Image: Andres Payan Estrada, “Espectro” (detail), 2024 © Andres Payan Estrada, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego will open ‘Visiones Nocturnas: Queer Nightlife in Contemporary Art’ on September 19, 2026, bringing together work by Latina/o/e and Latin American artists from the 1990s to the present. The exhibition will examine dance clubs, dive bars, block parties, backyards and bathhouses as environments where queer belonging, joy, collectivity and resilience can take shape.
Organized by Amy Crum, an associate curator at MCASD, the presentation will span painting, performance, photography, sculpture, textile, collage and video. The museum has announced works by Andres Payan Estrada, Laura Aguilar, Martine Gutierrez, Guadalupe Rosales and Joey Terrill, among others, in what it describes as an intergenerational exhibition.
The title ‘Visiones Nocturnas,’ or “night visions,” is taken from a work by Andres Payan Estrada. His immersive installation commemorates a decade-long photographic research project focused on ephemeral aspects of queer nightlife along the U.S.–Mexico border. An image associated with the exhibition identifies Estrada’s work as ‘Espectro’ (2024), although the available exhibition material does not provide further details about its presentation.
Across the exhibition, MCASD says the works will probe not only the social experiences connected to nightlife but also the physical characteristics of the spaces themselves. Clubs, bars, parties, private domestic settings and bathhouses are presented as sites with the capacity to foster queer belonging, transcendence and resilience. The exhibition’s scope extends from the 1990s through contemporary practice, placing different generations and media in conversation.
A preview party is scheduled for Friday, September 18, from 6 to 10 p.m. at MCASD, 700 Prospect Street in La Jolla. The event will offer an advance view of the exhibition and include live music, entertainment and a cash bar. Admission is listed as free for museum members and $40 for non-members, with tickets scheduled to go on sale September 1.
The exhibition’s free public opening will take place on Saturday, September 19, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. ‘Visiones Nocturnas: Queer Nightlife in Contemporary Art’ will remain on view at MCASD in La Jolla through January 10, 2027.
