See & Experience

White text on a black background spelling "SEE & EXPERIENCE."

Ranu Mukherjee, a place to find the light, 2023. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris.

The Sky Below

July 19 - September 21, 2025

July 19 | Members Preview: 1 - 2pm
July 19 | Public Reception: 2 - 4pm

Set against the mythic backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Area, The Sky Below brings together eight local artists who draw on feminist science and speculative fiction to imagine alternatives to dominant predictions of the future. Inspired in part by groundbreaking Californian authors such as Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, and NK Jemisin, these artists reclaim sci-fi tropes as tools for political resistance, introspection, and transformation. The Sky Below flips the genre’s stereotypical upward and outward gaze. Instead of intergalactic domination, these artists root their futuristic visions in embodied experience, collective memory, and ecological entanglement. The works on view invite a conversation between traditionally female-dominated craft forms—such as quilting, textiles, and papermaking—and new media, collapsing binaries between analog and digital materials and domestic and cosmic expressions. When these artists look to the stars, it is not toward conquest or empire, but toward interconnection, care, and resilience, proposing that the infinite potential we often associate with the sky may in fact lie beneath our feet and within our internal universes.

Maria Guzmán Capron, Intrepida, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Nazarian/Curcio.

Maria Guzmán Capron, Brisa Corriendo, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Nazarian/Curcio.

Sofía Córdova, If No Clouds, Then Stars, and Then the Cosmos, 2023-25. Courtesy the artist.

Featured Artists

Maria A. Guzmán Capron, Sofía Córdova, Soleé Darrell, Julia Goodman, Ranu Mukherjee, Genevieve Quick, rel robinson, and Astria Suparak.

Curated by Heidi Rabben.

The Sky Below is made possible through the generous support of the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art's Board of Directors, Marin Cultural Association, and more.

rel robinson, Black Hole, 2024. Courtesy the artist.

Summer Reading Groups, presented by MarinMOCA & Marin County Free Library

Join us for a summer of reading in conjunction with the exhibition, The Sky Below at MarinMOCA in San Rafael. Inspired by recommendations from artists in the show, this biweekly reading group will explore Marin’s many contributions to sci-fi as well as the many ways the genre reflects and interprets our contemporary world. Sessions are held on Sundays at MarinMOCA and the Marin Civic Center Library.

Genevieve Quick, Cel Bell, 2024. Courtesy the artist.

Reading Group #1

When: August 3, 2025, 2:00-3:00pm

Book: The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Facilitator: Heidi Rabben, Guest Curator, The Sky Below

Location: MarinMOCA

Reading Group #2

When: August 17, 2025. 2:00-3:00pm

Book: Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

Facilitator: Ranu Mukherjee, Artist, The Sky Below

Location: Marin Civic Center Library