Night Light: Multimedia Garden Party 2016

One-night-only, Saturday, July 23, 2016, Night Light: Multimedia Garden Party blankets SOMArts in luminous art installations, including audiovisual performances and performative interventions by 22 artists, and digital and cinematic projections and multimedia installations by 44 artists. The galleries open at 8:30pm and performances begin at 9pm and last until the event ends at midnight.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT TONIGHT’S EVENT:
Advance tickets are officially sold out!

Doors open to ticket holders at 8:30pm. We will be selling a limited number of walk-up tickets at the door for $15.

If capacity permits, we will release a limited number of tickets at the door each hour until the end of the event for cash purchasers–– no one will be turned away for lack of funds. We may need to turn people away during times when the building is at capacity.

If you don’t get a ticket online, the later you come, the better your chance of getting in as crowds tend to thin as it gets late & there’s more space for others to join.

SOMArts is wheelchair accessible, but not scent free. There will be MANY flickering lights tonight. Bike parking is available. Our restrooms are multi-stall and all-gender. There is a cash bar & pupusa vendor on site. Directions are here.

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Night Light is presented in conjunction with The Black Woman is God: Reprogramming that God Code, on view in SOMArts’ Main Gallery July 7-August 17, 2016. The Black Woman is God and Night Light will present a combined total of over 100 Bay Area visual and performing artists from a variety of cultural backgrounds exploding expectations for identity-based work.

“Night Light takes on the theme of code-breaking in order to reinvent, deconstruct, reshape or reclaim identity-based codes that determine how we are perceived or expected to behave,” said co-curator Carolina Quintanilla, who worked with Melorra Green and Karen Seneferu to select a curatorial theme that expands the conversation begun by The Black Woman is God to artists of other identities.

Quintanilla, Green and Seneferu worked together to curate SOMArts’ sixth annual Night Light event.

This year Night Light centers a series of robust, sometimes overlapping performances and site-specific art installations that activate SOMArts’ post-industrial space with the spirit of activism, embodying the idea of “code-breaking” in opposition to the status quo and unifying artists and audience in pursuit of liberatory self-determination. Night Light invites audience members to engage an artistic conversation about the relationship between identity, behavior, and lived reality. As with The Black Woman is God, Night Light exhibiting and performing artists proudly set the scope for their own existence.

A total space activation of the Center at 934 Brannan Street, Night Lightutilizes SOMArts’ indoor space and grounds, including the garden path, street-side loading bay, theater, Bay Gallery and Main Gallery to display a multitude of applications of light in art.

Curated by Karen Seneferu and Melorra Green, The Black Woman is God: Reprogramming that God Code celebrates the Black female presence as the highest spiritual form and challenges viewers to do the same. Over 60 Bay Area artists refocus the audience on the vital contributions of Black women as artists and social change-makers throughout history. For more information about The Black Woman is God, as well as a distinct list of visual artists whose work will also be on view in that exhibition during Night Light, visit www.somarts.org/theblackwomanisgod.

Night Light musician Zakiya Harris. Photo by Bethanie Hines.

Main Stage MC Zakiya Harris, along with her dynamic band Elephantine, will rock the Night Light stage with their mix of soul, hip hop, electronica and afro-beat music. A veteran of the East Bay music scene, Harris has shared the stage with Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Digable Planets, Gil Scott-Heron, and Tatiana Ali. She’s also been featured at Art Basel, Life is Living, The New Parish, Brick and Mortar, Cafe Du Nord and The Legendary CBGB’s Gallery. A shapeshifter herself, Harris brings her genre-blending and code-breaking music and performance to the Night Light stage.

Yetunde Olagbaju’s NUTRITIVE/POUR #1. Digital video still. Image courtesy of the artist.

Yetunde Olagbaju’s NUTRITIVE/POUR #1 explores the intersections of race and gender with notions of care-giving and tenderness through site-specific video installation and performance. Connecting to the themes of The Black Woman is God exhibition, Olagbaju said, “My drive to create connects to exploring the godliness within myself and those who have often— whether through oppression or lack of self-understanding— been stripped of connection to their own godliness.”

The Bay Area Light Brigade is part of a national coalition of artists formed during the 2011 Wisconsin protests to create bold and luminous messages for social justice. Believing in the power of the arts as a tool to galvanize social change, The Bay Area Light Brigade focuses on raising awareness of the violence faced by Kurdish people in Turkey today. For Night Light, The Bay Area Light Brigade will utilize SOMArts’ post-industrial space to project text and images to provoke conversations around human rights and the power of artful activism.

Performance and visual artist Julz Hale Mary will bring their stereotype-exploding photography to Night Light with “The Routine of Forgetting.” A veteran of the San Francisco drag scene, Hale Mary uses fashion, performance and self-portraiture to explore their high femme and boi genders and to expose the absurdity of polite society.

Julz Hale Mary, “Patron Saint of the Gaslit: He Will Protect Them He Will Grope Them,” digital photography. Image courtesy of the artist.

Inspired by the natural world and her engagement with environmental art and activism, multimedia artist and photographer Minoosh Zomorodinia describes her code-breaking work as, “somewhere between performances, photography, site-specific installation and video.”

Florida Waters and Dezi Soléy’s interactive, multimedia installation “Femmetopian” will invite audience members into a collective cleansing ritual to envision the possibility that liberation isn’t somewhere far away but something that can be created together every day.

Dezi Soley and Florida Waters, “Femmetopian,” digital video still. Image courtesy of the artist.

NIGHT LIGHT EXHIBITING ARTISTS:
AAU Architecture/Agglab
Bushmama Africa
bárbara alexandra
Onyinye Alheri
Bay Area Light Brigade
Ana Bedolla with Aaron Grobler
Lorraine Bonner
Andrea Castillo
Christy Chan
Toshia Christal
Irina Contreras
Ian Davis & Sotheara Yem in collaboration with Dom Jones
Bronwyn Dexter
Carmina Eliason
Will Erokan
Balitronica Gomez
Shylah Pacheco Hamilton
Jazz Monique Hudson
Ripley Jene
Melissa Koziebrocki
zàira lee, Aidan Bosanko, and SPELLING
Julz Hale Mary
Kristine Mays
Kathleen McDonald and Jay Ruland
Gabby Miller
Yetunde Olagbaju
Lala Openi
Annah Anti Palindrome, Ariel Springfield and Malic Amalya
Yuri Pop
Frida Precariat
Renee Rodriguez
Sophia Ronen
Safety First
Malik Seneferu
Tosha Stimage
Sunshine Velasco & Sultry Lapel
Blue Wade
Florida Waters & Dezi Soléy
Leila Weefur
Renee Yanez
Kit Young
Minoosh Zomorodinia

NIGHT LIGHT PERFORMING ARTISTS:
Sharmi Basu and Alexander Brown
Blue:Bawl (zàira lee, SPELLLING and Gabriel Christian)
Leland Bronson and Alexander Brown
DROUGHT SPA
Lisa Evans and Sabaa Zareena
Global Street Dance Masquerade
Zakiya Harris and Elephantine
Monica Hastings–Smith and Yafeu Tyhimba
Sea Heikes, Michael Gendreau and Chris Musgrave
Jazz Monique Hudson
Dom Jones
Impuritan and Maso Tachibana
Ripley Jene
LeVICE
Kolmel W. Love
MelYel
Rayla Meshawn
Osunfemi Wanbi Njeri
Nuance the Vicarious
Quiet Lightning
Sadusssa
DJ Sake One

Night Light was curated by Melorra Green and Carolina Quintanilla with support from Karen Seneferu. The Black Woman is God was curated by Karen Seneferu and Melorra Green.

Vodka, beer + kombucha for Night Light provided by Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Ninkasi Brewing + Clearly Kombucha.

CALENDAR LISTINGS

Night Light: Multimedia Garden Party
Saturday, July 23, performances 9pm–midnight, galleries open at 8:30pm
SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan St. (at 8th)
Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door. Tickets: http://nightlightparty2016.eventbrite.com
More info: https://somarts.org/nightlight2016

The Black Woman is God: Reprogramming that God Code
Exhibition July 7–August 17, 2016.
Gallery hours: Tues–Fri, 12–7pm and Sat, 12–5pm. Opening reception with performances and artist talks July 7, 2016, 6–10pm.
SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan St. (at 8th)
Free admission during gallery hours and opening reception
More info: https://somarts.org/theblackwomanisgod

SOMArts’ exhibition programs are generously supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission and The San Francisco Foundation, and are sponsored in part by a grant from Grants for the Arts.

Community partners include Frameline, Museum of the African Diaspora, Brava Theater, and San Francisco International Arts Festival.