Engineer's Daughter

long kwento

Through December 4 - Maia Cruz Palileo: Long Kwento at the Wattis

This extraordinary solo show by Maia Cruz Palileo at the Wattis fuses Filipinx histories with the artist's own unique visual language into a simultaneously fractured and cohesive whole. Drawing both from extensive research Palileo conducted in the Filipiniana collection at Chicago's Newberry Library as well as the artist's own family stories, Palileo's paintings and sculptures refer directly to a violent, colonialist past while at the same time celebrate the vibrancy and craft of Filipinx culture. The complex narrative that emerges defiantly reclaims space and refuses to reduce the diasporic experience to any individual story. In the evocative booklet that accompanies the exhibition, curator Kim Nguyen quotes Grace Kyungwon Hong on the topics of memory and knowledge:

To bring out your dead is to say that these deaths are not unimportant or forgotten, or worse, coincidental. It is to say that these deaths are systemic, structural. To bring out your dead is both a memorial and a challenge, an act of grief and of defiance, a register or mortality and decline, and of the possibility of struggle and survival.

Other things I liked this week:

• A Will to Kill by RV Raman. A classic Agatha-Christie-style whodunit set in a remote manor in the Indian countryside, this book gave my brain a lovely rest as I left detective Harith Atreya to puzzle out a murder. Maybe I should have been reading more mysteries during pandemic.
• Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu. A gorgeous memoir of a childhood lived all over the world and the lasting effects of a mother's abandonment and a father's death plus bonus colonialism and racism. Loved the geological metaphor Owusu employed throughout too. 
• While I have been making sure my coffee is bird-friendly for some time now, I hadn't thought about my chocolate until a wonderful presentation this week by Sharol Nelson-Embry about harvesting practices such as agroforestry, wild harvesting, and shade growing and how they connect to some cool bird species. Nelson-Embry offers delicious bird-friendly chocolate options in her online shop Cocoa Case, and you can even pick up a set that benefits the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory during their fall fundraiser.
• In yet another brilliant shutdown hack the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival is presented as a streamable film this year, beautifully filmed in various locations around the Bay Area...including an elementary school near my apartment! I was able to attend the virtual premiere Thursday evening and hear intros from the presenting artists too, which was super-neat. 
• The Mill Valley Film Festival also has an impressive online program this year, including Bob Sarles and John Anderson's riveting documentary Born in Chicago about the birth and the enduring influence of the Chicago blues. I watched it last night and was grooving around my apartment to all of its amazing vintage gig footage.

the violets in the mountains have broken the rocks, part two

Edited to add: The show has been extended through the end of June! Go see it!

Through June 12 - The Violets in the Mountains Have Broken the Rocks, Part Two at Gallery 16

I'm so glad I got to see this group show before it closed, especially because it's looking like Gallery 16 won't be much longer in the SOMA space where I've attended so many exhibitions and performances. But while they're still there, they're going to keep putting on great shows. With a loose theme of resilience some of the artworks speak directly to the pandemic, as with Tucker Nichols's incredible free-associative wall installation, while in other cases it's just interesting to see what artists were able to create in the last year. Cliff Hengst's series of intimate watercolors are real beauties, and they seemed to be having a conversation with Wayne Smith's ink-on-hardwood sculptures from across the room. Basically this exhibition felt like a wonderful conversational gathering with old friends and new. While I was in the city I also had a lovely bayside bento from Delica in the Ferry Building and took in the gorgeous Diane Arbus show at Fraenkel Gallery curated by Carrie Mae Weems. Just a fantastic day all around.

Other things I liked this week:

• Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization by Joe Scarborough. With a title (and an author) like that I was of course reading this book with a fairly critical eye, but though Scarborough is no historian this is an absorbing account of a part of American history I knew little about. I just could have done without the partisan potshots, and the alarming amount of typos.
• I thought Marin Theatre Company did an excellent job with Denmo Ibrahim's online play Brilliant Mind, a mix of live Zoom and pre-taped scenes and with the added fun of receiving texts during the action from one of the characters. I just really miss seeing Ibrahim onstage in front of me.
• SF DocFest is doing a few screenings at the Roxie this year but the whole thing is also virtual, so I chose to watch Keeper of the Fire about local poet and activist Alejandro Murguia from the comfort of my kitchen table. This is one of those festivals where every film is a gem.
• In one of the more brilliant pandemic adaptations, Robert Moses' KIN are currently rehearsing and performing a new piece called The Vital Heart of S.F. behind the windows of the old Gap store on Market for passers-by to observe at their leisure. I caught just a snippet of the dancers at work and it was divine.
• The Wattis just launched a new book called Why are they so afraid of the lotus? and to celebrate the occasion Astria Suparak gave a Zoom talk called Asian Futures, without Asians that was absolute fire.
• I caught another incredible performance from the ODC Theater Festival, this time Unheard: Deaf Refugees in America by Antoine Hunter (Purple Fire Crow).
• Until I can see them again in person, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater program from Cal Performances At Home was completely transcendent.
• And Tanya Diamond and Ahiga Snyder of Pathways for Wildlife taught me a ton about wildlife tracking in the first part of a virtual program presented by Peninsula Open Space Trust. Watch their presentation on YouTube and get ready for part two on July 9.

made lands

Through June 26 - Minoosh Zomorodinia: Made Lands at Local Language

I'm very happy that Oakland creative studio and fabrication shop Local Language was able to restart their artist-in-residence program earlier this spring, and the current show by Minoosh Zomorodinia is a real beauty. Zomorodinia began mapping her walks in 2016 when the xenophobic new administration unsettled her visa status. She started transforming the data points on her phone into physical objects both to lay claim to her adopted land and to reference the legacy of colonization in the United States in general and in California in particular. In this exhibition Zomorodinia continues to use those paths to investigate how the process of capturing memories on our digital devices affects our recall of past events, as in the My Ziggurat series in which she builds up layers like the ancient architecture from her Persian heritage and paints the resulting structures with gold leaf as if a monument to memory itself. And while you're in the neighborhood I recommend grabbing a bite at Forage Kitchen across the street and then heading down to West Grand to see Sheila Ghidini's deconstructed/reconstructed furniture at Gearbox Galley, another smart take on the concept of reassembly.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past by Meave Leakey and Samira Leakey. Meave Leakey is foremost a brilliant paleontologist, and she also has a remarkable grasp of sociology, zoology, chemistry, genetics, climate science...the list goes on and on. I loved hearing the stories about her important discoveries in Africa, and she also begins and ends with some strong words about the survival of our species if we don't change our current self-destructive ways.
• Hooligan Sparrow by Nanfu Wang. This documentary about Chinese human rights activist Ye Haiyan is a portrait in courage both of the feminists in China defying their government to demand change, and of the filmmaker herself, who had to stay one step ahead of the police and smuggle her footage out of China.
• For Memorial Day Sunday I took public transit over to the city, picked up cheese-on-a-stick and boba tea from Stix, and had a picnic lunch by a pond in Stern Grove. Highly recommended.
• Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America by Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner. I attended a virtual talk with Meehan and Turner and their University of Chicago Press editor Joseph Calamia on Wednesday and was inspired to immediately buy their book. The talk should be up on the Press's YouTube channel soon.
• To celebrate Pride Month Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society hosted a wonderful talk Wednesday evening with Jennifer Rycenga, one of the founders of Queer Birders of North America. Queer Birds: Community Inclusion, Community Building, and Community Science is available here.
• This year's ODC Theater Festival is all-virtual and features an impressive line-up of artists who showcase how good dance can look on film. I caught the opening night program on Thursday and especially loved the short pieces by the ODC Theater Opportunity Fund Artists.
• In honor of Black Birders Week this last week I recommend seeking out Annie Kaempfer's documentary The Falconer about Rodney Scotts's mission to provide access to nature for his community.
• Yesterday I kidnapped my friend Zach and headed off to McLaren Park for Psychopomp, the new outdoor theater walk from We Players specifically formulated for pandemic times. It was a magical and transcendent experience and then we went and outdoor dined at Red Window and that was most excellent too.

contact traces

Through June 6 - Contact Traces at The Wattis Institute

I always love to see what the graduates of CCA's Curatorial Practice program come up with for their culminating exhibition, and this year they have themed the show around care and directly address the traumas of the pandemic. Featuring works by Derya Akay, Lenka Clayton, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ilana Harris-Babou, and Jenny Kendler, Contact Traces questions how we take care of our selves, our community, our planet. Lenka Clayton's brilliant project 63 Objects Taken from My Son's Mouth, from which the above photograph is taken, highlights both a simple act of protection and also the constant observation (and quick reflexes) that motherhood requires. LaToya Ruby Frazier and Ilana Harris-Babou examine contemporary self-care practices in their pieces, and Jenny Kendler's work illustrates the helplessness one individual might feel against looming climate catastrophe. Meanwhile Derya Akay's joyful stand outside the gallery invites any and all passers-by to help themselves to tea and coffee, fresh fruit and flowers. The collected artworks point to systems that were already unsustainable before the pandemic, and invite us to imagine a more interconnected and just way forward. While you're in the Wattis neighborhood I also highly recommend a stop at Dumpling Time, and the current shows at Hosfelt Gallery featuring a small tribute to our beloved William T. Wiley as well as Isabella Kirkland's extraordinary paintings of Earth's biodiversity and Patricia Piccinini's sculptures and video depicting life considerably more unnatural.

Other things I liked this week:

• The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams by David S. Brown. I enjoyed this less for the biography of Henry Adams himself, who was a little too racist, elitist, and cynical for my tastes, than for the keenly observed history of the times Adams lived through in American and world history. Brown is an excellent writer and really keeps things moving too.
• The House Is Black by Forough Farrokhzad. A revelatory 1963 short film shot documentary-style in a leper colony, Farrokhzad mixes in her own poetry as well as excerpts from world literature to paint an unflinching and deeply human portrait of people isolated from society due to their disease.
• The UC Botanical Garden's YouTube channel, where you can explore the garden from the comfort of your home, has been a balm during the last year. Hoping to visit in person soon too!
• I feasted on many vegan goodies from Sarap Shop and Mackbox and Ube Mami last Sunday at the Oh My Gulay festival and just enjoyed being out and about in the lovely environs of Kapwa Gardens.
• The virtual option for the current Smuin al Fresco season is an excellent alternative for those of us who can't attend the live events, and I very much enjoyed the Pod Peony program last Sunday.
• The Marsh continues to knock it out of the park with their online programming too, with the premiere last night of Candace Johnson's new musical series about the art songs of Black composers, Music to My Ears: Hearing Adolphus Hailstork. She's performing it again tonight if you happen to read this in time, otherwise I'm very much looking forward to future episodes.  

the week that was

Things worth sharing:

1. Anyone who has read King Leopold's Ghost knows that Adam Hochschild excels at making even the most difficult and tragic events of history eminently readable, and his superb essay collection Lessons from a Dark Time illuminates some dark corners indeed but covers some hopeful subjects as well. Related, from The New Yorker: When America Tried to Deport Its Radicals.
2. For the collaborative show How To Fall In Love In A Brothel by Sunhui Chang, Ellen Sebastian Chang, and Maya Gurantz currently on display at Catharine Clark, the viewer is invited to engage with the exhibition at the level of intimacy that feels right to you. Watch a video in the media room, poke a hole in the shoji screens that form the central gallery installation, or schedule an "intimacy hour" to spend time inside said installation.
3. Guerrero Gallery is filled to bursting right now with art from three very exciting local artists: photography from Marcela Pardoa Ariza, paintings and installations from Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, and paintings and sculptural work from Troy Chew.
4. Saturday evening I was at ODC for Signals from the West, a breathtaking amalgam of dance, video and performance art, sound, and more, envisioned by curators Claudia La Rocco, Hope Mohr, and Julie Potter. From their program intro: "Signals from the West is a multi-disciplinary conversation within the international celebration of the Merce Cunningham centennial. We invited ten Bay Area artists from the visual, literary, and performing arts to be in workshop with each other and with the choreographers and former Cunningham dancers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener: an experiment for everyone." More experiments like this please!
5. Meanwhile back in Oakland, more excellent curation last weekend in the form of the film program Unruly Alliances organized by Amanda Nudelman and Rosa Tyhurst at Royal NoneSuch. I caught a screening Sunday afternoon that featured work by Patrick Staff, Connie Zheng, and Yetunde Olagbaju, and the group discussion afterward with Zheng and Olagbaju gave me much food for thought. Much love and restful energizing thoughts to Royal NoneSuch too as they close for a year-long sabbatical.
6. High Life (aka Robert Pattinson in Space) is not without its flaws, but personally I love it when Claire Denis fucks with my head. Other positives include solid black hole science, a spaceship designed by Olafur Eliasson, and a Tindersticks soundtrack.
7. I also did a rewatch of Clio Barnard's fascinating 2010 film The Arbor, in which actors lip-sync to interviews with friends and family of playwright Andrea Dunbar alongside newsreel footage and stagings of Dunbar's work.
8. And if you can squeeze a play into your busy schedule today or tomorrow, I highly highly recommend Nassim at Magic. Just don't read too much about it ahead of time, all of the fun is in the discovery.

niicugni

 

Tonight's find is this trailer for Emily Johnson's piece Niicugni which toured earlier this year to a number of venues around the U.S. including the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York.  From the Baryshnikov's website:

Niicugni—the word—is a directive to pay attention, to listen. Housed within a light/sound installation of handmade fish-skin lanterns, Emily Johnson's Niicugni quietly compels attentiveness, layering multiple dances, live music, stories, and histories into a space occupied by past, present, and future.

See also:

• Baryshnikov Arts Center
• Emily Johnson