Fight and Flight

"Fight and Flight: Crafting a Bay Area Life"

Exhibition period: 15 April - 10 September 2023

Venue: The Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, California, US

Guest Curator: Jacqueline Francis
Co-curator: Ariel Zaccheo

Participating Artists --
Adia Millett, Ala Ebtekar, Alexander Hernandez, Angela Hennessy, Cathy Lu, Cheryl Derricotte, Craig Calderwood, Erica Deeman, Jenifer K. Wofford, Lauren Toomer, Leila Weefur, Libby Black, Liz Harvey, Liz Hernández, Michelle Yi Martin, Nasim Moghadam, Ramekon O’Arwisters, Related Tactics, Charlene Tan, Margaret Tedesco, Richard-Jonathan Nelson, Woody de Othello, and yétúndé ọlágbajú 

Galerie du Monde is delighted to share our artists Cathy Lu and Adia Millett are featured in the latest exhibition presented by the Museum of Craft and Design, entitled "Fight and Flight: Crafting a Bay Area Life". A timely examination of the Bay Area arts ecosystem, the exhibition features 23 Bay Area artists who have stuck it out during the crises of our times: a pandemic, gentrification, high cost of living, limited access to resources, insurrection, and racist, xenophobic, and transphobic violence. Their responses are evident in their artworks. From them, we get a sense of what it takes to make it in the Bay Area now.

Curated by Jacqueline Francis and Ariel Zaccheo, "Fight and Flight" is about the struggle to live and work in the Bay Area where, despite the lack of affordable housing and studio space, the participating artists’ histories are nuanced expressions of the determination to remain. Over several months, Francis and Zaccheo visited artists in their studios and via Zoom, engaging in conversations about their Bay Area lives and careers and asking: “How, if at all, does your art practice relate to the Bay Area?” In dialogue with the artists, they discussed the relevance of “home” and “place” in their work. The artists spoke of conflicting and complex feelings: grief and frustration over erasure and invisibility; enjoyment of and inspiration from the Northern California landscape; and gratitude for friends, peer groups, and chosen families.

Francis comments, “For a long time, artists have ingeniously crafted a life in the Bay Area. For some of those who decide to move on, the careers and relationships started here are central to their sensibilities as makers.” Consciously uplifting communities that are historically underserved and underrepresented in museum collections and exhibitions, "Fight and Flight" primarily features African American, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, and AAPI artists.

The exhibition is generously supported in part by Anonymous, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation.

Learn more -- 

The Museum of Craft and Design