Please join MoAD on December 9th, 2023 for Sun Home, a performance and activation of Salimatu Amabebe’s current exhibition SON, featuring Zekarias Musele Thompson, Styles Alexander and Gabriele Christian. The performance will be followed by an artist talk with Salimatu Amabebe in conversation with artist Tahirah Rasheed. Light refreshments will be served.

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About the Exhibition

In SON, Salimatu Amabebe opens the door to reconsider the relationship between home, memory, and metamorphosis. The deep red interior, reminiscent of blood, invites reflections on the domestic space as one of close kinship ties, yet subject to dynamic change. The pewter casts in the space draw from the artist’s personal archive to preserve but also to probe the inherited lessons from his father including masculinity & movement. We observe how the inexactness of repetition acts as a productive improvisation of self-creation. Such gaps demonstrate how the memories we hold in our bodies enable performative acts of transfiguration & imagination.

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SON is Amabebe’s first solo museum exhibition.

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This exhibition is co-curated by Salimatu Amabebe & Key Jo Lee, Chief of Curatorial Affairs & Public Programs at MoAD.

About the Artists

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Salimatu Amabebe (they/he), is a trans, Nigerian-American chef and multimedia artist, working in food, film, photography, sculpture and installation. His work focuses on the intersection of food and art while centering community activism, African diasporic culinary traditions and Black queer/ trans liberation. Amabebe is the founder/ director of Black Feast - a culinary event celebrating Black artists and writers through food. Amabebe is a recipient of the 2021 Eater New Guard Award; his work has been featured in Vogue, The New York Times, Eater and in A24’s recent cookbook, Horror Caviar. Salimatu is a recent awardee of The Museum of the African Diaspora's 2023-2024 Emerging Artists Program (EAP).

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Zekarias Musele Thompson (they/their) is an artist based in Oakland, CA and Reykjavik, IS, who is interested in humanity’s conceptual and emotional organizational structures and how we bring them into material form. Through sonic composition, photography, collaborative group practice & performance, writing, and mark-making, they intervene with entrenched historical narratives around individual and collective self-deception and embodied trauma. Their work implores us to relinquish our attachment to identities rooted in dis-integrated mythologies and unnecessary hierarchies, and invites us to expand our capacity to create sustainable futures through self-observation.

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Zekarias has presented work at venues including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Lab, Land and Sea, and Eternal Now in the Bay area — as well as Associate Gallery and Open in Reykjavík, Iceland. They have performed and collaborated with artists such as Pétur Eggertsson, Phillip Laurent, Benjamin Rodgers, Ástríður Jónsdóttir, Joshua Wismans, Lonnie Holley, Zachary James Watkins, Claire Fleming Staples, Cory Todd, James Wallace, Miles Lassi, and Jessica Ackerley. Zekarias is an instigator of the Musele Project, a sound, image, performance, and facilitation practice that encourages deep, empathic listening, and a co-founder of Working Name Studios, a collectively owned and organized arts institution with the mission of building institutional stability and equity for underrepresented creative practices, ideas, and people.

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Gabriele Christian (they/them) is an Oakland-based conceptual artist and descendent of stolen folk experimenting within somatic practices, language, performance composition, video production and community arts facilitation to locate and center BlaQ (Black and Queer) experience, vernaculars and aesthetics as wellsprings for radical futurity. They are a founding member of BlaQ-led performance and land projects: &theruptureisnow; OYSTERKNIFE; and BlaQyard. They’ve presented and collaborated internationally in multimedia productions and processes with choreographers, collectives and companies like jose e. abad/fugitivity labs, LXS DXS, Sherwood Chen, Lenora Lee Dance, SAMMAY, Skywatchers (ABD Productions), Kim Ip, Cornelius Sigourney/OX Productions, Robert Woodruff, Joe Goode Performance Group, Jess Curtis/Gravity, WePlayers, Larkin Street Youth Services, Destiny Arts Center, et hella al. Along with this experience, they've empowered the work and stories of Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) folk, black and brown youth, Tenderloin residents, and LGBTQ+ elders. At the heart of all of their work, they strive to excavate oral tradition and movement as conduits for urgent and equitable conversations around belonging, spirit, desirability, abundance, and care.

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Styles Alexander (they/them) is a movement artist/choreographer/writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Styles Graduated from the Boston conservatory, where they received a B.F.A in contemporary performance and choreography. While attending the Boston Conservatory, Styles performed and collaborated in creative processes with choreographers such as Andrea Miller, Robert Moses, Dwight Rhoden, Doug Varone and others. Styles has also had the honor of performing repertory by Idan Sharabi, Robin Aren, Joy Davis, Chuck Wilt,  Nicole Von Arx. Styles  is a co-founder of RUPTURE, a performance collective based in the San Francisco and New York City.

Styles's choreographic work is a practice of reimagining and communicating with history residing in the body through; fantasy, afro-futurism, and fugitivity. Styles's work has been featured in Urbanity NeXt, DougVarone's DEVICES program, Jess Curtis' Gravity Pop Up Performance project, and the SENSEOBJECT, residency at Berkeley Finnish Hall. Styles is a 2023 DanceWeb Impulstanz Scholarship recipient, under the mentorship of Clara Furey and Lara Kramer.

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‍Tahirah Rasheed, a genuine artistic luminary, intricately intertwines the threads of creativity and impact. Hailing from West Oakland, CA, she emerges as a rising neon artist. Her journey is adorned with accolades, including recognition as a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 honoree and active participation in the 2022 AIDS/LifeCycle—a feat that saw her complete a remarkable 545-mile bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Featured in esteemed publications such as Forbes, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, and ARTnews, Tahirah stands as a beacon of inspiration and creativity. Her passion for the arts continues to burgeon, fueled by a vision where her endeavors contribute to sustainable support for Black art, fostering freedom, love, and prosperity.

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Generous support for the Emerging Artists Program is provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Karen Jenkins-Johnson and Kevin Johnson, and the Westridge Foundation.

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