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Abstract or Project Description

Abstract or Project Description

This two-year oral history and performance project will center Oakland’s Swan’s Market, a culturally vibrant and historic venue at the intersection of four diverse Oakland neighborhoods. The project’s first phase will begin with a nine-month workshop with Oakland high school students to build skills and develop performances. That will be followed by live and self-paced performances and exhibits that engage themes of the importance of identity and place in creating a sense of belonging, and the multiple roles youth can play in designing urban landscapes.

Abstract or Project Description

This project engages multilingual and multiracial Chinese and Latinx immigrant communities through the creation of flags representing power and resilience. The flags will be unveiled as a procession in San Francisco’s Lunar New Year Parade to illuminate immigrant culture in the public sphere. Communities will be engaged through multilingual workshops co-developed with community partners, drawing on their memberships and tenants.

Abstract or Project Description

This project will culminate in a large-scale outdoor Drag performance event, celebrating the living oral, dance and embodied tradition of the queer community from which Drag arises. The Show will be specifically committed to examining the ways that institutional white supremacy and racism are manifested, mimicked, enacted and/or complacent within the Drag community. The project will take place adjacent to CounterPulse’s facility in San Francisco.

Abstract or Project Description

This project honors the blocked and soil-filled waterways that once flowed through Mission Dolores and the 5,700 Indigenous ancestors buried in the cemetery. In collaboration and solidarity with local Ohlone culture bearers, Latinx and Indigenous dance artists, and the American Indian Cultural District, sii agua sí is symbolically re-filling the site with water (sii) to bring awareness and healing to a painful history of genocide that seeps beneath the streets of the Mission District. This collaboration will culminate in a street mural project by local muralists and students from Mission High School. Videos of water and the names of the 5,700 native ancestors will be projected onto the front of Mission Dolores.

Abstract or Project Description

To lift up Ohlone language restoration, culture and identity, sculptures will be created in Peralta Hacienda that represent the words for Sun (Gismen), Moon (Kormey) and Water (Sii), in Chochenyo. These sculptures will be bordered by sedge, ferns and willow plantings in the creek area to later harvest for Ohlone basketry. Over two years leading up to the unveiling of the art works, Calpulli Coatlicue and Friends of Negro Spirituals will hold eleven cultural festivals to engage community participation in Ohlone language revival, foodways, craft and storytelling.

Abstract or Project Description

This project invites and reflects on community responses to history and stories from the cityscapes of Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco and NOW Hunters Point. Through a live, outdoor dance performance, the lead artists will explore how communities inhabit space, how spaces influence bodies, how design can bring communities together, and how history is held in individual and collective bodies. The process and performance will excavate and express those stories to enliven the location and augment community ownership, as community members will be invited to perform alongside Kristin Damrow & Company dancers.

Abstract or Project Description

Pieces of Home. In collaboration with Marina Fukushima, Surjit Nongmeikapam and Mercy Housing, this project will create an intergenerational and multi-disciplinary performance that engages questions of transforming and repurposing urban spaces for affordable housing in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood. The project takes place within context of Mission Bay’s history as both “terrain vague” (empty, abandoned, marginalized and ambiguous space) and the site of immense industrial, commercial and residential development. With the participation of residents of 691 China Basin apartment complex, the development phase will begin with outdoor environmental research and indoor movement workshops.

Abstract or Project Description

In partnership with artists and the Oakland community, this project will illuminate, explore and celebrate the contributions of the Black Panther Party and African American community to Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood. This project’s development will begin with a series of community gatherings and conversations to elevate the voices of the Black Panther Party and Black business owners, residents, former residents and artists. Artist team-building workshops and collaboration events will build upon and help co-create the historical memory, cultural knowledge and public understanding of the Black Panther Party and Temescal’s identity and community.

Abstract or Project Description

Within the David Ireland House, this project will create a physical space to gather intergenerational stories, images and visual ephemera focused on trans joy and creative resilience. Primarily serving the trans Latinx community in San Francisco’s Mission district, the development process will include hosting weekly conversations with community organizations, artists and community members around trans self-representation, reaching out to the wider translatinx community and prototyping expansion into the production phase.

Abstract or Project Description

This immersive artistic experience will include site-specific, multimedia performances at and around the Ping Yuen housing complex in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Through performances, community programming and exhibitions, And the Community Will Rise will explore the legacy of and significant role that residents in Chinatown public housing play in ensuring the social, political and cultural integrity of San Francisco in the face of gentrification and displacement.

Abstract or Project Description

“An act of insistence of black female original genius.” This is the next iteration of the multi-year House/Full of Blackwomen, which addresses issues of displacement, well-being and sex trafficking of black women and girls in Oakland. The New Chitlin Circuitry will be a site-specific ritual performance project reclaiming and highlighting the creative labor and foundational influences Black women have birthed in all arenas.

Abstract or Project Description

This project will be a site-specific installation and performance elegy for five Oakland youth killed before the age of 30. THE BLACK (W)HOLE will examine Black culture as a vehicle for resistance and spiritual renewal, creating public rituals that affirm cultural memory and allow for mourning and healing.

Abstract or Project Description

A series of performances, public artworks, workshops and forums in San Francisco and Oakland. Y BASTA YA! will shine a light on the experiences of Latina women with regard to invisibility, labor rights, domestic violence and sexual abuse.

Abstract or Project Description

Colorín Colorado San Francisco will include community workshops and work with artists with developmental disabilities to create sculptures exploring their journeys as immigrants. The sculptures will be placed at San Francisco sites that are significant to the Latinx community. They will be animated by music, dance and poetry, bringing culture and the arts to life.

Abstract or Project Description

Commons Archive will foster connections across race, generation and class to address the dissolution of neighborhood networks by displacement and gentrification. The project will engage residents of North Oakland’s Golden Gate neighborhood to create a collective memory bank through citizen history trainings, community mapping and restorative justice listening sessions. The stories will be translated into projections and banners displayed along San Pablo Avenue.

Abstract or Project Description

Lakbai Diwa, Diasporic Spirit will bring visibility and collective cultural healing to the Pilipina community in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood. The project will be anchored by site-specific dance performances, workshops, art installations, and a ceremonial procession that will feature balangays, traditional Pilipino boats, as a metaphor for how this island culture has been affected by colonialism, displacement and immigration.

Abstract or Project Description

Future IDs will partner with California reentry programs, community organizations and formerly incarcerated individuals on a yearlong, site-specific exhibition on Alcatraz Island. Identity-inspired artworks and monthly public programs will illuminate the life dreams as well as the racial, gender and age diversity of those who have been incarcerated. In stark contrast to prison-issued IDs, these artworks will express individual stories of transformation.

Abstract or Project Description

The project will include youth and adult artist mentorship teams who will bring mobile print-making laboratories to six events in Oakland. The public will be empowered to create art that documents personal and family stories of migration, relocation, identity and citizenship, creating a portrait of the Bay Area immigrant community.

Abstract or Project Description

A series of screen and digital printmaking residencies to explore displacement and the housing crisis affecting San Francisco’s Mission District. Housed in a mobile unit, the residences will travel along the 16th Street corridor between Mission and Bryant streets.