Fight and Flight: Creating a Life in the Bay Area, a recently opened exhibition at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, is a timely examination of the Bay Area’s art ecosystem. It highlights 23 local artists who have withstood the crises of our time: pandemic, gentrification, high cost of living, limited access to resources, insurrection and racist, xenophobic and transphobic violence. Their answers are evident in their works. From them, we get an idea of what it takes to be successful in the Bay Area now. Organized by Jacqueline Francis and Ariel Zaccheo, fight and flight is about the struggle to live and work in the Bay Area where, despite the lack of affordable housing and studio space, the stories of the participating artists are nuanced expressions of the determination to stay.
The subtitle of the exhibition, Creating a Life in the Bay Area, denotes action: craft refers not only to artistic creation, but also to the conception of a creative life, whether or not the artist identifies himself as an artisan. Recent accounts have placed San Francisco and its surrounding urban areas “in the shadow” of the greatest artistic metropolises. The Bay Area sits in the shadowy margins of the art world conversation. Similarly, craftsmanship is often marginalized or footnoted in the canon of art history. Surviving and thriving on the fringes is a drastic act that sometimes requires the will to fight.
Fight and Flight: Creating a Life in the Bay Area is on view at Museum of Crafts and Design until September 10.
Participating artists
Libby Black, Craig Calderwood, Erica Deeman, Cheryl Derricotte, Ala Ebtekar, Liz Harvey, Angela Hennessy, Alexander Hernandez, Liz Hernandez, Cathy Lu, Michelle Yi Martin, Adia Millett, Nasim Moghadam, Richard-Jonathan Nelson, Ramekon O’Arwisters, yétúndé ọlágbajú, Woody De Othello, Related Tactics, Charlene Tan, Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur, Lauren Toomer and Jenifer K Wofford.
For more information, visit sfmcd.org.
Fight and Flight: Creating a Life in the Bay Area is generously supported in part by Anonymous, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation.
