Ceremonies: Rituals to Self

SAN FRANCISCO, January 9, 2025 — The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Main Gallery is excited to present Ceremonies: Rituals to Self, a group exhibition curated by PJ Gubatina Policarpio, featuring work by Demian DinéYazhi', Gericault De La Rose, Khari Johnson-Ricks, J Rivera Pansa, and André Bloodstone Singleton. The exhibition will draw upon the life and writings of celebrated writer, editor, and activist Essex Hemphill (1957 – 1995). 

Ceremonies: Rituals to Self opens on February 6, 2025 at the SFAC Main Gallery in the War Memorial Veterans Building and will be on view through May 3, 2025.  

“to love myself as fiercely  
as I have in better days” 
– Essex Hemphill, Better Days 

Essex Hemphill is best known for his urgent and uncompromising writing on the intersections of race, class, and sexuality, informed by his lived experience as an openly gay Black man in America. Ceremonies reflects on the vital themes present in Hemphill’s life and writing: desire, defiance, kinship, and ritual.  

Through multimedia works and new commissions, the artists in Ceremonies explore the intimate and collective acts of ritual—the sensual, the spiritual, and self-initiated—that call to mind Hemphill’s fierce commitment to self-acceptance and possibility.  

“The San Francisco Arts Commission is honored to support this thought-provoking exhibition based on the works of Essex Hemphill, which delves into themes of belonging, kinship, and the collective,” said Ralph Remington, Director of Cultural Affairs. “In a time when division and alienation feel more pervasive than ever, it is our shared connections that become our greatest strength. We take pride in creating an artistic space that is committed to fostering and building community and look forward to welcoming one and all to this meaningful exhibition in the Main Gallery.” 

Gericault De La Rose is a queer trans Filipinx, multidisciplinary artist, and educator based in the Bay Area. De La Rose’s work explores how the Philippines’ colonial trauma is consumed, digested, and regurgitated. Her work plays with histories of spectacles and practices of intimacy in order to regain bodily autonomy. For Ceremonies, De La Rose will present a structure surrounded by their textile works informed by Hemphill’s writings on realness and authenticity. Viewers are invited inside this intimate space to reflect and center themselves. 

Demian DinéYazhi' is an Indigenous Non-Binary Diné transdisciplinary artist. DinéYazhi'’s work is influenced by their ancestral ties to traditional Diné culture, ceremony, matrilineal upbringing, the sacredness of land, and the importance of intergenerational knowledge. In the exhibition, DinéYazhi' will be contributing An Infected Sunset (2018), a video work featuring the artist’s poem reflecting on queer desires, environmental injustice, Indigenous knowledge-making, and collective resistance. 

Working across media including paper, zines, and Black vernacular dance, New Jersey based artist Khari Johnson-Ricks creates work that is deeply concerned with acts of maintenance, training, and care that reference their background as an athlete. Featured in the exhibition will be two large-scale works made with intricate layers of cut and painted paper that touch on queer fellowship and communion.  

Through the use of grids as a form, Oakland-based artist J Rivera Pansa creates work that subverts the capitalist structures and systems as avenues for self-determined networks of kinship. Their work incorporated the hard structures and forms to underscore the connectivity between QTPOC chosen family and diasporic communities. 

André Bloodstone Singleton is an Oakland-based sacred healing, multi-disciplinary artist. His art acknowledges and celebrates his enduring survival as a human being and a proud descendent of the African Diaspora. For Ceremonies, Singleton will design an installation and performance inspired both by Hemphill’s writings as well Singleton’s own lived experience, drawing on Black funerary traditions and memorial rituals as an invitation to contemplate death, mourning, and remembrance. 

“As many of us are feeling heightened challenges during this time, we know that queer and trans lives have always been under siege,” states exhibition curator PJ Gubatina Policarpio. “But we must also remember that we've always had fierce advocates, including Essex. This exhibition is dedicated to Hemphill and many others whose commitment to liberation and queer possibility continue to inspire us all. I’m thrilled to collaborate with and spotlight a new generation of artists who carry this critical legacy forward.” 

“We are honored to work with these talented artists whose powerful contributions invite us to engage deeply and to connect to the intimate that ground us,” said Carolina Aranibar-Fernandez, SFAC Director of Galleries and Public Programs. “In these complex times Ceremonies celebrates the power of ritual, the sensual and boundless possibility.”

EXHIBITION DETAILS 
Ceremonies: Rituals to Self
February 6 – May 3, 2025
SFAC Main Gallery, War Memorial Veterans Building
401 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 126, San Francisco, CA 94102
Wednesday – Saturday, noon – 5 p.m.
Free and open to the public

Opening Reception Details
Thursday, February 6 | 6 – 8 p.m. 
SFAC Main Gallery, War Memorial Veterans Building
401 Van Ness Avenue, Suite 126, San Francisco, CA 94102
No reservation required. Free and open to the public

 

Public Programming Details
For more information, visit sfartscommission.org
All programs are free and open to the public 

Film Screening: Tongues Untied by Marlon T. Riggs  
Thursday, March 6, 2025 | 6:00 pm (Doors at 5:30 p.m.) 
SFAC Main Gallery, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102   

The seminal documentary on Black gay life, Tongues Untied (1989) uses poetry, personal testimony, rap, and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others) to describe the homophobia and racism that confront Black gay men. Directed by Marlon T. Rigg’s to “shatter the nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference.” 

Workshop: We Protect Us 
Saturday, April 5, 2025 | 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. 
SFAC Main Gallery, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102   
Free. Space is limited.  

IMPACT Bay Area leads a workshop tailored to queer and trans folks of color in which participants develop intuition, situational awareness, congruent body language, and verbal skills to deescalate and deter assault and harassment. 

Performance: Take Care of Your Blessings, Fiercely  
Saturday, May 3, 2025 | 2:00 p.m. 
SFAC Main Gallery, 401 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102   

Artist André Bloodstone Singleton presents a memorial ceremony, drawing on Black funerary practices and ritual, in honor of beloved writer and activist Essex Hemphill.  

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About the Curator
PJ Gubatina Policarpio is a curator, educator, and community organizer with over 10 years of experience in arts and culture, leading innovative and rigorous initiatives that engage artists and diverse communities. He has organized exhibitions and programming in San Francsico, New York, and internationally, including Notes for Tomorrow (Independent Curators International, 2021-present), Letter from the Network (Berkeley Art Center, 2024), Under the Same Sun (Edge on the Square, 2023), Notes on Cultural Evidence (slash art, 2023), Conversations on Carlos Villa: World-Making and Cross-Cultural Solidarity (Asian Art Museum, 2022), Tarsal by Metatarsal (Headlands Center for the Arts, 2021), Solidarity Struggle Victory (Southern Exposure, 2019), and Rally: Queer Art and Activism (Dixon Place, 2017). Policarpio is co-founder of Pilipinx American Library, an itinerant library and programming platform dedicated to diasporic Filipinx perspectives. His publications are in the collection of the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Born in the Philippines, Policarpio immigrated to the United States in his early teens. He lives and works in San Francisco. 

About the San Francisco Arts Commission
The San Francisco Arts Commission is the City agency that champions the arts as essential to daily life by investing in a vibrant arts community, enlivening the urban environment and shaping innovative cultural policy. Our programs include: Civic Art Collection, Civic Design Review, Community Investments, Public Art, SFAC Galleries, and Art Vendor Licensing. To learn more, visit sfartscommission.org.