About
Image: Helina Metaferia, The Willing(KADIST), 2024, live performance, 1 hour, image courtesy of the artist and KADIST
Interdisciplinary artist Helina Metaferia will perform a new iteration of The Willing, a live performance that activates several of her sculptures on view within her solo exhibition at the museum, What We Carry To Set Ourselves Free. During the performance, Metaferia will engage in song, movement, and text while leading a procession throughout the museum and nearby landmarks, including Yerba Buena Gardens and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. This is a culmination of Metaferia's one year research in Bay Area protest archives, with community engagement across several institutions. She will be joined by Bay Area collaborators, including musical guest August Lee Stevens, and former participants of her By Way of Revolution workshop, a performance-as-protest gathering for BIPOC femmes, which occurred earlier this year. The performance will be followed by a conversation about the performance and correlating exhibition between Metaferia and Louisa Gloger, executive director of Bolinas Museum.
Please note: this is a one hour participatory performance that involves the audience moving through the museum and walking a one block radius. Comfortable clothing and shoes is advised. Light refreshments will be provided during intermission between performance and talk.
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Helina Metaferia (@helina.metaferia) is an interdisciplinary artist working across collage, assemblage, video, performance, and social engagement. Metaferia’s solo exhibitions and projects include Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2024 and 2017); Center for Book Arts, New York, NY (2024); RISD Art Museum, Providence, RI (2022-2023); and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2021-2022). Her work was included in the 2023 Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates.
Metaferia received her MFA from Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Residencies include Recess, Project for Empty Space, MacDowell, Yaddo, Bemis, and Silver Art Residency. Her work has been written about in publications including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine, and ArtNews. Metaferia is an Assistant Professor at Brown University in the Visual Art department, and lives and works in New York City.
Louisa Gloger is the Executive Director of Bolinas Museum (@bolinasmuseum). She spent her formative years in Bolinas. Inspired early on by the flourishing arts program at the Bolinas-Stinson School, she graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in Art History. She worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco, founded a cancer awareness non-profit, and a fine art consulting business, among other pursuits. Gloger is passionate about art and education and serves on the board of directors of Headlands Center for the Arts and the Smithsonian’s Archive of American Art. She and her husband are avid art collectors and supporters of Bay Area arts organizations.
August Lee Stevens (@augustleestevens) is an independent artist using music and video to invite conversation through her work. Her dynamic sound merges the lyrical rawness and simplicity of Folk songs with the lush melodies and vocals of Neo-Soul. She uses music to cut into the heart, inviting you into the most intimate moments of her life. Her music showcases that there is strength even in vulnerability, and through the sharing of music hopes to provide a platform for healing.
Links:
Website: augustleestevens.com
Spotify: August Lee Stevens
Instagram: @augustleestevens
Features:
By Way of Revolution Workshop Participants & Performers for The Willing:
Erina Alejo, Kayla Janelle, Maia Mel-Lisa Ellen Jackson, JiaJing Liu, Leila Lurie, Hop Nyugen
This program is made possible by the generous support of Pamela and David Hornik.
Organizational partners for this project include Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bolinas Museum, and Stanford University, with library research conducted at San Francisco Public Library, Stanford University library, and Berkeley University library. Iterations of What We Carry to Set Ourselves Free are simultaneously being exhibited at Bolinas Museum and Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University, as a show of solidarity across the Bay Area region.
This program is presented in conjunction with Thrive@MoAD, a free community day sponsored by Kaiser Permanente. Additional support is provided by the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District.
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