About
Zoë Latzer is a curator and contemporary art researcher, currently serving as Curator and Director of Public Programs at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) San José. After five years at the ICA, she has worked across exhibitions, publications, public programs, outreach initiatives, and the integration of technology into audience engagement. Her practice centers on immersive, multi-sensory exhibitions that explore technology, mythology, and speculative, research-driven world-building.
She holds a BA in History of Art and Visual Culture from UC Santa Cruz and an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts. At ICA San José, she has curated solo and group exhibitions including Blood Be Water, Allegedly the Worst Is Behind Us, Leymusoom Garden, In a Knotted World, and Blood, Sweat and Time. Through her practice, Latzer develops exhibitions as research-driven ecosystems, enabling artists to expand media, reconfigure archives, and imagine alternate systems of social, technological, and environmental engagement.
Her exhibitions have been featured in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Art in America, KQED, Square Cylinder, and Metro Silicon Valley. Her curatorial work spans the Bay Area and international contexts, including her 2026 participation in the Curatorial Program for Research (CPR) Elsewhere Nordic.
To Give and Take by Greg Ito — opened September 19, 2026 at the ICA San José
Explores cycles of sacrifice, inheritance, care, and renewal through personal and collective memory, using The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein as a lens on emotional labor, survival, and intergenerational exchange.
Upcoming:
Familiar by Nimah Gobir — opening January 15, 2027 at the ICA San José
Drawing from her family archive, Gobir explores Black interior life and the meaning of home across the African diaspora. Through painting, textiles, stitching, and sculpture, she considers how photographs preserve everyday moments, shape family histories, and sustain connections across generations and geographic distance.
At the Basis of Magic — opening March 20, 2027 at the ICA San José
In a time of political uncertainty and ecological crisis, At the Basis of Magic, brings together twelve artists who engage magic and ritual to reconsider power, question dominant systems of knowledge, and reimagine our relationships with the more-than-human world. Across painting, installation, photography, film, and performance, ritual becomes a tool for navigating uncertainty, sensory engagement a strategy for healing, and ceremonial performance a way of imagining life beyond extraction and control. Alongside site-specific works responding to the Bay Area’s ecologies, technologies, and histories, the exhibition brings these practices into conversation with the region. At the Basis of Magic asks what becomes possible when we make space for enchantment as a method for relating to the world. Partnership with the Further Triennial. Co-curated by Zoë Latzer and Naomi Alessandra Shultz.
Previous workshops
ICA San José and Recology AIR present a hands-on workshop on the afterlives of everyday devices. Participants will bring old screens, monitors, tablets, and smartphones to explore technological decay, materiality, and creative transformation through experimental processes. June 2 — Recology Environmental Learning Center, San Francisco (6pm); June 4 — ICA San José (6pm).
San José Climate Art Program meetup — June 2: A public gathering featuring artist Miguel Novelo, in conjunction with INFRAMUNDO at ICA San José and San José’s 2nd annual Energy Day.
Current & Upcoming Projects