Collective Arising: A Positionality of Insistence from Black Bay Area Artists

Thu, February 25, 2021, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Join us for a virtual conversation with Ashara S. Ekundayo and Lucia Momoh the curators of Collective Arising: A Positionality of Insistence from Black Bay Area Artistswhich explores how contemporary Black artists in the Bay Area formed interdisciplinary collectives (such as the Nure Collective, 3.9 Collective, The Black Aesthetic, 5/5 Collective, CTRL+SHIFT Collective, and HouseFullofBlackWomen) to amplify the voices of Black women, men, and non-binary people. These collectives helped push Northern California in a boldly progressive direction at a pivotal moment for the nation. Collective Arising, to be on view in summer 2022, will include a multiplicity of media from painting and sculpture to mixed media, photography, sound, live performance, and video.

Formed organically alongside social movements, collectives bestow upon Black artists a unified, powerful voice. Arts movements, thus, have been defined by the collectives formed at a time of major cultural shifts as well as the tenants of their shared practices and social aspirations.

In this first of a series of online programs, co-curators Ashara Ekundayo and Lucia Olubunmi Momoh will discuss the history of artists’ collectives and their philosophical and political underpinnings, as well as the concepts beneath their upcoming exhibition Collective Arising: A Positionality of Insistence from Black Bay Area Artists (opening summer 2022). The exhibition with feature interdisciplinary works made by contemporary Black artists living in the San Francisco Bay Area who founded and are members of collectives aimed to amplify the voices and practices of Black women, men, and nonbinary folks.

Ashara Ekundayo is an independent curator, cultural strategist, and arts organizer whose intersectional creative worldview offers both an Afrofuturist and radical Black feminist framework centering the lives, traditions, and expertise of Black women of the African Diaspora. Her philanthropic platform Artist As First Responder serves as a portal for her recent initiatives The Reflection Fund for Artists and Black [Space] Residency both of which provide a container for imagination, inquiry, activity and rest. Ashara is also a forum curator at the Museum of The African Diaspora and hosts a monthly online, live, zine called “BLATANT” where she moderates discussions on art, joy and rage. 

Lucia Olubunmi Momoh is a curator, writer, and scholar who works as a curatorial assistant at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Her research there examines issues of anti-black racism, the production of history, and the role museums play in the formation of national and regional identities. Momoh views her curatorial practice as an extension of her social and environmental activism and works to make museums and art more accessible to marginalized communities. 

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