USAAF 2024 Kick-Off Event & Where Is Your Body Exhibition
USAAF 2024 Kick-Off Event & Opening Reception: Thursday, April 25, 6:00–9:00 pm
Exhibition Run: April 25–May 24
Closing Reception: Fri, May 24, 6:00–9:00 pm
at SOMArts Gallery, 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 (map)
Where is Your Body highlights the body and its needs as the lowest common denominator for solidarity. Thinking of the body – in its capacities and vulnerabilities – as a site of both violence and resistance, the exhibition gathers women/trans/queer artists of API diasporic experience engaged in practices of the body to explore questions of labor, memory, and desire. Rather than gesturing towards an identarian collectivity, the racial and gendered angle of the exhibition recognizes how systems of disenfranchisement are interlocked, co-constituting, and mutually sustaining.
The participating artists denaturalize and historicize these intersections, reflecting personal and communal responses to the violence of contemporary life that we each endure quietly. Their work, variously negotiating shades of abstraction and figuration, engaging durational embodied processes, or employing documentary aesthetics, maps the bounds and limits of the body and charts attempts at reaching beyond, towards a future, or each other.
Participating Artists:
- Delaney Chieyen Holton (Curator)
- Nibha Akireddy
- Erina Alejo
- Sholeh Asgary
- Bhasha Chakrabarti
- Edi Dai
- Theo/Tina Kashiwagi
- Learning Palestine
- Private Practices Collection (via Kayla Tange and Hailey Loman)
- Thuong Hoai Tran
- Kim Ye
- Rachel Youn
Special Programming:
Saturday, May 4, 1:30–3:30 pm
Artist Workshop with Chia Amisola
Chia Amisola will give a hybrid performance and participatory workshop on digital ritualmaking, gathering, and identity. Chris Giang will offer tea service using handmade ceramic teaware during the event.
Saturday, May 18, 1:30–3:30 pm
Tattoo Ritual with Kelsey Chen
Kelsey Chen will be performing a tattoo ritual for viewing while visitors are offered temporary tattoos. Chris Giang will offer tea service using handmade ceramic teaware during the event.