San Francisco, CA – The Arts at CIIS (California Institute of Integral Studies) presents “While You Were Sleeping,” an exhibition of surreal watercolor paintings by Karla Diaz. Like her ongoing body of work, Insomnia, these paintings emerge in the middle of the night in the hybrid space between sleep and wakefulness. Long before her 2017 stroke, artist Karla Diaz dreamed vividly, and would wake in the morning to recount to her partner each scene witnessed in the night. But while recovering, Diaz spent hour after hour awake with insomnia, healing and making paintings. Creating the works in this exhibition with a memory transformed by injury, Diaz describes a process of unlearning her formal training and instead trusting herself to make the work she needed to make, a powerful act of advocacy—for one’s voice and one’s very survival.

Each painting—rendered in bright swaths of color—brings together disparate ideas derived from memories, dreams, and ancestral lore, with the occasional snippet of popular culture. Her work, Geese at Hollenbeck Park, is an almost-familiar scene for a city dweller. In an otherwise picturesque landscape, a food cart vendor and a woman strolling in an urban park fight off geese who seem to fly directly into them. The vendor is running toward his cart, waving off the geese with a Mexican flag. The woman closes her eyes and turns her head as a goose lands on her arm. Inexplicably, in the foreground we see the head and torso of a man who appears to be holding a goose; both are calm, a jarring juxtaposition against the seeming chaos.

Diaz’ paintings embrace her love of magic realism and make vivid and visible the power of accepting her now disjointed memories and dreams as a new way to tell her story. Stepping into power as who she is today—despite or because that person diverges from the one she knew herself to be—the work integrates the whole self, removing the compartments that we impose to keep the inside and outside worlds more organized. Insomnia has been written up in the Los Angeles Times and presented at Luis De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles. While You Were Sleeping is accompanied by a booklet and essay about Diaz’ work by Vera Castaneda. For more information on the Arts at CIIS, please visit www.theartsatciis.org or contact Arts at CIIS Curator: Kija Lucas at klucas@ciis.edu.

About CIIS and the Arts at CIIS

California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) is an accredited university that strives to embody spirit, intellect, and wisdom in service to individuals, communities, and the earth. CIIS expands the boundaries of traditional degree programs with transdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and applied studies utilizing face-to-face, hybrid, and online pedagogical approaches. Offering a personal learning environment and supportive community, CIIS provides an excellent multifaceted education for people committed to transforming themselves, others, and the world.