Postcommodity; © Postcommodity, courtesy the artists

In March 2025, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will host the world premiere of Cosmovisión Torneo de la Bahia—a groundbreaking interactive digital art project by the Indigenous interdisciplinary collective Postcommodity – supported by the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, as well as a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission in partnership with Leonardo/ISAST, a global leader in fostering intersections between art, science, and technology. Launched in 2017 to celebrate the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s 50th anniversary, the Hewlett 50 initiative represents a five-year, $8 million investment in Bay Area performing arts, distributing $150,000 grants to 50 nonprofits for commissioning visionary works. As one of the final projects funded through this landmark program, Cosmovisión joins 49 other premieres enriching local audiences throughout the Bay Area.                

The collective, comprising Cristóbal Martínez (Genizaro) and Kade L. Twist (Cherokee), will also give a free artist talk on March 20, offering insights into their decade-long practice of interrogating borders, land, and collective memory. Together, these events transform SFMOMA’s Gina and Stuart Peterson White Box into a site of Indigenous-led sonic experimentation, where sound becomes a tool for reimagining community and place.

Artist Talk: Postcommodity

Artist Talk: March 20, 2025 | Floor 1, Phyllis Wattis Theater | 6 p.m. | Free. RSVP encouraged. Seating available on a first-come, first-served basis.

On the occasion of the premiere of their new work Cosmovisión Torneo de la Bahia, hear from Postcommodity (Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist) about the evolution of their practice. Employing prayer, poetry, prose, and manifesto, Postcommodity will reflect upon lessons learned from their historic work Repellent Fence (2015). They will share how these lessons influenced the way the collective works and the development of their monumental installations in Time Holds All the Answers (2021) at Remai Modern and their ambitious new project, Cosmovisión.

Performance: Cosmovisión Torneo de la Bahia

Cosmovisión Torneo de la Bahia: March 22–23, 2025 | Gina and Stuart Peterson White Box, SFMOMA Floor 4 | 2-4 p.m., both days | Free with Advanced Registration

Part musical event and part sonic ceremony, Cosmovisión, the newest project from interdisciplinary artist collective Postcommodity, premieres at SFMOMA with the event Cosmovisión Torneo de la Bahia. In this work, collective members Cristóbal Martinez (Genizaro) and Kade L. Twist (Cherokee) foreground the element of sound to explore our relationships with the land we came from and occupy today. Seven Bay Area arts and cultural workers will improvise and harmonize sounds with an instrument of Postcommodity’s invention. Through real-time feedback and collaboration, field recordings with personal significance transform into experimental music. Line drawings representing shared stories of the local landscape and soundscape become graphic musical scores, their images dissolving or resolving depending on performers’ collective ability to achieve sonority. Using land as a mediator of relationships, Postcommodity encourages knowledge sharing, the practice of intentional listening, and the creation of generative conversations that can lead to syncretized worldviews.

Performers: JD Beltran, Rob Corder, Derek Gedalecia, Kim Shuck, Jorge Eduardo Sibaja, Rosario Sotelo, Raquel Vigil

About the Artists

Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective, currently comprised of Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist. They create works of art that personify a shared Indigenous lens and voice, examining aspects of twenty-first-century life to inspire a uniquely Indigenous futurism. Using provocation as a tool, they spark constructive conversations that challenge the social, political, and economic processes that destabilize communities and geographies. The collective has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at: Contour the 5th Biennial of the Moving Image, Mechelen, Belgium; Nuit Blanche, Toronto; Adelaide International 2012, Adelaide, Australia; 18th Biennale of Sydney; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ; 2017 Whitney Biennial, New York; Art in General, New York; documenta14, Athens, GR, and Kassel, Germany; the 57th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh; Desert X, Coachella Valley, CA; Art Institute of Chicago; LAXART, Los Angeles; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Remai Modern Museum, Saskatoon, Canada; düsseldorf photo+, the third edition of the Biennale for Visual and Sonic Media, Düsseldorf; and their historic land art installation Repellent Fence at the U.S./Mexico border near Douglas, AZ, and Agua Prieta, Mexico.

Institutional Partnerships and Collaborations 

Cosmovisión Torneo de la Bahia emerges from a network of institutional support. Organized by SFMOMA’s Media Arts team (Karen Cheung, Chloe Kwiatkowski, Kathleen Maguire) and Leonardo/ISAST’s Vanessa Chang, the project received funding via the Hewlett 50 Arts Commission—with Leonardo/ISAST—alongside additional backing from the Ford Foundation U.S. Latinx Art Forum, Arizona State University, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, Otis College of Art and Design, and MAP Fund. Presenting support for performance of Cosmovisión Torneo de la Bahia is provided by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Language in this post has been provided by Claire Bradley, Associate Editor, Marketing and Communications, SFMOMA.