Dates: April 12 - June 22, 2007
Location: San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery (City Hall), 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Pl., SF, CA
Artists: Ananais Leki Dago, Bayete Ross Smith, and Lewis Watts.
This exhibition involved a programmatic partnership with PhotoAlliance, the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), and the SF International Arts Festival. Lens on Life, a look at photography from Africa, was presented at MoAD, and I curated an exhibition at City Hall featuring three artists involved in the exploration of place and identity from both African and African American perspectives.
Ananias Léki Dago: Bamako en Croix Léki
Dago, a photographer from the Ivory Coast, is making his San Francisco debut in Lens on Life. His series Bamako en Croix is presented as part of the Museum of the African Diaspora’s exhibition Lens on Life: From Bamako to San Francisco (May 18 – September 23, 2007). This photographic series highlights a common object in Bamako, Mali; the "pousse-pousse", a kind of wheelbarrow used to carry a variety of goods. For Léki Dago the cross-shaped handles stand out as a visual curiosity. The cross does not belong to the Malian culture, so this series questions the assimilation of exogenous symbols into everyday life.
Bayeté Ross Smith: Our Kind of People
San Francisco-based photographer Bayeté Ross Smith exhibits work from two recent portrait series: Our Kind of People and Passing. His images deal with stereotypes and preconceived notions. He is particularly interested in how biases, as well as the role generalizations and the sorting of people into categories, play in our everyday lives. Bayeté says, “I question when stereotypes are true, if ever, and if they have any validity. I am also interested in issues of identity, and who controls the imagery that is used to define us.”
Lewis Watts: Evidence
Lewis Watts, an artist, curator and Assistant Professor of Photography at UC Santa Cruz, presents Evidence. This series of black and white photographs center on African American cultural landscapes; where people live, how they occupy and use space, and the traces they leave behind. He is interested in the cultural roots of architecture and both the intentional and unintentional manipulation of space.
