Sights & Sounds is your weekly guide to the Bay Area arts scene. Multidisciplinary artist Yetunde Olagbaju told KALW’s Jen Chien about three awesome events happening around the Bay this weekend.
YAXHIBITION: Art(S)mash at Cesar Chavez Student Center Art Gallery at San Francisco State University through July 28
BODY PARTY X GOOD VBZ atEl Rio Saturday at 3pm
The Black Lives Masquerade on East 14th Sunday at 1pm
Each summer Youth Art Exchange (YAX) interns engage in month-long intensive art practice in a variety of disciplines. This summer, the students engaged with the question, “As artists, how do we contribute to a thriving community?” From engaging with their neighborhoods through documentary, to beautifying the city, and even collaborating with local artists to question the history of resistance in San Francisco, the Youth Art Exchange interns have worked hard to interrogate their place in the San Francisco community and how their art impacts the community around them. YAXhibition: ART(S)MASH at the Cesar Chavez Student Center Art Gallery at San Francisco State University is up through July 28.
OLAGBAJU: We're all in conversation with one another and it feels really generative and good for these young people to have so many sources of support.
BODY PARTY X GOOD VBZ promises to be a "lit n sunny afternoon of Queers + Hip Hop + Trap + R&B, bomb ass BBQ by Jackie ... #goodvbzonly. It's a day party at El Rio bar in San Francisco, Sunday at 3pm.
OLAGBAJU: It was exactly what I was looking for in that moment ... being able to find the queer community that I really wanted to cultivate, especially black and brown folks.
Oakland-based dance artist Rashad Pridgen's Global Street Dance Masquerade presents The Black Lives Masquerade on East 14th, Sunday at 1pm. He describes it as “a creative direct action, performance ritual and community engagement project; come to life through a Pan-Afro-futurist full body masquerade suit. The Black Lives Masquerade honors black lives lost to racial injustice, police brutality and gun violence.
OLAGBAJU: I know for a fact that that is going to be beautiful ... to honor these people who have been lost to violence...
