BED FOR DREAMING

CATERINA FAKE IN CONVERSATION WITH JESSICA SHAEFER

THE JONES INSTITUTE
AT MINNESOTA STREET PROJECT

THURSDAY 29 JANUARY 2026
6:30 PM
1275 MINNESOTA STREET, SAN FRANCISCO

The ancient Greeks practiced enkoimesis—temple sleep—in sanctuaries designed to induce prophetic dreams. The space itself was part of the medicine: architecture, objects, and atmosphere combined to prepare the pilgrim for what would come. The surrealists pursued similar territory centuries later, using hypnagogic states to bypass the rational mind and access what lay beneath.

At Minnesota Street Project, artist Caterina Fake has constructed a contemporary version: a gallery transformed into a dream chamber.

BED FOR DREAMING—named by the SF Standard as one of the Bay Area’s must-see fall exhibitions—centers on an ancient Chinese bed surrounded by guardians, Guanyin, and goddesses. The figures are functional, not decorative. They protect, creating the conditions for surrender.

The formal gallery has been claimed and remade. What was a white cube is now a vessel for something else. This distinction—between installation and environment—matters. An installation exists in dialogue with its context, often critically. An environment replaces context with itself.

Nothing is for sale. Commerce isn’t refused so much as rendered irrelevant.

“Dreams are the ultimate ungovernable act,” notes founder Aïda Jones.

 NOW ON VIEW AT THE JONES INSTITUTE AT MINNESOTA STREET PROJECT W-SAT NOON-5.

Caterina Fake is an artist whose career bridges the worlds of art, literature, film, culture and technology, who transgresses the boundaries between myth and machine, art and science, building and dreaming. Honored by Rhizome at the New Museum, with honorary degrees from RISD and the New School and named to the Time 100, Fake is currently working in installation, painting, performance, and participatory art. She is also half of the art collective Fake & Fake.