Black W(hole):
June Happenings

We hope June has welcomed you as warmly as it has us. As we celebrate Pride Month and honor the Black Queer artists, thinkers, and organizers whose visions continue to shape our communities, we're looking forward to gathering throughout the summer around even more collective imagination and pride!

This year has also brought many opportunities to engage with the work and ideas of Black feminist artists, including recent conversations like our Reclaiming Histories panel featuring Alison Saar, Adia Millett, Eve Sandler, and Taller SANAA, which you can now watch online here, as well as a short interview with Alison Saar.

We continue that spirit of exchange through Black W(hole), our curation of Black Feminist Arts Happenings now in its third year. The series brings together talks, performances, film screenings, and other offerings rooted in the Bay Area with brilliant Black feminist artists and scholars. We invite you to explore the full lineup below and join us for the remaining events throughout June.

Here's to a summer of deepening the transformative possibilities that emerge when we gather together.

See you soon,
Ashara, Christian, Ietef, Marcella, Nakachi, Sam, and Zandashé

Please help us welcome Nakachi Clark-Kasimu as our new Abundance Director, leading our fundraising and development initiatives and contributing to AAFR’s creative wealth!

Nakachi Clark-Kasimu is a multifaceted artist, educator, writer, and organizer whose skills bridge transformative justice, nonviolent direct action, and poetry. Nakachi activates her vow to alleviate the suffering of all beings through her expertise in organizational management and her work inside prisons in California and Washington. She is the founder of The Resonance Lab where she facilitates creative and performing arts workshops for incarcerated people through her program, Inside Voices.

Through embodied practice and storytelling, she helps cultivate spaces where participants can process harm, reclaim agency, and build community rooted in nonviolence and creative expression.

On Saturday, June 27, 2026, the de Young museum in San Francisco will host a free community celebration for the opening of Nengi Omuku: The Gathering in the arts of Africa galleries.

This is the first U.S. exhibition by Nigerian painter Nengi Omuku. Community Day Highlights include a 1pm Artist Talk with Nengi Omuku, a reception with music, and a launch of the new Audio Tour by Bloomberg Connects alongside a film about the artist and her practice. Free admission all day!

MILDRED HOWARD: POETICS OF MEMORY

Opening Friday, June 12th, Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory is the first major museum exhibition to celebrate the work of beloved Bay Area artist Mildred Howard. Spanning Howard’s five-decade practice, Poetics of Memory brings together her renowned collages, found-object sculptures, and immersive installations that explore memory, identity, and the African American experience. New and never-before-seen pieces punctuate the exhibition, while archival materials from Howard’s Oakland studio illuminate the cultural currents and lived experiences that shape her practice.

Maren Hassinger: Living Moving Growing Retrospective at BAMPFA (Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive) is now showing through November 29th, 2026. This is the most significant retrospective of the artist to date, presenting her work across sculpture, performance, video, and installation from the early 1970s to the present. Hassinger's work addresses social and cultural issues through an awareness of interconnectedness, ephemerality, and the relationships between humans and the natural world. Find more details below!