Out of Character, a reading

Thursday, September 17, 2026
7pm

Exhibition Warehouse
1201 Minnesota Street 
San Francisco, CA 94107
Free and open to the public

An evening of short readings, connecting six writers’ personal perspectives as a way of decoding the layered meanings of the artworks in the exhibition Character Development, followed by a discussion moderated by Joseph del Pesco, KADIST Americas Director. With readings by Dodie Bellamy, Deena Chalabi, Shona Mei Findlay, Elena Gross, Glen Helfand, and Heidi Rabben.

This program is co-presented with KADIST in conjunction with the exhibition Character Development, on view September 10 - October 31, 2026.

Participant Bios:

Dodie Bellamy is a San Francisco-based writer whose cross-genre work focuses on sexuality, politics, and visual culture. Her books include two collections published by Semiotext(e): Bee Reaved (2021) and When the Sick Rule the World (2015). With Kevin Killian she co-edited Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative 1977-1997 (Nightboat, 2017). She received a 2023 Guggenheim fellowship in nonfiction.

Deena Chalabi is a strategist, curator and writer based in Oakland. She has served as Senior Director of Growth and Partnerships at The OpEd Project, Head of Strategy at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar, and the inaugural Barbara and Stephan Vermut Associate Curator of Public Dialogue at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Shona Mei Findlay is a curator and Associate Director of Asia Programs at KADIST. Her curatorial practice engages with feminist and decolonial frameworks, with a particular focus on Southeast Asian and diasporic perspectives.

Elena Gross (she/they) is an independent writer and curator living in Oakland, CA. She specializes in representations of identity in fine art, photography, and popular media. Her research has been centered around conceptual and material abstractions of the body in the work of Black modern and contemporary artists and most recently in queer artistic and literary histories of the late 20th century. Elena is the co-editor, along with Julie R. Enszer, of OutWrite: The Speeches that Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture (Rutgers University Press), winner of the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Anthologies.

Glen Helfand is a writer, independent curator, and educator based in Oakland, CA. He is currently a Professor in the Graduate Fine Arts Program at California College of the Arts.

Heidi Rabben is an independent curator, writer, and editor based in San Francisco. She was formerly Senior Curator at The Contemporary Jewish

Photos: Dodie Bellamy, Deena Chalabi, Shona Mei Findlay, Elena Gross, Glen Helfand, and Heidi Rabben, all courtesy of the writers.