Please join us Sunday, February 18 from 2–4 pm for a book signing to celebrate Adrian L. Burrell's first monograph, Sugarcane & Lightning (Minor Matters Books). Burrell, who grew up surrounded by three generations of his family in Oakland, has researched his family’s experiences in Louisiana and traced back further to their origins in West Africa. His monograph combines his writing, photographs, and film footage with found letters and personal correspondence, pages from family albums, and stills from home videos, making fluid geographies and collapsing time.

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BIO

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Adrian Burrell is a third-generation Oakland artist utilizing photography, installation, and experimental media. His work examines issues of race, class, and intergenerational dynamics, inviting moments where collective storytelling could be a site for remembering.

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Burrell has lived and worked on four continents. He is a US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA, film) and Stanford University (MFA, Department of Art & Art History). At Stanford he lectured, served as Black Graduate student community outreach chair, and was a visiting artist with Stanford's Institute for Diversity in Arts.

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He was in residence at the Black Freedom fellowship in Salvador, Brazil, in 2023, was a resident at SF FILM, was a YBCA creative cohort fellow between 2021 and 2022, and was selected for the renowned Black Rock residency in Dakar, Senegal, in 2022.

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His solo exhibition, "Venus Blues," opened at the Minnesota Street Foundation 20,000 square foot space in October 2023. His first solo exhibition was on view at the ICA San Jose, California, from September 2022 - February 2, 2023.

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Burrell's work has been featured in the New Yorker, Black Star Film Festival, PopUp Magazine, Photo Ville, the Pingyao International Photography Festival China, and SXSW, among others. In 2021, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art acquired "It's After the End of the World Don't You Know That Yet." This collective self-portrait examines normalized violence inflicted on black lives. He received the San Francisco Camerawork Jurors Choice Award in 2019. Burrell is in development on his first feature film, Cousins, which was the recipient of the 2022 SF film Rainin Grant. His first monograph, Sugarcane and Lightning, is currently available for order through Minor Matters Publishing and the MoAD bookstore.

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Photos courtesy and © Adrian L. Burrell from Sugarcane & Lightning (Minor Matters Books).