Centro Exhibitions
About Centro Exhibits
Inside Centro Cultural De La Raza!
Video displays a walk around video tour of Centro’s gallery during the Roberto R Pozos Solo exhibition in 2024
The Centro offers a gallery space for emerging and experienced artists to showcase their work to the San Diego / Tijuana Region and international visitors. Our volunteer curators bring diverse artistic visions to life. We feature exciting new exhibits and recurring ones, such as Day of the Dead and Enero Zapatista. Each exhibit opens with a reception where you can meet the artists, enjoy live entertainment, purchase artwork, and support local talent. Most exhibits are free, donation-based, or offered on a sliding scale.
EXHIBIT on view June 6 -June 28 2026
Rooted in wonder is Curated by Monarch School Project K–12 Visual Art Teacher, Xareni “XA-XA” Lizarraga. This colorful show features student art inspired by nature’s beauty, rhythm, and magic.
Monarch School Project nurtures resilience in unhoused youth and their families. EACH year, we support hundreds of K-12 students, family members, and alumni experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity.
We empower students to influence their own growth in the areas of academic success and social emotional learning. We reinforce the existing strength of families so that students can thrive in school and In life.
Since its founding in 1987, Monarch is the only school in the nation exclusively designed to support unhoused youth. comprehensive programming supports family navigation to shelter, food, and income security; mental health; academic success; and college and career pathways, using trauma-informed, strength-based approaches. Our vision is to build a future in which an experience of homelessness does not define or limit any child’s promise and potential.
LEARN MORE AT WWW.MONARCHSCHOOLS.ORG OR FOLLOW @MONARCHSCHOOLS.
upcoming exhibit:
THIS EXHIBITION BY JESÚS MONTOYA EXPLORES RESILIENCE, IDENTITY, AND THE HEALING POWER OF ART. PAINTING ENTIRELY WITH A BRUSH HELD IN HIS MOUTH, MONTOYA CREATES WORKS INSPIRED BY HIS MEXICAN ROOTS, PERSONAL EXPERIENCES, AND THE BEAUTY OF EVERYDAY LIFE.
THROUGH VIBRANT LANDSCAPES AND EMOTIONAL IMAGERY, HIS PAINTINGS REFLECT PERSEVERANCE, HOPE, AND TRANSFORMATION. MORE THAN A COLLECTION OF ARTWORKS, THIS EXHIBITION IS A REFLECTION OF SURVIVAL, CREATIVITY, AND THE STRENGTH OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT.
THROUGH HIS WORK, MONTOYA INVITES VIEWERS TO SEE BEYOND LIMITATIONS AND TO EXPERIENCE ART AS A FORM OF HEALING, EXPRESSION, AND CONNECTION.
Boarder Crossings is a skateboard-art project by the border community for the border community. In the face of increasingly violent policies and hateful rhetoric that multiply the divisions between the two sides of the wall by portraying the border as an impenetrable barrier, we believe that a peaceful alternative is modeled by the binational grassroots community of skaters. This is a story that doesn't need to be invented, because it already exists: it's a story built daily by many young and not-so-young people on both sides of the border.
Skateboarding – as a subculture, sport, and popular culture – has always been an element of exchange, cross-pollination, and sharing between California and Baja. Often, this reality has been recounted from only one side, or it's been obscured by policies that increasingly paint the border as a wall, rather than an interface for building grassroots community that offer an alternative to the narratives of those in power.
With Boarder Crossings, we want to ask artists, youth, and activists connected to skateboard culture to imagine and represent a different border, starting from their biographies and from their own iconic objects: the skate decks.
PREVIOUS Exhibits
Enero Zapatista
Enero Zapatista is a month-long series of politically and culturally conscious events on unceded Kumeyaay land that commemorate the uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN)/Zapatista Army of National Liberation, better known as the Zapatistas, in January 1994. For 21 years, San Diego has held Enero events every January, with over 10 years of hosting a closing concert and art exhibit at the Centro Cultural as part of the month’s activities.
This past January’s exhibit was titled We Teach Life: Towards Other Geographies and Calendars, which was itself the third part in our four-part series Borderlands Visions
Roberto R. Pozos
Solo Exhibition
The Roberto R. Pozos Solo Exhibit featured the works of longtime border resident and artist, Roberto R. Pozos. Pozos, originally from Calexico, really captures the essence of life on the U.S./Mexico border. From individual portraits of fronterizas/os to realistic landscapes depicting the trials and tribulations, the angst and the joy of life en la Frontera, Pozos’ solo show brought much life, laughter and joy to the Centro Cultural de la Raza.
Indigenous BorderLands
Borderlands Visions III
Indigenous Borderlands: Weaving Nepantla, Remembering Sacred Relations at Centro Cultural de la Raza! This exhibition weaves together the connections, community, and history shared by Indigenous peoples, challenging conventional norms to create a space of healing, reflection, and unity.
It is an attempt to situate the historic connection that Chicano Mexicanos have had with our land bases, but also as a tribalized community, acknowledging that we are also on unceded Indigenous Kumeyaay territory. We’ve, historically, always had important political, cultural, sacred, and historical connections to Indigenous peoples of this area.