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Fluid Mutualism | The 2021–2022 Creative Citizens in Action theme, Fluid Mutualism, investigated intergenerational symbiotic relationships, networks and strategies expanding within different communities, species, disciplines and territories. Events organized by the CCA@CCA Faculty Coordinator, Prof. V; CCA@CCA Student Fellow, Niv Rajendra; and the CCA Exhibitions department focused on four of the five pillars of the Communal Flower, a model for understanding communality in the ancient philosophy and daily practice of various Indigenous nations in southern Mexico: land, communal responsibility, assembly and joy.

• 📖 CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium | Organized by Prof. V and Jaime Austin
• 📖 📸 CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium Exhibition | Organized by Jaime Austin
• 🎥 📖 Womb Wellness: A Reproductive Justice Lens to Moonstration | Organized by Prof. V
• 🎥 Transparency, Adaptability & Nourishment: Water as a Central Cultural Element of the Nations with Toltek Heritage | Organized by Prof. V
• 🎥 📖 Communal Responsibility: CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium Keynote with Celia Herrera Rodríguez | Organized by Prof. V
• 📖 Qigong | Organized by Jaime Austin
• 🎥 Luminous Matter: Afrofutures, Black Queer Feminism, and Storytelling | Organized by Prof. V
• 🎥 Freestyle: Communal Power, Hip Hop, and Autonomous Labor | Organized by Prof. V
• 🎥 Memory in the Bones: Restitution Through Visual Art | Organized by Prof. V
• 📖 Compassionate Movement Workshop | Organized by Jaime Austin and Niv Rajendra
• 🎥 Web of Life: On Mycelium, Indigenous African Spirituality & Mushroom Cultivation | Organized by Prof. V

CCA@CCA Faculty Micro Grants Program | CCA@CCA Faculty Micro Grants are designed to support the implementation of small-scale, immediate public-facing events, projects, or activations that aim to improve the learning experience of students and offer critical resources for civic involvement. These grants are administered by the CCA Exhibitions Department.

• 📸 Expanded Rainbow Flag | Organized by John de Fazio
• 🎥 Broken: Making Something from Nothing | Organized by Edith Garcia
• 📸 A Tribute to Those who Had to Cross Borders | Organized by Lydia Nakashima Degarrod
• 📸 Parks, Environment, and Leisure: A Climate Change Studio Study | Organized by Kim Anno
• 📸 Land Reflection | Organized by Shalini Agrawal
• 📸 U+ME: Inclusive and Integrated Embodiment | Organized by Katherine Lambert
• 📖 Radical Redesign: Coloring Care | Organized by Shalini Agrawal
• 🎥 Our Share / Your Slice: Asian American and African American Solidarity | Organized by Pallavi Sharma
• 🎥 Rematriation; Re-Storying the Land Through Centering Indigenous Relationships | Organized by Susanne Cockrell
• 📖 Magical Meshing Models | Organized by Mia Yinxing Liu

Organized by Prof. V, CCA@CCA Faculty Coordinator, and Jaime Austin, Director, Exhibitions and Public Programming

The CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium was a weeklong series of talks, workshops, teach-ins, exhibitions, and activations that explored how our quality of life is dependent on assembly and communal responsibility—two of the five pillars of the Communal Flower, a model for understanding communality in the ancient philosophy and daily practice of Indigenous nations in southern Mexico.

Organized by the Creative Citizens in Action initiative, in collaboration with CCA faculty, students, and staff, the symposium served as an anchor point for the 2021-2022 Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series, a year-long conversation series that spans the disciplines of art, design, architecture, and writing. See below for documentation of individual Symposium events.

📖 View the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium description and calendar ➞

Organized by Jaime Austin, Director, Exhibitions and Public Programming

The CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium Exhibition (March 1–4, 2022) featured artwork, installations, publications, and course outcomes by faculty and students who have participated in the Creative Citizens in Action initiative. 

Featuring site specific installations by the following CCA students:

• Gordon Fung and Ernest Strauhal (Individualized)
• Anbin Liu, Elif Aydinli, Saina Gorgani, Shreya Shankar, and Weisheng Zhong (Masters of Architecture)
• Joel Lithgow (Individualized) and Joseph Blake (Printmedia)
• Eric Lum (MFA Fine Arts)
• Namita Paul (MFA Fine Arts)

With course projects and outcomes from CCA@CCA courses led by faculty members Shalini Agrawal, Kim Anno, Katherine Lambert, John De Fazio, and Lydia Nakashima Degarrod. 

Plus a voter registration table, posters from the 2020 CCA@CCA Artwork Campaign, a participatory exercise mapping kinship, and the Fluid Mutualism Reading Room featuring writing, design, event videos, and course outcomes by CCA@CCA contributing faculty, artists, and guest speakers. 

📸 View photos of the exhibition's installation process by Nicholas Lea Bruno ➞

"Most exhibited works are collaborative, demonstrating artists’ understandings of symbiosis. The symposium demonstrated how arts education can put social responsibility into a creative practice. 'We are all very happy to have this opportunity. Through the school's exhibition activities, we not only use what we have learned in real practice but also deepen our friendship.'"

📖 Read Gordon Fung's full review of this exhibition on Rewind Review Respond ➞

Organized by Prof. V, CCA@CCA Faculty Coordinator

On Tuesday, March 1, 2022, Prof. V hosted a presentation and conversation with two AfroIndigenous midwives about womb wellness and the importance of midwifery.

Juju Angeles is the founder of Babymamahood. She is an art educator, poet, folk herbalist, a traditional birth keeper, doula and midwife.

Gingi Allen is the owner of The Art of Mothering. She is an educator, birth doula & postpartum healing specialist, certified professional midwife  and licensed midwife.

This event was part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium and was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

🎥 Members of the CCA community can watch a recording of this event below and on Panopto ➞

“For anyone who has ever gone to a doctor suffering from headaches, cysts, unexplained infertility, cramps, etc., only to be told you are 'healthy,' this newfound knowledge can be a game-changer. The stakes have always been high, and we are only beginning to discover just how vital this information is in the face of rising cancer rates, mental health crises, and alarming infant and maternal mortality rates.”

📖 Read Kristen Wawruck's full review of "Womb Wellness" on Rewind Review Respond ➞

Organized by Prof. V, CCA@CCA Faculty Coordinator

Akaxe Yotzin Gómez comes from a long line of Nahua tradition. As a child he received instruction in the fundamental disciplines of Nahua traditions from his father, which also included numerous traditional Indigenous ceremonies in Sierra Norte de Puebla. His journey as a Mazehual began from birth in which he dedicated his time for half of each year under the direction of his teachers Xiuhmitzin and Alfredo Huitzilmazatzin.

Since 1999 to today, Akaxe has been profoundly committed to researching, preserving, applying, and sharing the ancestral knowledge of the Toltekatl. Having taught the ancient arts, sciences, philosophies and disciplines throughout the globe in Mexico, various countries in Europe and throughout the United States.

In 2013, Akaxe launched Nahua Lessons / Machtia Toltekatl as Founder and Head Teacher with his duality Ixpahuatzin in which he continues to build upon the foundations in various cities and countries, with a network of individuals, groups, schools, businesses and organizations committed to preserving and applying the vast and profound knowledge of the natives of Anahuak and indigenous Toltekayotl of all lands.

"Transparency, Adaptability & Nourishment: Water as a Central Cultural Element of the Nations with Toltek Heritage" was presented on Wednesday, March 2, 2022 as part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium and was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

🎥 Watch a recording of this event below and on YouTube ➞

Organized by Prof. V, CCA@CCA Faculty Coordinator

Celia Herrera Rodríguez (Xicana/O’dami) is a painter, performance and installation artist whose work reflects a full generation of dialogue with Chicano, Native American, Pre-Columbian, and Mexican thought. She is the co-founder and co-director of Las Maestras Center for Xicana[x] Indigenous Thought, Art and Social Practice at UCSB, where she also teaches Chicana[x] art history and studio practice in the Department of Chicano & Chicana Studies. Originally from Sacramento, California, Herrera Rodríguez received her B.A in Art & Ethnic Studies from CSU-Sacramento and a M.F.A in painting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In 1987, she went on to study Art History, Theory and Criticism at the Art Institute of Chicago. In the mid-1990s she returned to California, where she made Oakland her home. Since 2005, she had been a Senior Adjunct Professor in Diversity Studies at California College of the Arts and for seventeen years also taught in the Chicano Studies Program at UC Berkeley. Her courses included: Chicana/o and Mexican Modernist Art, MeXicana/o and Indigenous Art History and Practice, as well as studio art classes. She has also held appointments at Stanford University, UC Santa Cruz, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Her paintings, drawings and installation work have been exhibited nationally and internationally including: The Triton Museum, Santa Clara, CA; Glass Curtain Gallery at Columbia College of Chicago; CN Gorman Museum, UC-Davis; The DeSaisset Museum at Santa Clara University; The Institute of American Indian Art Museum in Santa Fe; The Oakland Museum of California; Tufts University Gallery (Medford, MA); The Mexican Museum of San Francisco; C.A.G.E. Gallery (Cincinnati, OH); and, Name Gallery (Chicago), University of Cork (Ireland), The Centro Cultural Santo Domingo (Oaxaca, México), the Centro Colombo Americano (Medellin, Colombia) among others. Her work is permanently housed in a number of private and public collections, including the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago, and the Institute of American Indian Art Museum of Santa Fe.

In recent years, she has applied her vision as a conceptual artist to set and costume design, chiefly in collaboration with playwright, Cherríe Moraga. Herrera’s design work includes: The Hungry Woman(Stanford University); La Semilla Caminante(Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco); Digging Up the Dirt(Breath of Fire Theater, Santa Ana); and New Fire — To Put Things Right Again(Brava Theater, San Francisco). In 2011, a series of her line drawings were published in Moraga’s collection of essays: A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness, published by Duke University Press. In spring 2019, Herrera’s paintings and installations were presented in an intergenerational exhibition entitled, Xicanx Futurity, at the Manetti-Shrem Museum of Art, UC Davis. Nearly 10, 000 people witnessed the work. Recent visual art projects include “Making Ohlone Visible” a 2018-19 collaborative project with the Chochenyo–Ohlone community in Oakland, CA; and the collaborative PerformaProtesta, “Un llanto Colectivo, a shared ceremonial political outcry, opposing ICE & its brutal border policies (San Diego, 2018).

This event was presented on Wednesday, March 2, 2022 as part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium and was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

🎥 Watch a recording of this event below and on YouTube ➞

"We cannot take care of others if we do not take care of ourselves, and taking care of ourselves instantly connects us to our environment and the outside world... I was raised with this notion that in order to be a good person you had to be respectful of yourself and others, you had to work hard, and you had to stay true to yourself no matter what. Therefore, once I started writing and my family noticed that it came easily to me, my first real responsibility was born."

📖 Read Renata Blanco Gorbea's full review of the Communal Responsibility Keynote Lecture on Rewind Review Respond ➞

Organized by Jaime Austin, Director, Exhibitions and Public Programming

On Thursday, March 3, 2022, Talia Kirsh led a Qigong workshop, sharing practices to ground your own nervous system and find functional breath through therapeutic movement.

Talia Kirsh is a movement-based and healing practitioner working in Qigong, Medical Qigong and Aquatherics. She holds a Medical Qigong certification through The Noble Movement Academy and has studied with practitioners in the Dohon system and Wu Dang West. Kirsh is also a certified Watsu, and Aquatherics practitioner and is currently a Grad Student at CCA getting her MFA in Fine Arts with a focus in the healing arts.

This event was presented as part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium and was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

"When Talia introduced mouth sounds into the routine, I was self-conscious at first. I am pretty quiet most of the time so expressing myself through voice sounds was unusual. But hearing my peers’ sounds and their breathing put me at ease and helped me find my own sounds. I enunciated my breathing sounds and growled with my peers. We were in our bodies together."

📖 Read Alex Hwang's full review of the Qigong workshop on Rewind Review Respond ➞

Organized by Prof. V, CCA@CCA Faculty Coordinator

shah noor hussein (they / them) is a writer, visual artist, and doctoral pre-candidate in the Department of Anthropology, with a designated emphasis in Critical Race & Ethnic Studies. shah’s research aims to (re)center marginalized voices in dialogues on alternative epistemologies and cultural reproduction through a multimedia study of popular culture and women’s music in Sudan. They have served as a Writing Fellow at the California Institute of Integral Studies (2016-2017), a Teaching Fellow for the Peralta Community College System in Oakland (2018-2019), and a Graduate Pedagogy Fellow with the Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning at UCSC (2020-2021). shah's poetry has been featured in the LA Review of Books (2020), Umber (2019), and CUNJUH (2017) as well as performed at the Museum of the African Diaspora (2020), Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (2018), and the African American Arts & Culture Complex (2018), to name a few. shah has taught courses and led writing workshops at Stanford University (2020), Laney College (2019), and UC Berkeley (2018). Their films have screened on local and international stages from SoMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco (2016) to the Aguas Migrantes Film Festival in Mexico (2018) to the American Associations of Geographers conference in New Orleans (2022). shah earned their B.A. in environmental policy and gender studies, and their M.A. in Anthropology and Social Change.

This event was presented on Thursday, March 3, 2022 as part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium and was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

🎥 Watch a recording of this event below and on YouTube ➞

Organized by Prof. V, CCA@CCA Faculty Coordinator

Queens D.Light is a rap artist, performer, and filmmaker based out of Oakland, CA. Her unique sound is influenced by a mix of genres like dance, electronic, hip hop, and punk music. Her groundbreaking performances are both memorable and mind-bending. She has toured with Anderson Paak and shared stages with artists such as Georgia Anne Muldrow and Shabazz Palaces. QDL creates a multimedia experience by pairing her short films and installations with her musical performances. Her work has been seen at SFMOMA, Noise Pop Festival and Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. She has taught courses on film at San Francisco State University and lectured on Black Feminism In Music at UC Berkeley.

Diogañhdih Hall (Mohawk of Akwesasne) is a two-spirit multi-disciplinary artist, storyteller, community organizer, rapper, producer and agriculturist claiming space for native folks to re-indigenize and find movement and joy in the interconnected liberation of our bodies, spirit and land. In 2021, Diogañhdih produced and self released a 14 track concept album titled Rezbien, chronicling their time home between borders in Akwesasne. Since then, Diogañhdih has composed and self recorded a new concept album titled Chasing All My Demons,  including unique samples such as the return of the 17 year dormant locusts. Diogañhdih's goal and practice is to cultivate creative healing spaces for fellow two-spirit and queer Natives, QTBIPOC artists and organizers through the art they make and through the multimedia events they curate.

Anjali (they/them) is the singer, songwriter, electronic producer, organizer, and new media artist behind Diaspoura. Diaspoura’s sound and speech has brought forth a fresh perspective to the media of a poor, Brown, and gay South. They’ve been featured in a variety of publications including NYLON Mag, Bitch Media, Color Bloq, Kajal Mag, Oxford American, and, comically, even Fortune Magazine. Their most recent EP Traumaporn (2018) is a sonic study of power and vulnerability, using rigid beats, bells, and dense harmonies. Since the release, Diaspoura has pledged via Patreon.com to stay independent and committed to sustaining organic art and media. With the support, they coded a web art toolkit Diaspoura.com/DirtyLaundry.htm (2019), which provides education on the cycles of trauma perpetuated by Big Tech platforms. 

This event was presented on Thursday, March 3, 2022 as part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium and was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

🎥 Watch a recording of this event below and on YouTube ➞

Organized by Prof. V, CCA@CCA Faculty Coordinator

Quill Christie-Peters is an Anishinaabe arts programmer and self-taught visual artist currently residing in Northwestern Ontario. She currently works as the Director of Education for the Indigenous Curatorial Collective. She is the creator of the Indigenous Youth Residency Program, an artist residency for Indigenous youth that engages land-based creative practices through Anishinaabe artistic methodologies. She holds a Masters degree in Indigenous Governance on Anishinaabe art-making as a process of falling in love and sits on the board of directors for Native Women in the Arts. Her written work can be found in GUTS Magazine and Tea N’ Bannock and her visual work can be found at @raunchykwe.

Valincy-Jean Patelli is a self-taught Black Nonbinary artist working and living in Brooklyn, New York. Patelli experiments with three dimensional textures to create mixed-media works and sculptures. This nonlinear process allows them to blend stories from their ancestors with historical, theoretical and Yoruba cultural references that stem from the African diaspora. Valincy is interested in examining the disenfranchisement and marginalization of Queer and Black American culture. Patelli’s work has been exhibited in numerous group shows and belongs to collections in North America and Europe. Residencies include Patio Taller Residency in Puerto Rico, 2014 and a self-directed residency in Berlin, Germany 2015-2017. The Sheen Center, NYC invited Patelli to participate in Little Rock 9: 1957, a group show in 2018. Currently, their work is part of the UNRPED group show in Los Angeles 2020-2022.

This event was presented on Friday, March 4, 2022 as part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium and was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

🎥 Watch a recording of this event below and on YouTube ➞

"Why wouldn’t the elements in our bones remember their previous lives as other things? Though time erodes everything (even things meant to last forever), matter itself endures through time, manifesting as various bodies in a new life cycle. The transtemporal nature of matter seems a fitting metaphor for the conversation of restitution that is to follow."

📖 Read Katherine Jemima Hamilton's full review of Memory in the Bones, with illustrations by Caki Rebeiz, on Rewind Review Respond ➞

Organized by Jaime Austin, Director, Exhibitions and Public Programming, and Niv Rajendra, CCA@CCA Student Fellow

On Friday, March 4, 2022, Niv Rajendra led a Compassionate Movement Workshop where participants were invited to work through ancient Vedic breathwork techniques, somatic movement exercises, dialogue and choreography, with the hope to inspire more caring ways of building networks with humans and non-humans alike.

This event was presented as part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium and was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

“Fluid Mutualism is a state of being; a way of arriving at the world and a value system. Do our daily choices uphold values of reciprocity and care? Are we working to navigate the ebbs and flows of our collective lives with clarity and generosity?”

📖 Read an interview with Niv Rajendra in Rewind Review Respond ➞

"When we envision the selves we want to embody in this world, do we think about the quality of our inner waters? I feel called to draw connections between the waters that have held us, the power those memories hold and our own agency in manifesting clear waters."

📖 Read Niv Rajendra's reflections on the Compassionate Movement Workshop in Rewind Review Respond ➞

Organized by Prof. V, CCA@CCA Faculty Coordinator

Darren Springer is known for his Shroomshop Masterclasses around the world. He offers us a deep knowledge of the mycelium network encouraging and empowering everyone to spread the spores. In his workshops, participants learn the basics of mushroom cultivation growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms such as Oyster, Reishi, Shiitake and many other strains of mushrooms.

Darren is an educator, researcher and event organizer based in the UK. Known around the world for his Shroomshop Master classes he is a keen mushroom cultivator and teacher and has been growing gourmet and medicinal mushrooms for the last ten years. By day he is an Organic Horticulturist and Food Enterprise tutor and has translated his home growing experience into a social enterprise.

Darren is the mycologist in residence at Somerset House, one of the largest communities of arts and creative enterprises in the UK. He is also a qualified Permaculture teacher and facilitator and supports businesses and communities to create sustainable working systems and environments.

He is a member and presenter at the London Psychedelic Society, and is a chair and Breaking Convention committee member. He is also a regular presenter at the Detroit Psychedelic Conference, Ozora Festival, Noisily Festival and numerous psychedelic gatherings around the world sharing his extensive research on psychedelics and how they can help support humanity in the here and now.

Collectively his work aims to inform and empower individuals from diverse backgrounds to cope with social challenges and contribute to community development as well as self-improvement in an innovative, creative, culturally-aware style.

This event was presented on Monday, April 4, 2022, and funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

🎥 Watch a recording of this event below and on YouTube ➞

Organized by John de Fazio, Senior Adjunct Professor, UDIST and Ceramics

The topic based course “Queer Super Objects” explores the evolving history of LGBTQ+ iconography translated into physical forms. The Rainbow Flag designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978, commissioned by Harvey Milk, is a prime example of a group idea that crossed mediums in forms of graphics, jewelry, fashion and public art. The rainbow flag was conceived as a unifying symbol for LGBTQ+ communities to “proclaim its own idea of power,” as Baker recounts in his book, ‘Stitching a Rainbow’. Inventing a visual language to symbolize counter-cultural identity was an artist driven responsibility since the Stonewall Riots in 1969. The 1999 Trans Flag uses the colors light blue, pink, and white to represent the traditional colors for baby girls and baby boys, respectively, while the white represents intersex, transitioning, or a neutral or undefined gender. The Philadelphia Pride Flag created in 2017 included the black and brown stripes representing the Black and Latinx communities. The “More Color, More Pride” flag, has been used around the world to recognize the importance of intersectionality with Pride.

The students in “Queer Super Objects” created an Expanded Rainbow Flag, which was presented at the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium March 1–4, 2022. The artwork was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

Participating Students:

Jackie Kuang - Red | Life,

Henna Crowner - Orange | Healing

Emma Xing - Yellow | Sunlight

Demaris Huffaker - Green | Nature

Meztli Mercado - Blue | Serenity

Jasmine Jin - Violet | Spirit

Eli Cather - Pink | Sexuality

Jennyfer Medina - Brown | People of Color

Ruiji Yue - Black | Black Lives Matter

Ashley Malloy - Turquoise | Magic

Peipei Duan - Magenta | Harmony

Ray Chen - Silver | Wealth

Ashley Rodriguez - Gold | Iconic

Viv Pham - White | Innocence

Annie Artell - Clear | Invisibility

Organized by Edith Garcia, Senior Adjunct Professor, Upper Division Interdisciplinary Studio

SiouxBean explores the process of art and clay as vehicles for community, engagement, and sharing of our agricultural histories through performative socially engaged projects. Reyes celebrates and examines the connections between food, clay, and culture, specifically in Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities. As founder of SEED Studio, a POC owned and operated art studio exploring culture through art as a vehicle for social change. SiouxBean continued investigation into BIPOC clay and culinary traditions, the championing of justice rights movements through the studio as a social platform, and the continued mission to provide safe, secure, and sustainable studio practices. SEED welcomes all members of the community and prides itself on being a safe and accessible space.

This event was presented on Thursday, March 3, 2022 in partnership with the CCA UDIST Program and SEED. It was part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium and was funded in part by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

🎥 Watch a recording of this event below and on YouTube ➞

Organized by Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, Senior Adjunct Professor, Critical Studies Program

The United Nations has reported that the number of displaced people due to war conflict, persecution, climate change, and poverty has surpassed 80 million, larger than the populations of many countries of the world. Students in the Social Sciences course"Migrants, Exiles, Refugees" examined the roots of these forms of forced migration, the new formations of identity, and the emergent concepts of home and belonging. The students, working in groups, created maps of the refugees’ routes out of 4 critical zones: Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela and Central America, and Myanmar. Individually, they also made lanterns under the guidance of artist Na Omi Judy Shintani. The lanterns were lit during an event on Tuesday, March 1st between 10:30-11am to symbolically guide the refugees in their crossings.

Participating Students: Adam Bissell, Yuet Chi Letty Cheung, Quinn Dideon, Zaria Farrington, Kloyd Ganancial, Nic Hampton, Weeland Huang, Nicole Kuo, Jiahui Luo, Courtney O'Callaghan, Yuanyin Tang, Kellie Wu, Yitong Yang, Kai Yu Yang, Suyang Yao, Xiyue Zhang, and Becca Zheng.

This project was part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium and was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

📸 View photos of the lantern-making workshop by Nicholas Lea Bruno ➞

Organized by Kim Anno, Professor, Painting and Drawing Program

Students in Kim Anno's spring 2022 course, Parks, Environment, & Leisure, studied sea level rise maps of San Francisco and identified locations in vulnerability zones. They then visited the locations and created speculative visual projects based on the assumption that sea levels are going to rise significantly. The resulting work—ranging in medium from drawing to video and animation—features invented buildings and adapted sport and culture activities newly made for a watery location. This work was exhibited at the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium March 1–4. The Symposium was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

Participating students: Betty Deng, Xiaolin Deng, Sophia Georgopapadakos, Amelia Geraci, Wenjin Guo, Nick Hou, Alia Moussa, Vanshika Patel, Jacqueline Berezin, Pchevuzinske Xingyu Wang, Ziyao Wang, Siqi Wu, Yushi Wu, Vicky Xu, Shuyang Yang, and Xinrui (Cici) Yang.

Right: "Floating Bedroom" by Yushi Wu

Organized by Shalini Agrawal, Associate Professor, Critical Ethnic Studies

The Land Acknowledgement recognizes Indigenous Peoples their territories as the stewards of this land and the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and the land. It's a first step towards acknowledging that there is a history to the land. But, without accountability, it risks being an empty and harmful statement. Interdisciplinary collaborations by students in Shalini Agrawal's Spring 2022 Critical and Ethnic Studies course, Radical Redesign, begin by making space for the history of the land and creating experiences that move towards engagement, reflection and care. These collaborations were exhibited as part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium March 1–4. The Symposium was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

Participating Students: Mateo Sof Allier Lechuga, Andrew Chang, Vincent Chen, John Cho, Oliver Fredericksen, Haiyun Gao, Asya Garcia, Toby Hsu, Jillian Ikehara, Zona Lin, Ann Liu, Serena Ma, Sara Sagion, Jasmine Sun, Seya Tam, Yitong Wang

Organized by Katherine Lambert, Professor, Interior Design and UDIST

As a social justice issue, freedom to move through public space and buildings has transformed the lives of those most impacted and has led to greater understanding of the challenges to make that a reality for all. Students in Katherine Lambert's fall 2021 UDIST course, U+ME: Inclusive and Integrated Embodiment, collaborated on design and architecture projects intended to expand access to the built environment to all people, regardless of physical, cognitive, or age-related abilities. A display of student projects was exhibited as part of the CCA@CCA Fluid Mutualism Symposium March 1–4, 2022. The Symposium was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

Participating Students: Tony Fung, Min Ji Kim, Casey Leung, Taizhen Li, Fangming Liu, Jiyeon Park, Kajri Popat, Haishi Rao, Yuanyin Tang, Pricilla Trevino, Jiayuan Xu, Fanglin Yao, Yipin Zeng, and Xiyue Zhang.

Organized by Shalini Agrawal, Associate Professor, Critical Ethnic Studies

Students from the Spring 2022 Critical and Ethnic Studies course, Radical Redesign, created a guide of restorative justice care practices that introduce alternative, restorative methods of care and healing that center land-based learning, indigenous knowledge, and communal healing. This Coloring Care Zine is an index of "Practice of Practices" where students share their learning from land-based observations and personal care practices that develop personal, decolonized practices. From this new place of learning, students offer restorative justice prompts that aim to shift the status quo of how we learn and reflect with ourselves and others.

Participating Students: Mateo Sof Allier Lechuga, Andrew Chang, Vincent Chen, John Cho, Oliver Fredericksen, Haiyun Gao, Asya Garcia, Toby Hsu, Jillian Ikehara, Zona Lin, Ann Liu, Serena Ma, Sara Sagion, Jasmine Sun, Seya Tam, Yitong Wang

This zine was funded in part by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novak Creative Citizens Series.

📖 View the Radical Redesign: Coloring Care Zine ➞

Organized by Pallavi Sharma, Adjunct 2, Critical Ethnic Studies Program

Our Share/Your Slice is an opportunity for participants to listen, reflect and engage as the co-facilitators, Tomyé Neal-Madison and Ellen Bepp compare and contrast their personal histories, attitudes, life experience growing up on two opposite coasts in the 50s/60s. Although living in parallel worlds as an African American and a Japanese American artist, life ultimately reveals their connections due to political issues that inform their art advocacy. The recording below includes Tomyé and Ellen's presentations from the first session of this two-part workshop. Discussions were conducted in private breakout rooms.

Ellen Bepp is an Oakland-based visual artist and taiko (Japanese drum) musician. Since the 1980s her mixed media work, wearable art and hand cut paper have been exhibited nationally in museums and galleries. Her art speaks from her experience as a Japanese American, calling out for social justice and addressing the legacy of the WWII American concentration camps. She first learned about Japanese art and culture from her immigrant grandparents who practiced the Japanese arts and she draws inspiration from that rich source. Her subsequent interest in the folk art traditions of Asia and Latin America led to her textile arts research in Indigenous communities and humanitarian exchanges in Guatemala, Peru, Mexico, Nicaragua and Cuba. Those connections inform her work which honors ancestral wisdom and focuses on issues of displacement, identity and memory.

Tomyé Neal-Madison is a visual storyteller. Tomyé moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco after receiving a BFA from Moore College of Art & Design in 1973. After working in advertising for a couple of years, Tomyé began a career as a freelance fine artist and in fine art sales, working with retailers such as Shreve & Co., Petri’s in Sausalito, The Ebony Museum and Earth n’ Arts in Oakland, as well as the Oakland Museum Rental Gallery, and Expressions in Berkeley. During the 1990s, Tomyé participated in Women’s Initiative for Self Employment and received an MFA Certificate in Public Arts Administration from Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Tomyé served as Acting Director and subsequently Director of the non-profit gallery Oakland Center for Visual Arts, CVA (1992-1999). Tomyé has also worked with the City of Oakland’s Parks and Recreation Dept. as a Visual Arts Specialist (Instructor). Interacting and listening to youth and adult students who speak different languages, Tomyé began shifting the imagery in her ink drawings, gouache paintings, collages, and fused slumped glass artworks, from things and facades to people partaking in universal light-hearted experiences. During the 2000s, her images included depictions of disheartening movements and people raising voices for change.

This workshop took place on April 4 and 7, 2022, and was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

🎥 Watch a recording of the first session below and on YouTube ➞

🎥 Watch a recording of the second session on YouTube ➞

Organized by Susanne Cockrell, Associate Professor, Ecological Practices Minor

Join Mohawk Seedkeeper Rowen White in an hour of storytelling, inquiry, and invitation in the movement of Indigenous Land and Seed Rematriation. She shares the collective vision of intercultural healing that emerges when we center Indigenous leadership, ecological knowledge, cultural memory, and sovereignty of being in living relationship with the cultural inheritance of land, seeds, and other non-human kin. She shares stories, past, present, and evolving of the pathways in the Rematriation movement towards cultural sanity in the regenerative land stewardship movement in these times of great transformation.

Rowen White is a Seed Keeper and farmer from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and a passionate activist for indigenous seed and food sovereignty. She is the director and founder of the Sierra Seeds, an innovative organic seed stewardship organization focusing on local seed and education, based in Nevada City CA. Rowen is the Founder and advisor for the Indigenous Seed Keeper Network, which is an initiative of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a non-profit organization aimed at leveraging resources to support tribal food sovereignty projects. The mission of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network is to nourish and assist the growing Seed Sovereignty Movement across Turtle Island. Rowen's passion is in teaching and mentoring, and has developed many curricula which focus on holistic, indigenous permaculture based approach to seed stewardship which honors the many layers of seed culture; from practical hands on skills, cultural context and memory with guiding principles that are rooted in an indigenous ecology of relations. She teaches and facilitates creative seed stewardship immersions around the country within tribal and small farming communities, as well as offering an online distance learning seasonal mentorship called Seed Seva. She weaves stories of seeds, food, culture and sacred Earth stewardship on her blog, Seed Songs. Follow her seed journeys at www.sierraseeds.org

This event was co-presented on Wednesday, April 6, 2022 by CCA@CCA and the CCA Ecological Practices minor. It is funded in part by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

🎥 Watch a recording of this event below and on YouTube ➞

Organized by Mia Yinxing Liu, Associate Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture

The students in Mia Liu's Visual and Critical Studies/Graduate Elective course, Theories of Identity, Difference, and Power, spent the spring 2022 semester discussing the stratifications of society and how such boundaries come into being. On May 2, 2022, they brought people together in order to think about communal responsibility: what are models of building community? What is required to build community? How can we become more deeply attuned with our community members? This event included a presentation of the students' final papers, a collaborative mural, a collective weaving workshop lead by Carolina Cuevas, and a movement exercise led by Hannah Fhaye Oliver.

Participating students: Alex Hwang, Hannah Oliver, Meghan Smith, Carolina Cuevas, and Yiliu Teng.

This program was funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

📖 Read abstracts of the students' final papers ➞