‍What We Carry to Set Ourselves Free is a solo project by interdisciplinary artist Helina Metaferia that engages both the interior and exterior of the museum. The research-based project is an extension of the artist's ongoing By Way of Revolution series, which foregrounds the often-overlooked labor of BIPOC women and gender-marginalized people within activist histories, and their continued contributions within today's social justice movements.

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The exhibition includes a hand made collage replicated as a large scale vinyl mural, a text based installation, a wearable sculpture, a video performance, and an interactive live performance at the museum on October 12. Timed to coincide with the 2024 national presidential election, the objects and performance in this project allude to the contradictory weight and liberation that embodied activist histories can bring, which gets referenced explicitly in the exhibition's title.

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The exhibition developed from the artist's year-long partnership with several Bay Area museums and libraries, utilizing a community organizing framework and process based methodology. This includes archival research into Bay Area protest histories with a local research team, and direct work with Bay Area BIPOC femme residents through the artist's signature By Way of Revolution workshop earlier this year. The resulting archives are combined with the images and words from workshop participants to create all of the artwork and live performances for the exhibition. 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 Stanford University, as a show of solidarity across the Bay Area region.

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Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist working across collage, assemblage, video, performance, and social engagement. Her work integrates archives, somatic studies, and dialogical practices, supporting often overlooked narratives of intersectional identities.

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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. Group exhibitions include Blaffer Museum of Art, Houston, TX (2024); ICA San Francisco, CA (2023); Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (2023); The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD (2023); Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit, MI (2019); and Modern Art Museum Gebre Kristos Desta Art Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2019). Her work is in the permanent collection of institutions including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; KADIST, Paris, France; and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY.

Metaferia received her MFA from Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent residencies include MacDowell, Yaddo, Bemis, Recess Art, Project for Empty Space, 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, Artnet News, and The Art Newspaper.

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Metaferia is an Assistant Professor at Brown University in the Visual Art department, and lives and works in New York City.