on view
PAINTING OURSELVES INTO SOCIETY
Safe communities use art and inclusion as a solution, not prisons!
September 21st, 2024 — January 12th, 2025
Curated by orlando smith & rahsaan thomas
Empowerment Avenue and Berkeley Art Center co-present Painting Ourselves into Society. This exhibition is co-curated by Orlando Smith aka “O. Smith” from inside San Quentin Prison and Rahsaan “New York” Thomas, who has returned to society after 22 years inside. It features the works of eight currently and formerly incarcerated artists nationwide exploring what it means for incarcerated people to stay connected to the larger community and to challenge the idea of what healing looks like together.
Alvin Smith, Outside The Rusting Decay Of Confinement, 2024
UPCOMING
Archives Yet to Come
February 8 - May 4, 2025
Opening reception: Saturday, February 8, 3-5pm
Curated by Hannah Waiters
Archives Yet to Come centers the role of artists who employ buried and entangled archives to tell stories, sentiments, pedagogies, and conceptions of historical narratives. The interdisciplinary concept for this exhibit arises from ideas put forth in research like Lisa Lowe's The Intimacies of Four Continents and Toni Morrison's Playing the Dark. The artwork in this exhibition addresses the strategic artistic use of archives as a liberal genre, interrogating notions of preservation to understand identity under conditions of history out of empire.
The artwork in this exhibition poses novel preservation and record-keeping dilemmas. Given the fleeting nature of their chronicling mediums, the artists consider preservation as it relates to community's past, present, and future.
Artists: Lynse Cooper, Lindsey Filowitz, Jy Jimmie Flora, Mary Grahm, Nneka Kai, Charles Lee, Qadir Parris.