BLATANT | A Forum on Art, Joy and Rage with host Ashara Ekundayo and guests Sydney Cain and Yétúndé Olagbaju
November 16, 2021 @ 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm Pacific Time
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This month Ashara Ekundayo will be in conversation with Sydney Cain and Yétúndé Olagbaju.
Sydney “Sage” Cain is a visual artist born and raised in San Francisco, CA. As an act of empowered remembering, Cain’s work invites viewers to challenge the continuum of colonialism that privileges scientific language and understanding of mystical experiences over indigenous epistemologies. Utilizing graphite, powdered metals, printmaking, and chalk as transcendent emblems for myth-making, her work offers reverent narratives that reveal the power of remembrance and spiritual evolution within “unseen” Black afterlives.
Their work has been exhibited at Betti Ono, Ashara Ekundayo Gallery, Rena Bransten Gallery and the Oakland Museum of California. They have received the Emerging Artist Award at the Museum of the African Diaspora and the Honorary AIR Award at Kala Art Institute. Cain is currently represented by Rena Bransten Gallery with a solo exhibition scheduled to open there late 2021.
Learn more about MoAD Emerging Artist presents Sydney Cain: Refutations.
Yétúndé Olagbaju is an artist and maker, currently residing in Oakland, CA. They utilize video, sculpture, action, gesture, and performance as through-lines for inquiries regarding Black labor, legacy and processes of healing. They are rooted in the need to understand history, the people that made it, the myths surrounding them and how their own body is implicated in history’s timeline.
They have shown work and projects with Oakland Museum of California, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, pt. 2 Gallery, Southern Exposure, SOMArts Cultural Center, Untitled Art Fair, Art Basel, and more.
They hold an MFA from Mills College and are the recipient of the inaugural Nancy Cook Fellowship, the Murphy Cadogan Awards, and the Jay Defeo Award. They recently concluded a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts and are represented by pt 2. Gallery.
Ashara Ekundayo is an 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 both an Afrofuturist and radical Black feminist framework to the public sector by centering 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 Cultural Strategist for Chef Bryant Terry’s 4Color Books, an imprint of Ten Speed Press. www.Ashara.io
This program is co-presented by Museum of Sonoma County in conjunction with their upcoming exhibition Collective Arising: A Positionality of Insistence from Black Bay Area Artists
