Sovern Presents
rooted
A two person exhibition featuring Daeton Oclaray and Zoë Solis
On view:
December 4 - 11, 2025
Opening Reception, Thursday December 4 | 7 pm
with artist panel moderated by Riyaana Hartley
featuring mentors Dale Brockman Davis, Terrell Tilford, and Nicole Shostak-Sabourian
In Rooted, Daeton Oclaray and Zoë Solis share their works produced in Sovern LA’s 2025 Youth Artist in Residency program. The body of work shares the artists’ visual explorations of home as an anchor to navigate personal and collective histories. At the same time, Rooted reflects a shared commitment to their artistic practices strengthened by a foundation of support.
This exhibition is the culmination of the three month program during which Daeton and Zoë received mentorship from artist and Brockman Gallery co-founder, Dale Brockman Davis, Band of Vices founder and creative director, Terrell Tilford, and Sovern LA co-founder and artistic director, Nicole Shostak-Sabourian.
This exhibition is the culmination of the three month program during which Daeton and Zoë received mentorship from artist and Brockman Gallery co-founder, Dale Brockman Davis, Band of Vices founder and creative director, Terrell Tilford, and Sovern LA co-founder and artistic director, Nicole Shostak-Sabourian.
Featured Artists
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Daeton Abalos Oclaray is an interdisciplinary artist born in Hawai’i and raised between West O’ahu and Seattle, currently based in Los Angeles. His practice spans oil painting, charcoal drawings, and archival video, often extending into installation and material experimentation with surfaces such as raw canvas, linen, and found textiles. Drawing from his Filipino and Black American heritage, Oclaray’s work reflects on his family’s layered histories of migration, labor, and belonging. Through recurring imagery of domestic interiors and exteriors, floral motifs, and familiar objects, he explores how environments shape identity and memory, blurring the boundaries between figure, landscape, and pattern. Oclaray received his BA in Studio Art from UCLA in 2025, where he was also active in cultural programming and community organizing through the Cultural Affairs Commission.
In his current body of work Evidence of Dreams (in Living Rooms), Oclaray reimagines the living room as a landscape of migration and memory; into a space where fragments of family archives, labor histories, and collective dreams of “paradise” and progress converge. Across his practice, he seeks to construct visual languages and folklore-like scenes that reflect the fluid and in-between states that define the contemporary diasporic and post-colonial experience. These constructions are embodied through figurative, collage-inspired, and slightly playful charcoal drawings of relatives, close-friends, and self portraits on textiles that weave these experiences together. |
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Zoë Solis(b. 2001, Fontana, CA) is a Mexican-American interdisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, CA, whose practice reflects a curiosity of home- and the people, places, and things that she identifies with the concept. Using painting, pastels, and ceramics, Solís’s work explores figures, still lifes, and landscapes in which there is a visceral connection for her. While the foundation of her practice rests upon her work with oil pastels, she has translated the skills from this medium into large scale oil works that reflect themes of love and loss. In 2024, Solís graduated with a BA in Art History from UCLA, where she first began exploring oil pastels in her work. Zoë is also currently experimenting with air dry clay sculptures into which she incorporates other materials such as acrylic paint and resin — tools that ensure the archiveability of the structures.
Beyond the theme of home, Zoë's current body of work explores the artist’s natural attraction to elements she knows she can never build a home with. Utilizing oil, acrylic and spray paint, colored pencil, charcoal, cigarette ash, and pastel on canvas, her images examine entanglements with toxic vices the artist has learned have no place in her future. Many of the motifs and aesthetic influences in the work are inspired by murals, album covers, and old American classic tattoos. The combination of layers in her work create dynamic compositions that navigate knowing something isn’t good for you yet loving it anyway. |
Sovern LA is an intersectional community center and gallery, located in LA’s West Adams district, focused on supporting Black and Indigenous women and gender expansive people of color. Fueled by a passion for justice, equality, and creative expression, Sovern is driven by the collective determination to center healing justice, challenge systemic barriers, empower artists of color, and amplify their impact for collective wellbeing. By building a community that uplifts and celebrates diverse voices, we aim to reshape the art world in Los Angeles and beyond, creating a more inclusive and equitable space where artists and communities can thrive together.
