Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

 On the same day as my visit to the SFMoMA I also visited the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and a commercial gallery, so I'll focus on the YBCA trip in this post. I'd like to note, however, that I did not get a picture of the main entrance. I ended up walking from around the back to a neighboring building without realizing it, and then proceeded to forget to take a picture of the correct entry. I did snag a picture of the information in the main building. The photos below are of that wrong entry and main building infographic.

 

Now then, onto the art!

The first gallery's theme was on peoples' cultural identities and how their memories relate to the space around us, land or art. Specifically the cultural identity of marginalized communities, and how art can  expresses each journey that a person may have when exploring their heritage, be it personal or ancestral. Through art one may explore liberation from marginalization, deconstructing the limitations society has placed on them and constructing a peaceful world in its place.

The actual exhibition information is below.

The gallery room was large and spacious. Adjacent from the entry and far from it were ceiling-to-floor windows that illuminated the space in midday light. Installations had been erected around the room and were comfortably spaced apart to allow the viewer to walk through without crowding the art or being crowded by other people. The walls were a neutral off white and the ground of the gallery were slabs of concrete; the room was inoffensively designed so that the focus was on the artwork. The first favorite of this gallery quietly loomed in the corner of the room. I could see its apex from the entry of the gallery, though details were obscure. It was a wall of drawings titled Drawing Archive, 2012-ongoing by Jose Figueroa, a Venezuelan artist who resides and works in Oakland.

Drawing Archive, 2012-ongoing is a massive wall of drawings attached to one another. It is described as a "digital quilt" of drawings that the artist has made since 2012, with the intent to document the present. Below is a picture of myself standing in front of the massive collection.

The drawings vary in simplicity. Most are complex scenes, but I was unable to discern what the subject matter was for most of the drawings. Two close ups are below. 

The artwork creates a distinctly chaotic feeling even in the mundane scenes of what appears to be classrooms. Many scenes depicted on this "digital collage" appear to be classrooms, or classroom-like settings (such as a science lab). Some with writing stick out, such as the one labeled "Fresco Barn" encircled in green with words like "good girl," "rebirth," bad girl," and many more. The artwork information plaque stated that these works were meant to document the present (at the time they were made) but I suspect they are laden with commentary relating to whatever event they're depicting, personal or otherwise.  

Contemporary art is a vehicle for expression that provides comfort from the hardships of the world. As was mentioned in the lecture regarding Doris Salcedo's work, art cannot change anything. It's just art. But the feelings art evokes? I believe those might facilitate change, depending on the impact and the viewer. Regardless of that, the art that has been made here was made to document the world through  Jose Figueroa's eyes. 

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, this exhibition was made to reflect one's personal or ancestral odysseys as they explored their heritage and culture. All art in that spacious gallery space aligned with this theme and reflected it to the viewer in their own ways. Still, there was one artwork in particular that I found was a gut-punch. 

There was an installation that had two benches, two doors, and a set of picture frames. An unsettled feeling creeps in at first glance of the doors and benches and the empty spaces with graffiti covering them. Immediately the viewer knows that this isn't a work of art meant to coddle or fill you with warm pleasantness. 

The picture describes the works listed, excluding the tapestry. At the time, I believed to have gotten photographs of all items but it seems I was missing the tapestry.

These doors and benches came from a ICE detention center. Artist Arleene Correa Valencia creates works that reflect migration, family separation, and the complex issue of undocumented immigration. Correa Valencia was a DACA recipient herself, and knows the struggles families go through as they assimilate to protect themselves from being identified as "illegal." Her works explore the physical and psychological pain that many immigrants experience in the USA. 

After a work trip Correa Valencia obtained a pair of original doors from a decommissioned ICE detention center that closed in the mid 2000s. The artist was stated to have been very unsettled as they walked through the facility. In the basement were these doors (to individual detention cells) and benches, as if hiding these things out of sight would hide the violent history of the site. After this Correa Valencia traveled to Mexico City and collaborated with Oaxacan artisan Jacobo Mendoza to create the text carved into the doors. Visitors were welcome to sit on the benches in the installation.

I did not sit on the benches.

I, of course, neared the benches to read the text easier, oblivious to the insidious detail that was welded to the bench, looped in a perfect circle. I had to be standing right beside the bench to notice it, because I had been so fixated on the tops of the benches with the scrawled writing. I hadn't planned on sitting on the art, and the metal circle attached to the bench solidified this was the right choice if I wanted o exit this gallery without crying. 

Words cannot convey how horrible the sight was, so I will post pictures, and end the post. Pictures are worth a thousands words, or so I've been told, and all these words carry violence and speak of inhumanity.