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Black Artists Who Are Unapologetically Branding Themselves
Black Artists Who Are Unapologetically Branding Themselves
Announcing MoAD’s 2022-23 Emerging Artists Program Awardees
MoAD’s Emerging Artists Program (EAP) amplifies the practices of Bay Area artists at a pivotal moment in their career when visibility at a major museum will have a trajectory impact. “Emerging” is not an indicator of age or a marker of educational status, but an identifier that speaks to this moment of impact. MoAD is helping to establish EAP artists as important culture-makers to watch throughout the rest of their career. Offering artists visibility and a museum platform will ensure the longevity of their practice.
We are excited to announce:
- Cynthia Aurora Brannvall
- Richard–Jonathan Nelson
- Trina Michelle Robinson
- Ashley Ross
These artists span a variety of mediums from photography, multi-media works on paper, and sculpture. Admission tickets for this spring will be available soon.
Cynthia Aurora Brannvall – The Threads That Bind
March 30 – June 12, 2022
The Threads that Bind is an allusion to a body of artwork rendered in textiles to evoke memory, presence, labor, trade, industry, slavery, luxury, baptisms, weddings, funerals, gender, and history in the African diaspora. The concept and material of thread creates meaning as an ancestral carrier traveling through time across borders through voluntary and involuntary migration from one body to another. The bind refers to shared experiences of trauma, oppression and perseverance that cohere in Black identity.
Richard-Jonathan Nelson – Interlacing Distributed Intelligence/Noir Care
June 22 – September 18, 2022
The Black body and craft can be intermeshed to depict our western culture’s speculative future no matter how foreign the idea of Black craft is outside of the American Low country. Through the hybridizing of traditional craft practices like embroidery, weaving, and quilting along with digital art, the Black body is reimagined as a place for futuristic progress. Thereby creating images of the Black Diaspora far removed from continued historic depiction as servile and without agency, but instead as visual and culturally complex individuals. The work is balanced visually between the dichotomy of Blackness as an expansive unknowable monolithic void and a chromatically intense generator of culture.
Trina Robinson – Excavation: Past, Present and Future
October 5 – December 11, 2022
Using early photography and motion picture processes, Excavation looks at the relationship between memory and migration. Robinson’s ancestry is the catalyst for this exploration, but the work also looks at stories of migration and memory outside of her immediate family. In Paul Virilio’s The Vision, the author talks about capturing the impression of someone or something rather than producing an exact copy when it comes to creating an image. An ethereal copy is Robinson’s approach when considering the excavation of memories. An exact replica might not be possible, but we can get a glimpse, hold on, and sit with what remains so we can move forward into the future. Hopefully we can move into the future together.
Ashley Ross – 10/27/03
December 21 – March 5, 2023
10/27/03 is a body of work that surveys the ways in which experiential dualities can exist within the confines of a religious upbringing. Bringing together staged black and white photographs, familial archive layered works, and installation, this body of work uses photography and personal memorabilia to illustrate ideas about indoctrination and legacy within the black familial structure. Whether through visual allegories or the artist’s personal explorations of religion, each photographic work represents the process of rumination and memory when confronting one’s own former spiritual experience allowing the viewer to contemplate the ways in which we internalize belief systems.
*Exact dates may be subject to change
The Emerging Artists Program is generously funded by Karen Jenkins-Johnson and Kevin Johnson and Westridge Foundation
Black Men Wanted
We would value having your thoughts, experiences, and lessons learned that you feel will best galvanize and help our youth advance successfully from adolescence to adulthood.
My name is Thomas Robert Simpson. I am the founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning AfroSolo Theatre Company in San Francisco. AfroSolo’s (afrosolosf.org) mission is to nurture, promote and present Black art and culture through solo performances and the visual and literary arts. We are a not-for-profit organization under the fiscal sponsorship of Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco.
AfroSolo has a history of connecting with and focusing our programming around the issues and concerns of our community members. Although many of our male youths are doing well, it is evident via homicides, crime, deadly encounters with police, poverty, school dropout rates, etc., that this population needs our attention.
Over the years, AfroSolo has produced and presented theatre, dance, music, poetry, and spoken word performances, along with literary and visual arts, symposiums, and panel discussions. Since our beginning, we have shouted that Black Lives Matter. And through the arts, we have daringly presented the diversity of our community by showcasing older, younger, male, female, disabled, and LBGTQ+ members of the community.
Your Invitation
I am writing to ask for your help to inspire, uplift, and motivate young Black men and boys to achieve beyond their expectations. I simply ask that you write a letter. Your letter will become part of an anthology entitled, Lighting the Path: Letters From Black Men to Young Black Men and Boys. I want our young men and boys to know that they are valued, cared for, and loved.
The letters will be from a diverse section of Black men (politicians, academics, businessmen, entertainers, clergy, formerly incarcerated, etc.) addressed to young Black men and boys. We would value having your thoughts, experiences, and lessons learned that you feel will best galvanize and help our youth advance successfully from adolescence to adulthood.
The contents of your letter will be of your choice, including any personal experiences, advice, and other inspirational words you wish to share. The suggested length for the letter is up to 750 words. We need your letter by March 22, 2022, to prepare for our Fall 2022 book release. You will retain copyright ownership of the letter, but with your permission, we will make it available in as many forms and media as possible to support our youth.
About Us
We are honored to be working with Dominique Broussard, Ph. D., Director of University of San Francisco (USF)’s Marshall-Riley Living Learning Community
The Marshall-Riley Living-Learning Community (MRLLC) allows first-year and sophomore students to live together on campus; share an interest in Black Americans’ historical, intellectual, and political traditions, and engage with the Bay Area Black community through service-learning classes. “Lighting the Path” will be their project for the spring semester.
We are excited to be collaborating on this project with the USF’s “Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good.” The center is dedicated to inspiring and preparing students at USF to pursue lives and careers of ethical public service and the common good. Jacqueline Scott Ramos will also be joining us. She is the Program Manager of Community-Engaged Learning and oversees the Community Empowerment Activists program for the Leo T. McCarthy Center.
Also on our team is USF’s, Professor David Holler. He serves as the Director of the Martín–Baró Scholars Program, a living-learning community for first-year students covering five core classes, including public speaking, composition, literature, cultural diversity, and community-engaged learning.
We would like to acknowledge the support of San Francisco African American Art and Cultural district for their.
Our Goal
Lighting up the Future… will be distributed free to juvenile halls, schools, libraries, and community organizations. Our initial goal is to distribute 500 books. Although each letter will be different, they will share the same goal: to inspire, motivate, give hope, and uplift our young men and, most of all, let them know they have support from their community.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your positive response. Please email your letter to: [email protected]. If you have any further questions, contact me at that email address or call me at 415-771-2376.
I also ask you to support this project by making a tax deductible donation at: www.flipcause.com/secure/
