reception for the above exhibition will be on Saturday, January 19, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM. It is free and open to the public.