Photo: Robbie Sweeny – House/Full of BlackWomen
Artist As First Responder (AAFR) is a 6-point philanthropic and interactive arts platform that acknowledges, engages, and financially supports Black, Indigenous, and other Artists of Color whose creative practices heal communities and save lives.
EXHIBITIONS
Curated by Ashara Ekundayo and on view at /(slash) until December 17, 2022
Collective Arising: The Insistence of Black Bay Area Artists
Co-Curated by Ashara Ekundayo and Lucia Obunmi Momoh, on view at the Museum of Sonoma County until November 27, 2022
ARTIST RESIDENCIES & FELLOWS
AAFR Artists-In-Residence & Fellows
AAFR offers space, opportunities and resources for artists to explore their practices.
A physical container for imagination, inquiry, activity & rest for BLACK CREATIVES (In-partnership with AAFR)
GRANTS
The Reflection Fund for Artists
City of Oakland, Human Services Department, Re:CAST, Fall 2020/Summer 2021
#AAFR Founder
Ashara Ekundayo
Curator and Cultural Theologian
Photo: Demondre Ward
for Umber Publishing
Ashara Ekundayo is a Black feminist independent curator, artist, cultural theologian, creative industries entrepreneur and organizer working internationally across cultural, spiritual, civic, and social innovation spaces.
Through her company AECreative Consulting Partners she places artists and cultural production as essential in equitable design practices, real estate development, and movement-building.
Her intersectional worldview offers an Afrofuturist framework to the public sector that centers the lives, traditions, and expertise of Black womxn of the African Diaspora. She sits on the Advisory Boards of the Global Fund for Women “Artist Changemaker Program,” San Francisco MoMA SECA Committee, and the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music.
In 2019 she founded and currently stewards Artist As First Responder, an organization and 6-point philanthropic, interactive arts platform that reifies artists whose practices heal communities and save lives. She also serves as a forum curator at the Museum of The African Diaspora, is Co-Founder of Black [Space] Residency, and is the Cultural Strategist for Chef Bryant Terry’s 4Color Books, an imprint of Ten Speed Press. www.Ashara.io
Christian Walker
Creative & Social Economies Manager
Christian Walker is a Creative Director whose professional arts practice embodies a range of roles including fashion designer, model, image consultant, campaign stylist, photographer, and social entrepreneur. He is the owner of STUDIOS, a fashion and lifestyle brand based in Oakland, CA.
Christian designs and produces a myriad of outward-facing programming in his role and is the visionary and steward of the “Men’s Wellness Fellowship” - a monthly collaboration with the Sol Affirmations organization and motivational speaker Karega Bailey. The forum invites men of color to convene for a meal and roundtable discussion on vulnerability, safety, and daily wellness practices.
Ietef “DJ CAVEM” Vita
Climate Justice Artist In Residence
From an early age Cavem has had a deep connection to environmental activism and food justice. Raised in Denver’s Five Points district, often referred to as the Harlem of the West, his interest for gardening and hip hop helped him resist the snares of gang lifestyle. Becoming vegan at age 14, he said he felt a calling to speak about these issues in his songs, “especially since most of the neighborhoods considered food deserts were people of color.” His 2007 debut single “Wheatgrass” with rapper Stic.Man of Dead Prez hit top ten on the charts in Spain and introduced him to the public as an OG (Organic Gardener). It led to his 2010 debut album The Teacher’s Lounge, followed by 2012’s The Produce Section, which featured collaborations with Speech from Arrested Development, Drummi Zeb from The Wailers, and Sa-Roc. Part album, part curriculum, The Produce Section offered lessons on organic gardening, plant-based recipes and alternate uses of energy.
Since then Cavem has traveled the world as both a performing artist and an educator. He’s shared the stage with Nick Jonas, Public Enemy, 2 Chains, Questlove, Wyclef Jean, among others. Offstage he’s involved with numerous organizations and projects dedicated to promoting wellness, eating healthy and environmental awareness.
Marcella Sanchez
Studio Assistant
Marcella Sanchez began her love of photography as a child growing up in Oakland, CA. She soon became obsessed with the fundamentals that make a great photograph: lighting, balance, composition, and use of space. She shares her passion through private sessions and events, studio and lifestyle product photography, and personal blogs.
In addition to photography, she has been an advocate of medical cannabis for over 20 years. Along with her parents, she started the country's first medical cannabis magazine, Greenkind. She was the publication’s lead photographer and had the pleasure of shooting many of medical cannabis's most famous and revered activists.
Her photography has been featured in multiple shows on the East and West Coast, in magazines, in a national billboard marketing campaign, and online. She also enjoys shooting events. For weddings, family, elopements, and parties, she brings a non-intrusive narrative to each event she shoots. She is the recipient of the Dream Keeper Enterprising Creative Cohort Grant, Enterprising Creatives: Test Market Laboratory Cohort Grant, the October 2023 Curator-in-Residence at The Black Curator’s Lab through Artist As First Responder at the Minnesota Street Art Foundation, and a 2023 recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Dream Keeper Initiative Artist Grant.
Marcella is also the Studio Assistant at the Artist As First Responder office/lab located at Minnesota Street Project Studios and also at the AfroPortals Project Space & Archive at Liberation Park in East Oakland. This project’s first public showing and a retrospective of her work debut in October 2023 at the Minnesota Street Art Studio.
NiQueen Jones
Abundance & Administrative Steward
NiQueen Jones is on a mission to inspire and transform lives through art, education, and an unwavering commitment to positive change. A dynamic and passionate Oakland-based multidisciplinary artist with a versatile skill set, she masterfully traverses realms from visual art, creative writing, and photojournalism, to music. For over 20 years she has been a teacher and hip-hop historian who intersects social justice, cultural heritage preservation, youth empowerment, and mindfulness.
NiQueen is currently a candidate for an MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship, a 2024 AfroUrban Society Lit From the Black Fellow, and an Emerging Artist Fellow with YouthSpeaks in collaboration with the California Arts Council.
Helen Peña
Digital Media Manager
Helen Peña is a child of the Atlantic, filmmaker, culture worker and digital strategist from Miami, FL. Their work has screened in festivals across the country including Prismatic Ground, New Orleans FIlm Festival and Third Horizon Film Festival. In 2020, Helen participated in the UCLA Sanctuary Spaces Residency, where they worked on their first short film, When Angels Speak of Love, which screened on PBS South Florida. In 2017, Helen co-founded (F)empower, a collective of queer feminist artist-activists. Their art and organizing has been showcased at the Museum of Modern Art, the Norton Museum of Art, ICA Miami and more. They are currently a Marketing Manager for Third Horizon Film Festival and a Digital Media Manager for Artist as First Responder.
Thank You to AAFR Sponsors
Walter & Elise Haas Fund
William + Flora Hewlett Foundation
The San Francisco Foundation
Lacun Giving Circle Fund
Tao Rising
Wakanda Dream Lab
Women’s Foundation of California
AECreative Consulting Partners LLC
African American Art & Culture Complex
Akonadi Foundation
Anonymous
City of Oakland Human Services Department
Culture Change Fund
AAFR Advisory Board
Alisha B. Wormsley
Angela Wellman
Cat Brooks
Crystal Hayling
Gia Hamilton
Halima Afi Cassells
Jennifer Edwards
Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo
Marcel Pardo Ariza
Sabrina Nelson
Sam Vernon
Sian Morson
Sonya Renee Taylor
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Angela M. Wellman is an award-winning musician, scholar, educator, and activist from Kansas City, Missouri. She has called Oakland home since 1987. In 2005 she co-founded the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music (OPC), a vanguard institution that centers blackness in the development of American musical culture and identity. Since opening its doors, OPC has provided rigorous, affordable, and culturally-relevant music education for people of all ages. Angela is a third-generation musician and has performed with many noted musicians such as the McCoy Tyner Big Band, Joe Williams, and Dee Dee Bridgewater. She is a recipient of multiple local and national awards, including the City of Oakland “Cultural Key to the City,” the Jazz Journalists Association's Jazz Hero Award, the Arhoolie Award, the 2020 Caffie M. Greene Community Building Award from UPSurge! NY, the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship, the 2021 Alameda County Arts Leadership Award, and the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Beacon Award from the International Women’s Brass Conference. As a music education activist, her work is centered on ensuring access to music education for African American students. As a scholar and researcher, her research explores the impact of racism and white supremacy on access to music education for Black students. Angela's passion for and commitment to creating access to culturally sustaining music education has kept her developing pathways to meaningful experiences in music for the people of Oakland and beyond for the past thirty-five years.
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Alisha B. Wormsley (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer. Her work contributes to the imagining of the future of arts, science, and technology through the black womxn lens, challenging contemporary views of modern American life through whichever medium she feels is the best form of expression, creating an object, a sculpture, a billboard, performance, or film and thrives in collaboration. Recent exhibitions, projects and public art commissions in partnership with; the Oakland Museum, VCUArts Qatar, Speed Museum, Southbank Arts London, Times Square Arts and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Wormsley’s project, There Are Black People In the Future, which gives mini-grants to open up discourse around displacement and gentrification and was also awarded a fellowship with Monument Lab and the Goethe Institute. In 2020, Wormsley launched an art residency for Black creative mothers called Sibyls Shrine, which has received two years of support from the Heinz Endowments. She is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts, an Awardee of the Sundance Interdisciplinary grant, the Carol Brown Achievement award among others. Wormsley has an MFA in Film and Video from Bard College and currently is a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University.
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Cat Brooks is an award winning actress and playwright. In her role as an artivist, she is also the KPFA host of Law & Disorder and resident playwright and actress with The Lower Bottom Playaz in Oakland and 3 Girls Theater in San Francisco. As an organizer, she played a central role in the struggle for justice for Oscar Grant, and spent the last decade working with impacted communities and families to rapidly respond to police violence and radically transform the ways our communities are policed and incarcerated. She is the co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) and the Executive Director of The Justice Teams Network. Cat was also the runner-up in Oakland’s 2018 mayoral election, facing incumbent Libby Schaaf.
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Growing up a Black girl in the South, Crystal’s survival depended upon her navigating social hierarchy, where she had to fight to be seen, heard, and taken seriously. Despite the fact that both of her parents were professionals, Crystal’s family experienced racial terrorism that endangered their existence and stripped away generational wealth. Early on in her life, Crystal committed herself to naming and correcting that injustice for all communities experiencing anti-Blackness, exploitation, and oppression.
“The frontline communities Libra supports are my teachers. At the foundation, our goal is to listen. We honor interdependence, disrupt philanthropic patterns that prioritize productivity over humanity, and support a new culture that centers justice and liberation,” says Crystal. As executive director, Crystal is cementing Libra’s dedication to being the type of funder that social movements need to bring forth progressive wins. She has brought together a team of empathic, knowledgeable, and curious individuals who are executing on that vision. With 30+ years of philanthropic and nonprofit experience, Crystal likes to say, “I’ve pretty much made all the mistakes already.”
With Libra, Crystal has brought a fresh vision of philanthropy that rejects business as usual and is responsive to the needs of frontline communities. Since 2017, Crystal has worked with the Libra board to advance these goals, including doubling Libra’s grantmaking in 2020 in light of the global pandemic and uprisings, and launching the Democracy Frontlines Fund, a new aligned giving strategy that raised $36 million in unrestricted, multi-year support for a slate of Black-led organizations.
Crystal is a graduate of Yale University and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Prior to Libra, Crystal served as CEO of the Blue Shield of California Foundation, where she spearheaded work to achieve universal health coverage. She was also part of the founding team at The California Wellness Foundation, where she led a groundbreaking initiative to shift youth violence prevention from a criminal justice issue to a public health effort. Crystal currently serves on the boards of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Essie Justice Group, and Community Change. She frequently writes and publishes on leading edge topics in philanthropy, and Inside Philanthropy named Crystal “2021 Foundation Leader of the Year."
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Gia M. Hamilton is an applied anthropologist who employs Social Magic™ methodology to investigate land, labor and cultural production while examining social connectivity within institutions and community. As a model builder, Hamilton co-founded an independent African centered school, Little Maroons in 2006; later, she opened a creative incubator space- Gris Gris Lab in 2009 and designed and led the Joan Mitchell Center artist residency program in New Orleans as a consultant from 2011- 2013 and director from 2013-2018.
As the Center Director, Hamilton led the development of the two acre campus capital project using a workforce development project HyperLocal and designed the program as a place based, community centered laboratory for visual artists, curators and the creative community with the belief that imagination and creativity are paramount to creating a more equitable and socially just society. Currently, Gia is the architect of her latest projects: Afrofuture Society and Dark Matter Projects. In 2019 she became the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the New Orleans African American Museum
Hamilton received her bachelors in cultural anthropology from New York University and masters in applied anthropology from City University of New York’s Graduate Center. She is on the board of Artists First Responders, Alliance for Artist Communities and, Museum Hue. Hamilton recently received the 2018 Next City Vanguard fellowship and was nominated for the 2018 City Business Woman of Year award and was City Business 2022 Hospitality Leader. Gia currently lives in the Treme neighborhood in New Orleans with her family.
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Halima Afi Cassells (b. 1981) is an award-winning interdisciplinary community-engaged artist/gardener/mom currently working in her hometown of Detroit. Born into a creative family, her parents photographed her unsolicited murals and fashion as a kid. Community is the heart of her work. After a decade of creating murals, she credits gardening as inspiring her move away from painting into a practice using materials and processes that foster thriving of (human and non-human) communities. Spanning two decades, she continues to co-create spaces for connection, narrative deconstruction, collective healing and community empowerment through various media.In addition to Detroit, her work has been featured in NY, Oakland CA, Berlin, Copenhagen, Bogota, and Harare.
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Founder of Better Consulting LLC (Better), Jennifer Edwards is a multifaceted creative whose work is driven by two core questions: What impact do you wish to have? And what stands in your way? Better, is a full-service organizational development, brand strategy, and communications company that started in New York City/Philadelphia and has since relocated to San Francisco. Better works with clients from idea, through concept and planning, to implementation and launch.
Guided by a deep love of listening and learning paired with an innate ability to hold space for complexity, Jennifer is passionate about developing human systems that center equity, uplift and honor all aspects of diversity, and place process-in-action at their core. As someone who just can't seem to leave college, she's taught in institutions ranging from Georgia Tech to Brown to University of the Arts and developed the arts entrepreneurship program for NEW INC at the New Museum . Her work has been featured in publications including The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune. Her writing appears in Huffington Post, Dance Magazine, The Jacob's Pillow Archives, and Forbes. She is an alumna of New York University (Tisch), The New School (Milano), the OpEd Project, and The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership.
Jennifer has toured North America, Europe, and China as a spoken word artist, performer, and choreographer. She is also the director / producer of three podcasts “PillowVoices” (for Jacob’s Pillow Dance); "Inside the Dancer’s Studio" and "How People Move People" (both for NCCAkron - The National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron).
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Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo (They/them/Lukaza) is an artist, activist, educator, storyteller & curator who lives/works between Ohlone Land [Oakland, CA] and Powhatan Land [Richmond,VA]. They invite the viewer to recall and share their own lived narratives, offering power and weight to the creation of a larger dialogue around the telling of B.I.Q.T.P.O.C. stories.
Branfman-Verissimo received their MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and BFA at California College of the Arts. They have had solo shows at SEPTEMBER Gallery [Kinderhook, NY], Deli Gallery [New York City, NY], Roll Up Projects [Oakland, CA], Guerrero Gallery [San Francisco, CA] and STNDRD Projects [Steuben, WI]. Their work has been included in exhibitions and performances at Konsthall C [Stockholm, Sweden], EFA Project Space [New York City, NY], Leslie Lohman Museum [New York City, NY], Yerba Buena Center for the Arts [San Francisco, CA], Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive [Berkeley, CA] and L’Internationale Online, amongst others. They have been awarded residencies and fellowships at Kala Art Center [Berkeley, CA], Women Studio Workshop [Kingston, NY], ACRE Residency [Steuben, WI], Vermont Studio Center [Johnson, VT], CENTER [Grand Rapids, MI] and Common Field. Lukaza’s artist books and printed editions have been published by Endless Editions, Childish Books, Press Press, Sming Sming and Printed Matter Inc. and is in the permanent collections at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cynthia Sears Artist’s Book Collection, California College of the Arts Printmaking Archive, University of California Santa Cruz Library, New York University Special Collections and San Francisco Museum of Art Library.
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Marcel Pardo Ariza (b. Bogotá, Colombia) (they/them) is a trans visual artist, educator and curator who explores the relationship between queer and trans kinship through constructed photographs, site-specific installations and public programming. Their work is rooted in close dialogue and collaboration with trans, non-binary and queer friends and peers, most of whom are performers, artists, educators, policymakers, and community organizers. Their practice celebrates collective care and intergenerational connection. Their work is invested in creating long term interdisciplinary collaborations and opportunities that are non-hierarchical and equitable.
Their work has recently been exhibited at the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Palo Alto Art Center; San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Palm Springs Art Museum; and the Institute of Contemporary Art San José. Ariza is the recipient of the 2022 SFMOMA SECA Award, the 2021 CAC Established Artists Award; the 2020 San Francisco Artadia Award; 2018-19 Alternative Exposure Grant; 2017 Tosa Studio Award; and a 2015 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award. Ariza is a studio member at Minnesota Street Project, and the co-founder of Art Handlxrs*, an organization supporting queer, BIPOC, women, trans and non-binary folks in professional arts industry support roles. They are currently a lecturer at California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University, and based in Oakland, CA.
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Sabrina Nelson was born in the wake of the ‘67 Rebellion in Detroit, Michigan. She is a painter by degree from Detroit’s College for Creative Studies. Influenced by Yoruba Religion, as well as Eastern and African philosophies, Sabrina’s work is a combination of spirit, motion, and intimacy. Not limited by two dimensions, the scope of her work also includes sculpture, objects, performance and installations.
Sabrina has been a professional artist for over 35 years and an educator for nearly as long. As a studio art teacher at the Detroit Institute of Arts, she lectures and performs artist demonstrations. She is also on staff at the College for Creative Studies, where she works hard at motivating and preparing students to pursue art degrees in Detroit.
Sabrina has lectured on the preservation of Black Feminism in Art at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. She is a guest curator at both The Carr Center and the Music Hall Performing Arts Center. For over 30 years she has judged art competitions, curated numerous art talks and exhibits, and conducted interviews of guest artists for the City of Detroit’s Culture video channel MyDetroitCable.
Her work has been exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the African American Art in Culture complex in San Francisco. Sabrina’s work has also been exhibited in Florida, New York, Louisiana, Illinois and Ohio. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and private collections in Florida, New York, Ohio, Georgia, California, and Michigan. She has also shown work at Jakmel Gallery as part of Art Basel Miami, as well as at the American University in Paris.
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Sam Vernon earned her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University in 2015 and her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2009. Her installations combine xeroxed drawings, prints, photographs, paintings and sculptural components in an exploration of personal narrative and identity. Sam has exhibited with many public institutions including Downtown Gallery, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; G44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto, Canada; Seattle Art Museum, Olympic Sculpture Park; California African American Museum in Los Angeles; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum and Queens Museum. Vernon's latest solo exhibition, Impasse of Desires, was on view at the Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco, California October 20, 2021 through September 18, 2022. Sam is an Assistant Professor at Bard College in Studio Arts, former co-Chair for the Painting discipline of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard, and teaches printmaking and graduate courses at California College of the Arts (CCA). Vernon currently lives and works between Brooklyn and Catskill, NY.
This spring, Sam will move to Berlin, Germany for a year-long residency with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.
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Sian Morson is a visionary thought-leader, blockchain enthusiast, and Web3 Innovator working at the center of emerging technology, NFTs, community development, and public speaking. Throughout her successful career, Sian has had the opportunity to build an arsenal of both technical and creative skills that have helped her transform businesses, optimize high-performing teams, and accelerate the growth of top-tier brands.
Since entering the Web3 realm, Sian has already had a tremendous impact on the market's growth by playing a significant role in educating others on the power that lies beneath this highly innovative technology and space. As a forward-thinking and dynamic Web3 leader, Sian genuinely believes that this new and exciting sector holds a plethora of opportunities that can level the playing field of generational wealth for marginalized people.
Sian has spent her entire career on the frontlines of diversity and has thrived in the face of challenges of all sizes. Her diverse background and unique set of skills have perfectly positioned Sian to usher in a new era of Web3 builders, meta-architects, and NFT artists. Outside of bridging the communication gaps between communities and builders, Sian also holds the role of Editor at 'The BlkChain,' the go-to source for coverage of NFT art and music with a focus on the culture.
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Sonya Renee Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, world-renowned activist and thought leader on racial justice and transformational change, international award winning poet, and founder of The Body Is Not an Apology (TBINAA), a global digital media and education company exploring the intersections of identity, healing, and social justice through the framework of radical self-love.
Sonya is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love (1st and 2nd editions), Your Body Is Not an Apology Workbook, Celebrate Your Body (and Its Changes, Too!), poetry collection A Little Truth on Your Shirt, The Book of Radical Answers (That I Know You Already Know) (Dial Press 2022), and co-editor of The Routledge International Handbook of Fat Studies. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors over the past two decades, from her National Individual Poetry Slam Championship award in 2004 to her 2016 invitation by the Obama administration to participate in the White House Forum on LGBT and Disability Issues. More recently, she served as an inaugural Edmund Hillary Fellow in Aotearoa (New Zealand) from 2017-2020.
Sonya is a resident of the world and continues to share her insights globally as a highly sought-after international speaker, artist and educator on issues of radical self-love, social justice, and personal and global transformation.