Black Magic

Curated by Native Art Department International 

This exhibition marks the West Coast premiere of Black Magic, a collection of videos created by five members of the San Francisco-based Three Point Nine Art Collective. In 2020, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto invited Jason Lujan and Maria Hupfield—aka Native Art Department International—to curate new work for the museum's Shift Key online platform. They invited Three Point Nine Art Collective to create videos investigating protection spells. During this time of universal upheaval, the videos situate the concepts of protection, strength, resilience, and endurance as both individual, embodied practices and also collective acts of creative and cultural production. 

Three Point Nine Art Collective statement:
We focused on our individual methods of protection and self-care during the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racism. With this body of work, we expressed and performed our arcana based on these words: Mediation. Ritual. Run. Strength. Each artist created personal narratives on how they thought of or utilized one of these terms in their lives. The films created by the collective members include personal narratives, contemplative practices, observations and performances. By working collectively and valuing our individuality, we are dismantling the ideas of monolithic experiences within our culture, and creating radical images of ourselves that are nuanced, reflective and poetic. 

Acknowledgment: Video production and editing by Minoosh Zomorodinia 

The Three Point Nine Art Collective is an association of African American artists, curators, and art writers who live in San Francisco, and who came together to draw attention to the city's dwindling Black population. The Three Point Nine Art Collective bears witness to this phenomenon and seeks to reverse it by drawing attention to the historical and ongoing presence of Black artists in the city and creative expression in its Black communities. Through multiple forms of presentation and outreach, we create and claim spaces to display our art work; nurture young artists and develop educational programs for students; and write about and curate exhibitions means to generate productive, cross-cultural dialogues. 

Image credit: Ron Moultrie Saunders, Meditate. Rejuvenate. Regenerate, 2021. (still)