All photos courtesy of Jemila MacEwan and Campbell Watson. Pacific wind combs through the grasses, feathering them against the earth. I am on the crust of California’s coast in a field circumferenced by pines, looking for the impact crater of a meteorite. The dried growth makes hushing sounds as I walk through the clearing. Close [more]
From Marissa Leshnov’s photo essay “In Liberation’s Wake,” Alcatraz Is Not an Island, 2019. A little more than a year ago, I was part of an all-volunteer committee that brought an Indigenous canoe journey to Alcatraz Island to honor the fiftieth anniversary of the 1969 occupation by Indians of All Tribes, an activist collective advocating [more]
Leaked draft letter that was supposed to be sent out to American companies on the eve of Inauguration Day. Rumor has it that it was rejected by the PR team. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Dear CEO/Manager, We would like to start off by assuring you that we will do everything in our power to let YOU know [more]
The title of this video is taken from a Willem de Kooning quote that opens Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation.” Kota’s previous contribution to the Open Space magazine, “Filibuster,” was commissioned for the publication’s third issue, A slight fluttering of panic, maroon, cerise, the seriousness of leisure. Open Space [more]
Rico Solinas painting in the Bayview. Photo: Austin Leong. My childhood home looks onto the campus of Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA). I recall a flurry of stonewashed jeans, neon hued t-shirts, and Converse sneakers descending on our Miraloma Park neighborhood each weekday morning as students and teachers arrived — a [more]
Jarrel Phillips (left) with Maitre Artiste World Laureate Afewerk Tekle at Tekle’s home in Addis Ababa. Photo: Edwin Johnson. “I am going home to the motherland,” I thought. This was my first trip to Africa — we were headed to Ethiopia, with a layover in Cairo. I awoke at about 4 a.m. to the pilot’s [more]
Kevin Convertito, Apocalypse Oculus, 2020 “Isn’t the museum closed right now?” was the response I usually got when talking about how 2020 has been one of the busiest years of my tenure as a registrar at SFMOMA. Even without the public, the art on view and in storage needed to be regularly checked; art shipments [more]
Citrus Yellow, Bougainvillea Pink, Deb’s Park Green, Succulent Blues. The day after we moved into our apartment on the Northeast side of Los Angeles, I woke up with vertigo. I had no idea what was happening in my body, but my eyes wouldn’t focus and my head was spinning. I couldn’t walk straight; nauseous, I [more]