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https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85212455744?pwd=UkF0S00wN2k3NHo3bVVqQlVpZzc3Zz09
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Illustrated records of Black life through film and photography continue to be cherished ephemera as they bear witness to the beauty and stamina of a people throughout multiple generations and political realities. Listen to four artists from “Collective Arising” who are utilizing film mediums in the lineage of creating archives that center the Black experience and their reflections on the camera and love.
Join Adrian Octavius Walker, Sasha Kelley, shah noor hussein, and Erica Deeman in conversation with curator Ashara Ekundayo via Zoom.
Collective Arising: The Insistence of Black Bay Area Artists is on display at the Museum through Sunday, November 27th.
This virtual event is free and open to the public. The link will be sent to your email address once you register.
About the Panel:
Ashara Ekundayo is a Black feminist interdisciplinary independent curator, cultural theologian, arts organizer and strategist whose intersectional creative practice is rooted in the study and creation of Black archives, site-responsive ceremony, and the specific lives, traditions, and expertise of Black womxn of the African Diaspora. Her philanthropic platform Artist As First Responder serves as a container for imaginations and inquiries for creatives working at the intersection of design, technology and activism to heal communities and save lives. As a former gallerist at Omi Arts Project Space and Ashara Ekundayo Gallery she mentored a new generation of cultural scholars and art collectors and currently serves as a forum curator at the Museum of The African Diaspora and Co-Founder/Director at Black [Space] Residency while also holding a seat on the Advisory Board of SFMoMA’s SECA Committee. In Fall 2022 she will join the Headlands Center for the Arts as an Artist-In-Residence investigating and transcribing joy-informed pedagogies that reimagine collective liberation and document cartographies of Black power.
Adrian Octavius Walker is a mixed media artist/photographer whose work seeks to expand the canon surrounding the nuances of Black life through tenderness and grit. His fascination with the tangible is the driving force to expand his visual language through various materials. Walker’s passion lies in using his practice to platform critical discourse around the imagination in black nostalgia. His work cast questions that inspire the viewer to investigate their own biases and opportunities for community engagement. Adrian’s approach to both still photography and sculpture is rooted in his commitment to archiving Black stories for the future. Ultimately, Adrian Octavius Walker uses his practice as a space to discover, document, and reminisce about the cultural impact of Black life in America.
Erica Deeman (b. Nottingham, UK) is a visual artist whose work explores the intersections of race, gender, and the hybridity of Black identity. Deeman is concerned with the multiple ways selfhood manifests through transnational and hybrid modes; and how we find a sense of belonging and ‘home’ through migratory patterns, memory, cultural and personal experience, and ancestral legacy. Her multidisciplinary practice embodies the complexity and transformational nature of Blackness. Deeman currently lives in Seattle, WA and works between here and the Bay Area. She received a Bachelor of Arts, Public Relations, degree in 2000 from Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK and a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Photography, a degree in 2014 from Academy of Art, San Francisco, CA. Deeman is an Art Practice MFA candidate 2022, at UC Berkeley, CA.
Sasha Kelley is a multidisciplinary artist that uses photography, place making & social practice to examine the topics of Black Identity, Women of Color Creativity, Cooperative Communities & Divine Archetypes. Kelley uses her creative practice as a tool to connect her personal, social and political experiences with that of the larger collective. As a social practice practitioner, Sasha Kelley, has a history of building & bridging communities to produce works centered in political, spiritual & communal care. Kelley is the cofounder of Malidoma Collective & The House of Malico, two groups centered in the cultivating the brilliance within black/brown/femme/&queer creatives through public programming. Sasha Kelley has exhibited at Siete Potencias Gallery, Krowswork and Somarts. Her work is featured in the permanent collection at Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. Kelley has been published in Fader, Umber Magazine and Black Futures by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham.
shah noor hussein: A member of House of Malico collective, shah’s practice with film photography began at a young age, when they began bringing disposable cameras on their trips to Sudan over long hot summers. The practice has now expanded to gallery installations and experimental filmmaking. Collective Arising will feature shah’s photography, alongside her collective member Sasha Kelley, which explores the collective identity formation found in both their Sudanese aunties—their rituals and warmth—and their chosen spiritual communities in the San Francisco Bay. Together Kelley and hussein’s work will demonstrate the complex elements of Black femme identities.
