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

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

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

Marion Brown and the Department Store Employees Union

Rosenberg Library, 4th Floor Reference Case
February 1-September 9, 2011

In 1936, Marion Brown, a 19 year old clerk at Woolworth’s Department Store, was radicalized by the unjust firing of several workers and went on to found the Department Store Employees’ Union. Drawing by Giacomo Patri

Photo Left: Marion Brown, photographer unknown
Photo Right: Emma Adami, Rose Lancilotti. In an effort to tell their story  to a maximum number of passersby, these two strikers used placards understandable to many a patron of the five-and-ten-cent store at 1343 Stockton St. where the two are on picket duty along with 450 other striking employees of Woolworth and Newberry stores. In case you haven’t guessed, one sign’s in Chinese; the other in Italian. Aug. 13, 1937. Photographer unknown.

The 1934 San Francisco General Strike inspired a wave of union organizing in the city: unions spread to the city’s warehouses, hotels, street cars, garment workers, and department store clerks.  Women played key leadership roles in many of these struggles.

In 1936 the F.W. Woolworth Company warehouses were organized by the International Longshoremen’s Association.  When the company refused to recognize the union, warehousemen went out on strike and also set up an informational picket outside the main San Francisco Woolworth store at the corner of Fifth and Market.

Invited by I.L.A. strikers, nineteen year-old Marion Brown and six other store employees attended a Sunday meeting at the San Francisco Labor Council to hear more about the issues.  Observed by a Woolworth’s assistant manager, all seven were summarily fired upon returning to work Monday morning.  An angry Marion Brown promptly joined the picket line outside.

When the Woolworth Company decided to end its warehouse strike I.L.A. negotiators made re-employment of the seven fired store employees a settlement condition.  But Marion Brown recalled years later that F.W. Woolworth Co. and she were in perfect agreement at that point in time – they didn’t want to put her back in her old job and she didn’t wish to go back, “under any circumstances.”  She went on instead to help found the Department Store Employees’ Union (later Retail Clerks Local  1100)

Chartered in 1937, the Department Store Employees’ Union rapidly organized the major department stores in the city, including the biggest, the F.W. Woolworth Store at Fifth and Market Streets.  Union’s often used street theater to capture public attention and support for their cause.

On the line in front of Penny’s Department Store, 1939, Photographer unknown

Check out Giacomo Patri’s pioneering graphic novel “White Collar”

Download a List of Library Resources on Women and Labor

Download Marion Brown Assignment

Exhibition and all photos from the Labor Archive and Research Center at San Francisco State University. Check out their Facebook Page.

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

Welcome to My Global Hood: What is Environmental Justice?

April 20-November 5, 2010

ArtsChange And the CCSF Library collaborate to present this project created by Richmond, CA youth working with artist-in-residence, Milton Bowens to explore what environmental justice means to youth in Richmond and how the “art making process represents an opportunity to place themselves in the center of the formulation of a world they will inherit…”

How do you define environmental justice?

Here’s how the EPA does it: “Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.”

Read these ebooks online! (Login with CCSF I.D.)

Eco-Justice– the Unfinished Journey

The Human Right to a Green Future Environmental Rights and        Intergenerational Justice

Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

More Library Resources on Environmental Justice

Links:
Notes from ArtsChange: Curatorial statement

Milton Bowen’s Website

CCSF Sustainability Report

For more information contact Kate Connell at kconnell at ccsf.edu

Sue Ko Lee and the National Dollar Stores Strike of 1938

March 2-September 10, 2010

Rosenberg Library, 4th Floor Reference Case
A collaboration with the Labor Archives and Research Center at San Francisco State University

In the 1930s, the garment industry was the largest employer in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Here the workers continued to toil under sweatshop conditions, earning wages ranging from $4 to $16 a week. Sue Ko Lee, a button hole machine operator, worked in the National Dollar Store factory for 25¢ an hour. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) began an organizing drive in Chinatown to stem the flow of work from union shops to Chinese manufacturers and established the “Chinese Ladies Garment Workers Union Local 361.”

Under the skilled leadership of ILGWU organizer Jennie Matyas, a successful union election was won at the National Dollar Stores factory for better wages in 1938. The owner, a prominent Chinatown businessman, promptly sold the facility to Golden Gate Manufacturing, a “new” company headed by the factory manager and another former National Dollar Store employee. The change of “ownership” allowed management to set aside the hard won contract. Seeing this move as an attempt to break the union, the workers went on strike, picketing the factory and its three retail stores in San Francisco for 15 weeks. During the struggle, Sue Ko Lee and the other women workers actively engaged in the strike – walking the line, organizing picket shifts, and speaking out publicly at meetings for the first time. When the white retail clerks supported the strikers and refused to cross the line and shut down the picketed retail outlets for two weeks, the owner finally negotiated with the workers to settle a contract.

“The strike was the best thing that ever happened.
It changed our lives.

-Sue Ko Lee, As quoted in Unbound Voices by Judy Yung

The workers won a 5 percent raise; a forty-hour workweek; enforcement of health, fire, and sanitary conditions; and a guarantee that Golden Gate Manufacturing would provide work for a minimum of 11 months of the year to its workers. Despite these protections, one year after winning the contract, Golden Gate conveniently went out of business. The ease with which garment factories could close shop and relocate, sometimes leaving a substantial debt in unpaid wages, made it a common practice in the 1930s. This tactic remains a constant threat for workers attempting to organize a union even today.

The Dollar Store strike, though it could be seen as unsuccessful since the company closed shop, was critical in that it helped break down racial barriers in San Francisco. After Golden Gate Manufacturing went out of business, the union helped find the workers jobs outside of Chinatown, in what had previously been white-only shops. The strike also led to Chinese workers taking leadership roles in the union.  Sue Ko Lee became a business agent at another garment factory, then secretary of the union local and the San Francisco Joint Board, as well as a delegate to the ILGWU national convention.

Sources:

Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century. Harvard College, 2004.

Yung, Judy.  Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. University of California Press, 1999.

Yung, Judy. Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco.  University of California Press, 1995.

Find more information in the CCSF Library on Women and Labor
Women and Labor Bibliography 2010

Download the Exhibition Assignment
Sue Ko Lee Exhibition Assignment

Photo Credits and Use: First 2 photographs at the top from the collection of Judy Yung. Please contact kconnell@ccsf.edu for more information. All other images from the collection of the Labor Archives and Research Center, SFSU
These images are intended for educational use only. Permission to publish
these image must be obtained from the Labor Archives and Research
Center, San Francisco State University. Copyright is retained by the
original creator of the work, whose permission must also be obtained
for publication. Responsibility for any use of this image rests
exclusively with the user. Please contact larc@sfsu.edu for more
information.

Words, Verses & Garabatos

November 18, 2009-April 16, 2010 Artists from Creativity Explored approach text in unconventional ways in new work on paper and wood.

Artists: Daniel Green, Evelyn Reyes, Merna Lum, John Patrick McKenzie, Berta Otoya, Ka Wai Shiu, Ana Maria Vidalon, Suet Fun Ow Young

Paintings on wood, handwriting on glass and re-invented musical scores are some of the work on display from artists of Creativity Explored. Located on 16^th Street near Guerrero, Creativity Explored, is a nonprofit visual arts center where artists with developmental disabilities create, exhibit, and sell art. For more than twenty five years, Creativity Explored has offered a fine arts program taught by renowned Bay Area artists including Ester Hernandez, Victor Cartagena, Paul Moshammer, Bessie Kunath and Pilar Olabarria. The Creativity Explored mission supports the dignity of artmaking and personal expression, organizational beliefs are described as: “All people are creative, given a supportive environment; Creative expression fosters personal growth; Self-worth, a sense of purpose, and community are essential for all people; Visual art is language everyone can use; Disability is not a boundary; and Art making is a viable career path.”

Check out these books and websites:
Library Resources on Art with Text