Experiences

BLACK SPACE, is a mixed-media futurism project aimed at launching an investigation into the disappearance of generational Black San Franciscan residents, and was created during America's "racial reckoning" period in 2020.

Using academic research, geographical data, and witness testimony, the evidence gathered by the artist found: the city of San Francisco was historically complicit in Anti-Black erasure, and enacted policies that were directly responsible for this decline.

The evidence collected was turned into a short film, soundscape and wearable art forms that honor and highlight spaces historically held by Black people, all while dispelling the myth of San Francisco being a liberal and progressive city.

Photographed by Jean Melesaine and Afatasi, the work centers two Afronauts investigating spaces in San Francisco and the absence of Blackness in the aftermath of gentrification, cultural erasure, race-based housing discrimination, the war on drugs, redlining, mass incarceration, resource theft, and the complete destruction of the Fillmore's Harlem of the West.

The soundscape work uses sounds of space provided by NASA's Voyager Missions to the Exoplanets, and Mars Rover Missions, as well as the sounds of passing comets, and meteorite showers as a sonic metaphor to engage & challenge listeners.

This sound work also uses quotes from Black San Francisco leaders, as well as dialogue from the KQED documentary film, "Take This Hammer", featuring the Black-American influential writer, James Baldwin.

Visually, conical shapes reoccur within both Afronaut suits (inspired by NASA rockets and jet propulsion engineering which propelled man to the moon). 

The Afronaut helmets are engineered with built-in lighting, and feature Samoan inspired motif cutouts (a nod to the self illuminated bright lives of Black residents, now forced to live in the shadows).

BLACK SPACE

Established in 2020