Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ multimedia exhibition “Conjuring Power: Roots & Futures of Queer & Trans Movements” explores the history and future of queer and trans activism and reveals how creativity has fueled the LGBTQ+ community.
On view through Aug. 23, the exhibit includes murals, documentary photography, contemporary videos and original work by established Bay Area artists such as Ester Hernández, Serge Gay Jr., Tanya Wischerath and Crystal Mason, as well contributions from the Queer Ancestors Project, a San Francisco nonprofit offering free workshops in printmaking, writing and queer history to young artists.
It also features archival material from San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society and audio clips from oral histories gathered by Oakland writer and professor Caro De Robertis for the Elders Project, a collection of hundreds of interviews of people from underrepresented communities across the United States.
De Robertis co-curated the show with Tina V. Aguirre, director of San Francisco’s Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. Their statement at the opening of the exhibit says, “The call is urgent — but not new. Queer and trans movements have deep cultural roots that can inspire and ignite our work for justice. Our histories are tales of magic, brilliance and power. So are our futures. We refuse attempts to erase us from the past, present and future and we do so with grace and defiant joy.”
Among the show’s central works is illustrator-graphic artist Gay Jr.’s “Underground Collective,” a mixed media work depicting mangled bodies climbing, surviving and triumphing, strangely invoking the feeling of death. Conversely, the San Francisco artist’s inspirational “Gay Revolution” poster, from the GLBT Historical Society archives, promotes resistance and offers hope, as does the wall display of Gay Jr.’s giant queer-positive pin buttons with vintage and historical gay liberation designs.
“Diasporic Griefspace,” a print by Arina Sarwari-Stadnyk, depicts a woman blowing bubbles underwater while mushroom-like growths climb upward. It illustrates the show’s “Roots” theme exploring queer lineage and presence within broader historical movements. Sarwari-Stadnyk writes, “The initial feeling when you go underwater: a deafening swell, a gravitational shift. Sounds grow heavy, movements slow. That is queer grief in diaspora.”
Further exemplifying the diverse communities represented in the show, a grouping of linocut prints by Queer Ancestors Project artists includes “weaving the world whole,” which shows an Indigenous woman weaving, by Leddy, a Two Spirit artist; “Badass Butches by the Bridge,” illustrating lesbians in Taiwanese history by Cloud Lu, an East-Asian artist based in Lisjan Ohlone land, now the East Bay ; and “we have always been queer,” an image of Bodhisattvas displaying gender fluidity by Faustina Ngô, a self-described “queer neurodivergent canto-iet Pisces, born and raised on Huichin Ohlone land (Oakland).”
A video display with headsets serves up videos with queer poetry and songs. It also features excerpts from Aguirre and Augie Robles’ “¡Viva 16!” a short documentary featuring the queer Latinx community in the Mission District from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s; black-and-white images from the AIDS era depict suffering and loss.
At the end of the exhibit, the interactive “Invocation for a Dream” by Mason combines video and questions written in large print on the walls. Paper and pens are provided for visitors to answer the evocative queries: “What will you conjure for our communities?” “What seeds do you want to plant for the future?” and “What do you need to dream?”
“Conjuring Power: Roots & Futures of Queer & Trans Movements” is on view through Aug. 23 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., San Francisco. Admission is $10 general; $5 for seniors and students, free for ages 17 and under; visit ybca.org.
