"Fruition: Water Holds All Memory"

September 6 - October 18, 2019

Asya Abdrahman
Simone Bailey
Ayanna Bassiouni
Sydney Cain

New art works and deep contemplation on cultural considerations centering a collective intraspection on social values, on built spaces, and on harvesting from an eco-system wrought with trauma, "Fruition: Water Holds All Memory" represents an opportunity to re-member our covenants with self, all Beings, and the Earth.

"Fruition: Water Holds All Memory" features four Black womxn artists working across and cross-platform in visual, new media and performance art to amplify new archival models and creation using elements from the natural world. The exhibit includes painting and assemblage by Asya Abdrahman; film. sculpture and installation from Simone Bailey; paint, fiber art and performance by Ayanna Bassiouni, and works on paper from Sydney Cain also known as Sage Stargate. In addition to the exhibit, the programming will include panel discussions, design cyphers, and special performances from the artists and in collaboration with visiting scholars, curators and makers.

Special thanks for to our community partners Akonadi Foundation and the City of Oakland Human Services Department ReCAST Grant.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Asya Abdrahman
Asya Abdrahman is an Oakland and San Francisco artist/curator, world builder and multi-disciplinary artist who considers the intersection of cultural identity, human rights and the environment in her work. Of Somali, Eritrean, and Ethiopian heritages, she fled her East African homeland during a time of regional wars. Abdrahman’s work promotes cultural and ecological survival, advanced through her use of human, technological, natural, found, and recycled resources. http://www.asyaabdrahman.com/

Simone Bailey
Simone Bailey works with video, performance, sculpture, and photography to explore themes related to violence, agency, and the impulse to grasp the intangible. Her work has been exhibited at The Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, CA), Krowswork (Oakland, CA), Galeria Luis Adelantado (Valencia, Spain), Amory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, CA), the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY), and CDA Projects (Istanbul), among other venues. She lives and works in San Francisco.

Ayanna Bassiouni
Ayanna Bassiouni's relationship to her work is founded in the spiritual. The source that she pulls from is of an energetic principle that leads her into creativity and self discovery. Ayanna is moved by the abstraction of reality and tenaciously work towards the desegregation between the abstract with the linear elements in her work. She considers herself a creator. This responsibility disciplines her life and facilitates the endless flow of synchronicity and magical life experiences.http://www.silverscarabstudios.com/

Sydney Cain
Sydney Cain, aka sage stargate, is a visual artist born and raised in San Francisco. Her work has been a reflection of an unseen reality we experience. Cain produces works on paper largely using dye, lithography, graphite and chalk as emblems of impermanency and transformation. These specific materials act as ciphers to assist decoding these “unseen realities”. Graphite, as the element carbon, represents the possibilities of forming into new allotropes. Chalk, an a carbon based material, commonly formed from the shells of ancient deep marine organisms acts as a medium of of spiral time theories. Though time and earth assures that all changes through stages of death and rebirth, the existence of that essential matter, is everlasting. https://www.sydneycain.com/