Artist’s Talk

Activist Imagination Artist’s Talk, photo by Derek Chung

The Artist’s Talk for the Activist Imagination exhibition was held on Thursday, April 24 at Kearny Street Workshop’s Space 180. The three artists walked a group of about 20 attendees through the gallery, describing their works, inspiration and processes. Christine Wong Yap began the talk by introducing the show of reproductions of early Kearny Street Workshop posters. Donna Keiko Ozawa discussed her sound-based sculptures, as well as her connection to the I-Hotel through Richard Hongisto. Inspired by photos of activists, along with their mementos, Bob Hsiang recounted stories of activists of many stripes. Then, Executive Director Ellen Oh spoke about generous funders of Activist Imagination, such as the Creative Work Fund, San Francisco Foundation and individual donors. She also announced that the Activist Imagination exhibition catalog — with essays from Artistic Director Sam Chanse and guest essayist Kevin Chen — is available for presale at a discounted rate. (The catalog will be released on May 24th, at a closing reception). Then Chanse facilitated a panel and Q&A session, which focused on identity and politics, such as what makes the art work Asian Pacific Islander, or how does the artist’s political backgrounds influence the work. Audience member and artist Indigo Som pointed out that a show like this is only possible in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is especially fertile in the alternative arts and politics, as well as featuring a large immigrant population.

The exhibition runs through May 24, 2008. The Exhibition Closing Reception & Catalog Release will be held on May 24, 2008; 7 – 9pm at Kearny Street Workshop’s space180, 180 Capp Street, 3rd Floor, @ 17th Street, San Francisco. It will be free and open to the public.

Activist Imagination Artist’s Talk: April 24

When [Studio Museum in Harlem director Thelma] Golden and her friend the artist Glenn Ligon called the 28 young American artists [in the 2001 exhibition, "Freestyle,"] “postblack,” it made news. It was a big moment. If she wasn’t the first to use the term, she was the first to apply it to a group of artists who, she wrote, were “adamant about not being labeled ‘black’ artists, though their work was steeped, in fact deeply interested, in redefining complex notions of blackness.”

The work ranged from mural-size images of police helicopters painted with hair pomade by Kori Newkirk, who lives in Los Angeles, to computer-assisted geometric abstract painting by the New York artist Louis Cameron. Mr. Newkirk’s work came with specific if indirect ethnic references; Mr. Cameron’s did not. Although “black” in the Studio Museum context, they would lose their racial associations in an ethnically neutral institution like the Museum of Modern Art.

Ethnically neutral? That’s just a code-term for white, the no-color, the everything-color. For whiteness is as much — or as little — a racial category as blackness, though it is rarely acknowledged as such wherever it is the dominant, default ethnicity.

Holland Cotter, The Topic Is Race; the Art Is Fearless, NYTimes.com, March 30, 2008

April 24, 2008, 7–9 pm : Artists’ Talk

{Posted by Christine Wong Yap, artist, Activist Imagination}