Startup SF 2025 special projects

Beyond the hotel rooms, Startup Art Fair transforms the public spaces of Hotel del Sol into a dynamic, interactive art experience. Our Special Projects program features a curated selection of performances, panel discussions, installations, outdoor sculptures, and hybrid art practices—all designed to engage, challenge, and inspire.

Join us in exploring the intersection of art, space, and audience in the unique setting of the hotel’s courtyards, hallways, and outdoor areas.

Special Collaboration

The flipp side + remake
interwoven: Unraveling the textile waste effect

Interwoven is an immersive art installation and fashion experience, curated by Kara Fabella (@theflippside) that confronts the environmental impact of textile waste while offering tangible solutions. At its core, a striking pile of discarded textiles—layered in symbolic colors—visually represents the problem and the potential for change. Repurposed consumer packaging and wearable objects highlight our direct role in the issue, while thought-provoking statistics from Remake, a nonprofit advocating for garment worker rights, provide deeper context. Surrounding the installation, local designers and vintage curators showcase creative responses, dressing mannequins in upcycled and secondhand fashion to inspire more sustainable choices. Through this dynamic blend of art, fashion, and activism, Interwoven challenges audiences to rethink their relationship with clothing and consumption.

Booth 8

Performances

Guta galli
Yes, You Can: Impossible Systems

This project consists of two interconnected works: a concrete sculpture of the artist’s body (Yes, You Can, 2018) and a durational performance with a precarious concrete chair. Together, they form a trajectory that explores resilience, collapse, and the illusion of stability under neoliberalism.

The sculpture is a cast of the artist’s body in a position of depletion and endurance—curled yet gripping, embodying the contradiction of a system that demands both resilience and submission. The cracked concrete surface reflects the internal fractures caused by the relentless pressure to endure, highlighting the tension between strength and vulnerability.

The performance, in turn, extends this investigation into a live, durational act. Using a makeshift chair constructed from concrete, lard, and fragile materials, the artist engages in a repetitive cycle of attempting to sit, falling, and rebuilding. The lard, an organic material often linked to nourishment and the body, ironically acts as a weak binding agent within the structure—its presence ensuring the chair’s inevitable collapse. This unstable foundation mirrors the hidden, gendered labor that props up fragile systems, questioning whether resilience is a means of survival or an enforced complicity.

Saturday, April 19th, 2pm

Midori, BRYAN AND VITa HEWITT
Godzilla vs The Golden Peril

Godzilla vs. The Golden Peril is a collaborative performance event that explores the divide-and-conquer nature of racism in a comedic, self-documenting, audience-participatory format. Godzilla fights The Golden Peril, who is always the model minority (until she’s not). Godzilla possesses fearsome size, unbeatable tale moves and the endangered status of being the only example of her type of Kaiju. The Golden Peril packs a powerful punch, impressive shine and Chinese Mom skills beyond compare. The Media is always watching as The Ring Announcer goads the battle into new heights of frenzy and concern over lactose intolerance. Midori wears the inflatable suit as the inimitable Godzilla. Vita Mei Hewitt is The Golden Peril, a character based on the Yellow Peril Asian stereotype (but better) and Bryan Hewitt is The Media. 

Sunday, April 20th, 2pm

Sculpture

REBECCA FOX
CAPTURING SPACE

Powder coated steel
120 x 69 x 48 in.

Capturing Space, a 10-foot-tall sculpture by Rebecca Fox, transforms steel into a bold exploration of form, movement, and balance. Interconnecting circles appear to float effortlessly, wrapping space with elegance and fluidity. Finished in a vibrant blue powder coat, the piece blurs the boundaries between weight and weightlessness, inviting viewers to engage with its dynamic presence from every angle. More of Rebecca’s work can be seen in Room 204

Courtyard

KATHY AOKI
Koons Ruins: Koons Ruins photostand

Gatorboard and metal
60 x 84 x 30 in.

Come get a picture at this humorous photostand, which is part of Aoki’s larger conceptual project, "Koons Ruins" that can be seen in Room 211. Set up as a simulated visitors center/museum her room installation includes framed works on paper, a low-relief map with audio tour, interactive learning panels, swag (t-shirts, buttons, postcards), a peephole diorama.

Courtyard

Installation and Social Practices

Margaret Timbrell
Selfie Wall 2.0

Continuing a project first presented at our 2018 fair, Timbrell will create an interactive experience exploring digital bias.

Leading up to and during the fair, she will invite people to contribute their auto-corrected names (e.g., “Pretty” instead of Priti, “Paypal” instead of Payal, “Center” for Centa, “Drawline” for Dawline). She will then hand-embroider these altered names onto a series of diaphanous curtains, forming an immersive “selfie” environment.

Throughout the fair, Timbrell will continue collecting names and stitching them onto the fabric, encouraging visitors to engage with the evolving installation by taking selfies within the space. The layered, flowing textiles symbolize the complexities of identity and digital misinterpretation, inviting attendees to move through and reflect on the impact of technological bias in everyday life.

Entrance to the Courtyard

PAINTING

jANE FISHER
Pudgy Stockton Banner

Oil and acrylic on polyester canvas
84 x 50 in.

Near the pool you’ll find a portrait of Pudgy Stockton. Abbye "Pudgy" Stockton was a pioneer of women’s bodybuilding and a California native. Fisher depicts her in a classic biceps flexing pose commonly seen in male strongmen. Jane states: “Having a larger-than-life image of a muscular woman on display sends a message of female empowerment in a time when our politics are dominated by toxic masculinity.”

You can see more of her work in Booth 5 on the courtyard level.

Pool Area