Engineer's Daughter

matokie mix 02.27.22

mix

as i live and breathe

Through April 10 - Angela Hennessy: As I Live and Breathe at SOMArts

Angela Hennessy's solo exhibition at SOMArts is a full-body experience, the way that the warehouse gallery has been masterfully arranged to feature Hennessy's synthetic-hair sculptural pieces, the way that poetry fills your ears as you seem to float in darkness with her work. Ropes of braided and twisted hair twine into talismanic shapes that grow from the floor, while teased-out afro-puff planets dangle in space. I could see the evidence of Hennessy's hands throughout, where shimmers of regal gold contrast with darker strands in some pieces and in the large-scale blanket of black hair displayed on one wall that had me standing in awe of the time it must have taken to craft it. Through her work Hennessy wants us to ask, "How does our understanding of mortality, specifically as Black, Indigenous, people of color, shape the way we move through the world? What does it mean to practice both surrender and agency?"

Other things I liked this week:

• A Different Image by Alile Sharon Larkin. Made in 1982 during the LA Rebellion film movement and shot by Charles Burnett, Larkin's beautiful piece depicts art student Alana and her quest to connect with her heritage by embracing something other than patriarchal beauty and relationship standards.
• Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life by Sutton Foster. A very charming memoir told through the lens of the art and crafts Foster has made throughout her life.
• When I was at UCSC I always appreciated the amazing speakers they brought to campus for the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Convocation, and this year the whole thing was on Zoom so I could hear Ruja Benjamin speak about race and technology at home Wednesday night. Highly recommend checking out the recording here.
• Meanwhile on Thursday I teleported to Green Apple Books via Zoom to hear badass Silvia Vasquez-Lavado speak about her experiences as a climber and her new book In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage. I will never climb any epic mountains but love hearing from those do.
• Josh Faught's current show at the Wattis Look Across the Water Into the Darkness, Look for the Fog is a must-see before it closes next week too. Faught literally and figuratively weaves together kitsch and queer history into an extraordinary body of work.
• I'm also very glad I squeaked in the High Plains exhibition at Johansson Projects featuring art by Rachelle Bussières, Blaise Rosenthal, and Andy Vogt on its last day yesterday. By juxtaposing photogramic lumen prints by Bussières, sculptural pieces by Vogt, and works on shaped canvas by Rosenthal, the show created a harmony of color and dimension that felt downright magical.

matokie mix 02.20.22

mix

image gardeners

Through April 30 - Image Gardeners at McEvoy Foundation for the Arts

This group show of portrait photography by women and non-binary artists is full of gems. Alongside familiar pieces by the likes of Nan Goldin, Francesca Woodman, and Lynn Hershman Leeson the Foundation also commissioned Bay Area photographers Marcel Pardo Ariza, Carolyn Drake (pictured above), and Chanell Stone to create new work for the exhibition. As the title implies these are creators who employ photography as a generative practice, not offering bodies for consumption as in Susan Sontag's famous quote about photography as a "voracious way of seeing" but instead as a means of connection and documentation. Gina Basso has also curated the short film program seen only, heard only through someone else’s description to run concurrently that takes its title from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and further expands the conversation about presentation of identity.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Movement of Things by Manuela Serra. This lyrical 1985 documentary is a time capsule of everyday life in a rural Portuguese village where the older women perform the rituals of farming, cooking, and cleaning, while a young woman goes off to work in a factory.
• Parallel Mothers by Pedro Almodóvar. It is always such a pleasure to spend a couple hours in the worlds Almodóvar creates, and Penélope Cruz is at the height of her powers here as a single mom who befriends another in the birthing suite.
• Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades. Brilliantly written in a collective voice that nevertheless allows for a vast multiplicity of lived experience, this novel follows a group of young first-generation women from the "dregs of Queens" as they come of age and find their way out into our current version of the world.
• New Conservatory Theatre Centre's Gently Down the Stream was the perfect production to stream on V Day, with Donald Currie particularly affecting as older gentleman Beau recollecting his life to his (much) younger lover Rufus.
• And later in the week I chose another sweet romance to watch at home in the form of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights. That last scene gets me every time.

matokie mix 02.13.22

mix

a pound of pictures

Through March 26 - Alec Soth: A Pound of Pictures at Fraenkel Gallery

I'm back after winter hiatus to blog again, and to urge you to see Alec Soth's show of photographs at Fraenkel if you're in SF. I have been following Soth's work ever since I moved the Bay Area, and his ability to capture moments of perfect beauty and tenderness in our off-kilter world remains unsurpassed. Taken during the last few years these images feel especially poignant given our ongoing global crisis, though there are also humorous touches that never come at the expense of his subjects. Interspersed throughout the exhibition are snapshots from Soth's own collection, creating a rich conversation about the practice of photography itself and what might be considered art-worthy. Similarly the gallery has curated a room full of Friedlander, Goldin, Arbus, and the like at the end of the show that demonstrates Soth's influences and his place among them. 

Other things I liked this week:

• The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman, Chez Jolie Coiffure, and Delphine’s Prayers by Rosine Mbakam. Born in Cameroon and based in Belgium, Mbakam creates extraordinary documentaries centered around women and sometimes around her own family to illuminate both the female and the immigrant experience. 
• Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. A quietly exquisite trio of short films thematically linked by longing and loss and fate. 
• Troubled: The Failed Promise of America's Behavioral Treatment Programs by Kenneth R. Rosen. Rather than an exhaustive exposé of these highly problematic programs, Rosen concentrates on the personal accounts of four former teens whose lives decidedly were not changed for the better by them.
• San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory's virtual Birdy Hours have been a balm throughout pandemic, and Thursday's talk with writer and biologist Maya Khosla was full of her observations about wilderness recovery after wildfire. In a time when I continue to grapple with our climate catastrophe reality it was wonderful to see how wild lands can burst with new life.
• And they both close today but spending some quality time with the Leonard Cohen pieces by Marshall Trammell and Candice Breitz at the Contemporary Jewish Museum yesterday did my soul a lot of good too.

matokie mix 02.06.22

mix