Go West: African American Lives and Westward Migration
Artist Talk and Performance at the Southeast Community Center
video still from Go West
Monday, August 12, 2024 | 8:00 p.m. (Doors at 7:30 p.m.)
Southeast Community Center, Alex Pitcher Pavilion and Amphitheater, 1550 Evans Ave, San Francisco
Free and open to the public
Join artist Trina Michelle Robinson for an artist talk followed by a special performance featuring her new video work Go West!
Projected onto the exterior of the Southeast Community Center’s amphitheater and accompanied by musician Christopher Lowell Clarke and dancer Audrey Johnson, Go West looks at the migration of Black people to California from not only the South, but also the East coast and Midwest. Using the large-scale projection as a metaphor for taking up space, this piece celebrates the drive felt by so many to travel far from home in search of new opportunities, adventure, and also to simply rest.
A conversation between Trina and author, curator, and educator Jacqueline Francis will take place inside the Alex Pitcher Pavilion prior to the performance. Refreshments provided.
*Note: The performance takes place outside in the SECC Amphitheater. Please dress warmly.*
This program is organized in conjunction with Praxis of Local Knowledge, a group exhibition featuring four artists, including Robinson, creating work that explores their ancestral stories and grappling with these memories today. The exhibition is on view through Saturday, August 17, 2024 at the San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery. Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 12:00-5:00 pm
Artist Bios
Trina Michelle Robinson is a San Francisco based visual artist. Her work has been shown at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Art Commission Main Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery, Minnesota Street Project, and New York’s Wassaic Project and is currently included in the prestigious triennial Bay Area Now 9 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She had a solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), a Smithsonian Affiliate, as part of their Emerging Artist Program 2022-23. Robinson is a 2024 SFMOMA SECA Award finalist and her print series Ghost Prints of Loss is included in the book Is Now the Time for Joyous Rage? published in 2023 by CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts and Sternberg Press. She previously worked in print and digital media in production at companies such as The New York Times T Magazine, Vanity Fair and Slack before receiving her M.F.A. from California College of the Arts in 2022.
As a storyteller, she traveled the country telling the story of exploring her ancestry with The Moth Mainstage at Lincoln Center in New York, in addition to touring with them on stages in San Francisco, Portland, OR, Omaha, NE and Westport, CT. Her first story aired on NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour in 2019 and her second in earlier this year. www.trinamrobinson.com
Christopher Lowell Clarke is a trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. Christopher's professional performance experience includes playing with the East Coast Jazz Festival Fish Middleton Rising Star Band in Baltimore, Carnival Cruise Lines Main Orchestra and Jazz Chair, the Johnny Nocturne Band at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Orvieto, Italy, his own quintet at the Fillmore Jazz Festival in San Francisco, and the Contemporary Music Orchestra at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He has also performed with Eddie Marshall and Holy Mischief, the Marcus Shelby Big Band, the Howard Wiley Quintet, and the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra. Christopher currently serves as a teaching artist for SF Jazz/Oakland Public Conservatory After School Jazz Program, Oakland Public Conservatory, SF Jazz’s Jazz In Session Program, Oaktown Jazz Workshop, and the Lafayette Summer Jazz Camp. Christopher has released several albums, including The Swooper (Lifeforce Records 1018) and multiple albums with bassist Dewayne Oakley on Naki-Do Records. www.christopherlowellclarke.com
Jacqueline Francis is the author of Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America (2012) and co-editor of Romare Bearden: American Modernist (2011) and Is Now the Time for Joyous Rage? (2023). Francis’s curatorial projects include side by side/in the world (San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery, 2019), Adia Millett: You Will Be Remembered (Galerie du Monde—Hong Kong; 2022), Fight and Flight: Crafting a Bay Area Life (Museum of Craft & Design—San Francisco; 2023), and Sargent Claude Johnson (Huntington Art Museum—San Marino, California; 2024). She is Dean of Humanities and Sciences at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
Audrey Johnson is a queer, Black, mixed-race dance artist and plant worker with roots from Detroit, Michigan/Anishinaabe land, currently based in Oakland, CA/Ohlone land. Audrey’s performance, choreographic, and teaching work experiments with improvisation and embodied time travel, in refusal of colonized time and space. She has shown performance work in the San Francisco Bay Area and Detroit, and has performed in the companies of artists Gerald Casel, Jennifer Harge, Biba Bell, Detour Dance, Stephanie Hewett, among others. As an educator, she has taught dance as embodied practice at community spaces, dance centers, and youth programs, and is a current faculty member with the LINES BFA Program through Dominican University. She holds a BFA in Dance from Wayne State University and was a co-founder of Collective Sweat Detroit. www.audreyjohnson.space
Program Partner
