Following a successful collaboration on the opera “Harvey Milk Reimagined,” the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the GLBT Historical Society have teamed for an exhibition on queer history that emphasizes joy and that the struggle for liberation is not new.
The YBCA team reached out to San Francisco State University creative writing professor Caro De Robertis about curating the show.
De Robertis writes fiction and nonfiction, including “So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color,” published last year by Algonquin Books.
One of the people De Robertis interviewed for the book was Tina V. Aguirre, director of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. De Robertis thought their visions aligned and asked Aguirre, who has experience working with artists and deep knowledge of local LGBTQ+ history, to work on the exhibition, leading, De Robertis says, to a “blossoming of ideas and possibilities.”
Together, De Robertis and Aguirre organized “Conjuring Power: Roots and Futures of Queer and Trans Movements,” which seeks to emphasize joy and imagination, and how the power and influence of social movements can transcend their impassioned origins.
The exhibition comes as San Francisco is elevating LGBTQ+ history in multiple locations, as with the opening of the Out Museum in late May in Chinatown.
For the YBCA show, the organizers aimed to show people that they are not alone in their struggle and could learn from fights of the past.
“The heart of the exhibit for us from the beginning was this vision of affirming queer and trans past, present and future, and pushing back against the lie that we can be erased and that we haven’t always been here,” De Robertis said.
They noted common experiences among many marginalized groups in the United States and their efforts to push back against oppressive forces.
“There are so many conversations happening in our society right now about the urgency of the present moment and the need to fight fascism,” De Robertis said, “and how many emergencies so many of our communities are facing, especially trans communities and immigrant communities and communities of color. It felt very important to create a space where we could remember collectively together that we do have the tools to fight fascism and to affirm our humanity.”
Along with showing this history through photos, archives and stories, De Robertis said, they and Aguirre wanted to include beautiful art “that can delight us and spark our imaginations and fill us up with joy, so that we have lots of internal resources for the path ahead.”
Artists featured in the exhibition include San Francisco printmaker Ester Hernández, known for “Sun Mad,” her take on the red Sun Maid raisin box replacing the smiling lady with a skeleton as a commentary on how farm pesticides poisoned the water.
Aguirre and De Robertis commissioned work from artists Serge Gay Jr., Crystal Mason and Tanya Wischerath.
To create the large format “Ecstatic in the Light,” Wischerath used spray paint, acrylic, house paint and paper cutouts to make a piece inspired by mushrooms.
“You see fungus but underneath the ground there’s miles and miles of root systems, and they’re connected to so much other plant life, so you’re seeing this really small piece of this interconnected web that’s invisible,” Wischerath said. “That felt related to labor, not just labor in the making of a thing, but labor movements, and labor within movement building.”
With “Conjuring Power,” the curators wanted to focus on giving a feeling of belonging to those under attack, Aguirre said.
“Each of us in this struggle is not alone,” she said. “People attempting to erase us work to isolate us and give us the idea that we are powerless.”
“Caro and I agreed that the opposite is true,” Aguirre said, “that we are many, we are legion and we are able to respond to this moment in a very passionate, powerful way that leads with love.”
This message attracted TT Takemoto, whose short video, “Looking for Jiro,” is humorous even though it’s set in a World War II internment camp. The 2011 video originated from a project with the GLBT Historical Society and Elena Gross, the director of exhibitions and public programs there suggested it be in Conjuring Power.
Takemoto, who mostly painted and did performance art before making this film, came up with the idea for the video after being part of “Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive,” a project developed by E.G. Crichton, an artist in residence at the GLBT Historical Society who invited people into the archive, paired them with someone not well known and invited them to respond.
Crichton suggested that Takemoto explore the life of Jiro Onuma, the only Asian American with records in the archive at the time. Takemoto looked at the few photo albums of the gay man who came to the United States from Japan when he was 19. The pictures of him in an internment camp were a revelation.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve never really thought about queer history and Japanese American history together,’” Takemoto said. “I’ve taught Asian American art history and queer art history, but I’ve never put those things together. I’m fourth generation. My parents and grandparents were incarcerated, so I have a sense of incarceration camp history, but this was completely mind blowing to me.”
Takemoto found the same images come up consistently in documentaries about the camps and wanted to push against that.
“You’re always going to see the same people standing in line, the same grandpa eating food in the dining hall, the same old guy serving the food,” Takemoto said. “So, the performance was about a juxtaposition of queer fantasy in relation to this war propaganda footage.”
Traditional historians often dig into archives looking for facts, said Takemoto, who takes a different approach.
“When you’re a queer person or trans person engaging with the archives, it’s a super-motivated practice and you’re going into it to create a personal connection with the past. It also opens up this space for your own lineage,” Takemoto said. “The overall feeling that I get when I’m in that exhibition is just the joyfulness. There’s so much tactile love and labor in all of the work.”
“Conjuring Power” is at YBCA through Aug. 23.
