CUBA: Two Views

 

Afrodescendientes/Afro Cuban Guanabacoa
Photographer Roberto Chile

El Calor del Sol
Steven Daiber and Red Trillium Press

November 13, 2012-April 13, 2013
Rosenberg Library, City College of San Francisco
(Campus is closed for winter break December 20, 2012-January 14, 2013)

These two exhibitions offer a chance to see Cuba from two very different perspectives, from both inside and from the outside. Here in the United States we don’t often get to learn about Cuba’s kaleidoscope of unique history, rich culture and powerful role in the history of the Americas. In 1960 the U.S. instituted a trade embargo against the socialist island nation, a blockade that is still in place, having just been re-insituted by a vote in the United Nations General Assembly. Cuba also maintains some travel restrictions although occasionally, musical groups (including Orquesta Aragon and Septeto Nacional Ignacio Piñeiro de Cuba recent visiors) and others are able to secure both Cuban and U.S. visas in order to perform here. The U.S. embargo limits travel to Cuba to for U.S. citizens to educational and religous purposes. The City College Travel Abroad program leads trips to Cuba during the winter break, click here to learn more.

For the exhibition Afrodescendientes/Afro-Cuban Guanabacoa , prominent Cuban photographer and documentarian Roberto Chile chose to capture life in the community of Guanabacoa in Havana. This collection of photographs was created for the UNESCO International Year for people of African Descent, 2011. In celebration of that year, Afrodescendientes, has been shown in Havana; Madrid, Spain; Buenos Aires, Argentina and in Washington DC.

Over his forty year career as a photographer, Chile has served as the staff photographer (1984-2006) for Fidel Castro, President and Minister of Cuba and has produced bodies of work—films and photography collections—on a range of subjects: Cuban dance, children’s theater, Afro-Cuban religion and Alberto Korda, the photographer who created the famous image of Che Guevara that is seen around the world. Chile has been described as a chronicler of his time, in the words of the Historian of the City of Havana, Eusebio Leal Spengler:

“Roberto Chile has forged a unique image of Cuba, always dignified and luminous. His images make up a universe of faith and spirituality, visible to those who, like him, are able to love. “

El Calor del Sol features artists books from Steven Daiber’s Red Trillium Press Based in Massachusetts, Red Trillium publishes artists books in collaboration with Cuban artists. Daiber travels back and forth between the United States and Cuba and has worked in eight different silkscreen workshops in the city of Havana. Subjects for his books include daily life in Havana, the Cuban Revolution, U.S./Cuba relations, Baseball, gay and transgender life in Havana and daily food rationing—as Daiber travels in Cuba, his experiences, and those of the people he meets and the artists he collaborates with are all possible subjects for his handmade books. Daiber says:

“My work facilitates dialogue between Cuban and foreign artists. Red Trillium Press books create real, metaphorical objects: palaces of the memory in which each element underscores a meaning. The collaborative books co-created with Cuban artists tell their stories of the lived reality in Cuba during the 21^st century.”

Daiber’s recent trips to Havana in 2010 and 2011 included teaching book arts and book collaborations with Cuban artists. Poder (Power), created in 2010, is the first book in a series of three books based on themes Cuban artists feel describe their social and political relationships: power, privacy and waiting. These ideas developed during a number of meetings and conversations in 2007 with the artists. The second book, Privacidad (Privacy), was created in 2011 and the third book, Esperando (Waiting), is planned for  2013.

Cuba Two Views Assignment and Book List

Check back as we add more links!

Cosponsored by the City College Study Abroad Program and the Latin American and Latino/a Studies Department.

Botellas Curadas

Botellas Curadas:
Healing Herbs and Home Remedies

In Collaboration with
Equipo Multicisciplinario de Colombia

September 21, 2012-March 22, 2013
Rosenberg Library, City College of San Francisco

Home Remedies are an essential part of health care systems all over the world. It is estimated that up to 80% of the world population depends on herbal remedies as their primary healthcare. Especially in the less developed world, herbs are a vital health resource for both humans and animals, although alternative medicine is accepted to varying degrees globally.

Home remedies are healing recipes that are based on plants and herbs, spices, fruits or vegetables. Around the globe families treat ailments based on remedies that have been passed down through generations.
Maybe you know of a home remedy that your family or friends use?

Home remedies, by definition, have not been scientifically tested. Although when they are, many remedies are shown to have a scientific basis for their efficacy. Many pharmaceutical drugs are in fact based on plants and herbs. The CCSF Library offers many resources for researching the effects of specific plants—beneficial and toxic. As with pharmaceutical drugs (many of which are based on plants) herbs can have both good and bad effects on your health or that of your pet.

The Multidisciplinary Group of Colombia/
Grupo Muliticisciplinario de Colombia 

Grupo Multicisciplinario de Colombia, a group of artists and scholars wanted to investigate the use of herbs in their native Colombia. They collected home remedies by interviewing fellow Colombians across the country. Following the interview process, they compiled a collection of remedies and recipes and transformed them into the Vademécum pages that you see here in the cases. Following their work in Colombia, the Group next traveled to Cuba to interview Cubans about their use of plants and herbs for health and religious purposes. They collaborated with MAC/SAN, The Contemporary Art Museum of San Agustin in Havana for the Havana Bienal. Because of colonization and globalization, the Group found that many of the same remedies were used in both Colombia and in Cuba although each country had its own rich tradition of herbal use from, indigenous, African and European sources.

In Cuba the Group used video and visual art to share their findings—creating an installation at MAC/SAN, a museum without walls, in Havana where they displayed herbs and offered remedies for the public to sample. To emphasize the popular use of herbal remedies in Cuba, MGC created the Ruta Medicinal/Medicinal Path, silkscreening an image of the Botellas Curadas logo (bottled remedies) on the homes or offices of people practicing herbal medicine.

Here in the Bay Area we are lucky to have access to herbal health practices from all over the world. We can easily find Chinese, Ayurvedic and herbs from other cultures in local stores and markets. We can purchase growing plants from nurseries or plant them from seeds. We could easily create a Bay Area Vademécum of global health remedies.

At the display in the Rosenberg Library Norma Villazana-Price’s
Child Development class shares home remedies used by
their families and communities.

 

 

 

 
Bottom Row: Grupo Multicisciplinario at MAC/SAN for the
Havana Bienal, May 2012.

Assignment: Botellas Curadas Healing Herbs and Home Remedies

What Cannot be Taken Away, Families and Prisons Project

Artist Evan Bissell: About What Cannot be Taken Away

What Cannot Be Taken Away: Families and Prisons Project was a collaborative dialogue looking at the impact of incarceration on families that took place from 2009-2010.  For 5 months I met weekly with four fathers at San Francisco County Jail #5 in the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP) and with four youth who have fathers who are or have been incarcerated and are part of the programs Project WHAT! or Roots (All three programs are run by Community Works West, who made the dialogue structure and project possible).  Not related and never coming into contact with each other, the two groups worked on the same exercises and prompts each week, accumulating ideas, furthering their dialogue and building community in the process.  The workshops centered around processes of reflection, writing, painting, drawing and recorded conversations that were subsequently played for the other group.  During the third month, participants began to design the narrative structures, composition and symbolism present in the pieces.  We then continued our dialogue less frequently – through letters and individual meetings, while I worked from their sketches for the following 3 months.  The timeline, interactive components and resource library offer bits of context to an endemic social problem that has deeply personal effects.

I came to this project through reflections on being a teacher, not through a personal connection to having a parent or child incarcerated.  My interest stemmed from the lack that I was experiencing in schools – the lack of buy-in for students, the lack of compassion and healing as part of learning, and the lack of imagination for dealing with ‘problem’ students.  The treatment of students who step ‘outside the bounds’ reminds me of the current mentality of incapacitation that characterizes the US prison system.  On this, Ruth Gilmore notes, “Incapacitation doesn’t pretend to change anything about a people except where they are.”  Through these mechanisms of separation, our society stokes fear of difference, the unknown, and unseen to create standards of being and living that renders pain invisible except in spectacle.  With an understanding that pain rendered invisible so frequently manifests in violence, WCBTA is an attempt to create an alternative communal education, one that is focused on dialogue, sharing and expression with the intention of positive change and healing.

The power of these portraits lies in each person’s honest confrontation of their experience and the freedom that comes from that.  I continue to be grateful for their wisdom and love – Ben, Cheyanne, Darren, Joe, Liz, Melvin, Sadie, and Vonteak.  Thank you as well to Community Works, Dee Morizono Myers, SOMArts, LEF and Penguin Foundation and the many individual donors.  A special thank you to the Rosenberg Library, Health Education Department, Interdisciplinary Studies, Kate Connell, Donna Willmott, Tim Berthold, Lauren Muller, Amber Straus, Nancy Elliot, Graphic Communications Class, and Lauren Porter for affirming the importance of this process.

-Evan Bissell, 2012
http://www.evanbissell.com

What Cannot be Taken Away Assignment and Book List

BYOB(ag)

BYOB(ag):
Creating Nutritional Awareness/Design for Social Impact

Project: Value Reduction and Stenciling

Class: Basic Design 125A
Instructor: Nancy Mizuno Elliott
Recycling an Assignment:

Last year I stumbled upon this project when perusing the blog Apartment Therapy. It was sponsored by AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) and originated from Moore College of Art and Design. I was compelled to “borrow” the concept; it had the rare combination of being both politically relevant and very cool.

Also, I’m a bit competitive. I had a feeling that first year CCSF design students could handle this project; even though it was initially intended for junior level graphic design students attending a private art program. My hunch was right.

Come into the Rosenberg Library and see what CCSF students produced!

Coloring Outside the Lines: Black Cartoonists as Social Commentators

November 11, 2011-April 7, 2012

This exhibition, curated by Kheven LaGrone includes the work of:

Jerry Craft
Barbara Brandon-Croft
Brumsic Brandon
Keith Knight
Nate Creekmore
Cory Thomas
Darrin Bell
Morrie Turner
Makeda Rashidi

Keith Knight

The best cartoons expose some truths and, to quote the Bible, “the truth will set you free.”               -Kheven LaGrone

I’ve been censored too many times to mention. Mostly in the Bay Area.
-Keith Knight

When his art is released, the artist has no control over how a viewer may react.  Not everyone will understand what the artist is trying to say or do and in most cases an artist will displease as many people as he pleases.
–Nate Creekmore

DURING “LUTHER’S” VERY EARLY DAYS, HATE MAIL UNWITTINGLY SUPPLIED ME WITH A MOTHERLODE OF MATERIAL.   
–Brumsic Brandon

I don’t feel that I’m any more or less of an outcast than any other individual.  No one is without his or her quirks. Maintaining very much focused on the idea that we (people, groups, individuals) are all equally absurd.
-Nate Creekmore

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Download: Coloring Outside Assignment and Book List

The Men Along the Shore and the Legacy of 1934

October 21, 2011-April 1, 2012

The Men Along the Shore and the Legacy of 1934.

At the beginning of the 20th century, employers launched an all-out campaign to crush the labor movement. Union organizers were portrayed as un-American in the media, and union members were subjected to a reign of terror, including vigilante violence, mass arrests, deportations, and lynchings. Radical union leaders were driven underground and many workers were forced to join company unions.

In 1934 the workers fought back. In May, maritime workers went on strike, shutting down the entire West Coast. A new labor movement was born. It was a birth paid for in blood. Police and vigilantes opened fire on strikers and demonstrators, killing and wounding workers in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and San Pedro.

This unique display of historical photographs, graphic arts, newspapers, artifacts and documents was originally commissioned by the Longshore Division of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union to portray the union’s origins in the historic 1934 strike. Historical materials were gathered from the ILWU library in San Francisco and union sources in San Pedro, Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle. Additional items were obtained from museums, historical societies, public libraries, universities, and the personal collections of ILWU members.

The exhibit pays tribute to those who sacrificed and gave up their lives so that future generations could live in a more just world and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

D0wnload: IlWU Assignment and Bibliography

Link to the Labor and Community Studies Department at City College of San Francisco

 

Reduce.Reuse.Recycle.Recreate

April 20-November 4, 2011
2nd Floor, Rosenberg Library, City College of San Francisco

A Gallery Full of Reclaimed Junk

Looking around the 2nd floor gallery at the Rosenberg Library, can you guess what these materials looked like when someone dropped them off at the dump?

Recology’s Artist in Residence Program at the San Francisco Dump

The Artist In Residence Program at Recology San Francisco is an innovative program that inspires and educates people about recycling and resource conservation by providing local artists with access to materials, a work space, and other resources at the Recology Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center.

Trash to Treasures
Since 1990, artists have worked in a large, well-equipped studio next to the Recology Transfer Station west of Highway 101 near Monster Park in San Francisco. The Transfer Station is located within a 44-acre property that includes several recycling facilities and the Public Disposal Area (also known as “the dump”).

Art is created from what would have been sent with the rest of San Francisco’s trash to landfills across the Bay or recycling plants across the nation.

Check out the Library’s resources on:
Art Garbage Recycling Environment Environmental Justice

Download the Recology Assignment on the R.R.R.R Library Exhibition

Go to Recology’s website to learn more about their special events!

Revolutionizing Memory, Constructing the Future

March 16-September 16, 2011

Stencil Art from Buenos Aires, Argentina

Rick Kappra describes his photographic exhibition
in the Rosenberg Library:

In the summer of 2007 I went to Buenos Aires to study Spanish for two months.  I knew some of the history, but I didn’t know the details.  I was curious and wanted to learn more.

I found that people were very willing to talk about politics in Argentina, unlike in the United States, where political discussions are not considered appropriate for “polite” conversations, or where our political discourse is often more mythology than fact.  In Argentina, discussions of politics were everywhere – in my Spanish classes, on TV, and among friends.  People were not afraid to talk about the dirty war, the 30,000 or more Argentines who were “disappeared”, the economic collapse or the things that caused it.  After 25 years of being afraid to speak, Argentines believed in the power of their voices, their memories and their political action.

This belief in the importance of political action was reflected in the daily protests that closed streets and schools and shut down train lines.  Direct action seemed to be the greatest political weapon that modern Argentina had, or perhaps its last resort.

I first discovered stencil graffiti in the neighborhood of San Telmo.  I believe it was my second day in Buenos Aires.  “Soy puto y soy feliz” – ‘I’m a fag and I’m happy’ was one of the first that I saw.  “Besa a quien quieras” – ‘Kiss whomever you want’, was another.  Among this collection of powerful statements of queer militancy, were teddy bears and other whimsical figures.  It was my introduction to a world of expression I quickly learned to love.  As I went about documenting it, it became like a treasure hunt.  Each piece of graffiti revealed one more aspect of the tremendous fight Argentines were waging to free themselves from their past while not forgetting it.  Queer rights, women’s rights, class struggle and calls for prosecution of those behind recent human rights violations were some of the many issues that were expressed through the stencil graffiti.  The struggle to save their schools, a cause of many of the street protests, appeared alongside other rallying cries. The graffiti was simple, direct and for me as a learner of Spanish as a second language, easy to understand and digest.  In its simplicity lay its power.

Rick Kappra, Photographer
ESL Instructor, Civic Center Campus, City College

Find Information on:
Argentina and Street Art through the City College Library

Occupation! Economic Justice as a Civil Right in San Francisco, 1963-1964

November 10, 2010-April 15, 2011

Beginning in 1963, massive civil disobedience actions swept through San Francisco. Demonstrations focused on discriminatory hiring practices that excluded African Americans from employment equal to white workers and shook the city’s liberal image of itself.

Featuring photographs by Phiz Mezey (including above), this collaborative exhibition presents selections from the Labor Archives and Research Center at SFSU and the archives at the San Francisco History Center of SFPL. Curated by Nancy Arms Simon.

Go to the library for great resources on economic justice:

Resources on the Civil Rights Movement and Economic Justice

Download the Library Exhibition Assignment:
Occupation! Economic Justice Library Assignment

Mexico: 2010.1910.1810

Independence and Revolution: Two Anniversaries
For Latino/a Heritage Month: a display in the 4th floor Rosenberg Library reference case displays two new serigraphs by local artists Amy Diaz-Infante and Juan Fuentes.

“At Practice” by Amy Diaz-Infante, 2010

“Duality” by Juan Fuentes, 2010

Maria Pinedo, John Adams Library staff member, created the display. In honor of the 100 year anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, she produced a timeline that describes the events of the Revolution between 1910-1920. Maria also created a resource list with books and websites on the Mexican Revolution.

Library Resources on the Mexican Revolution