About this event

On Saturday, October 22, visit the In the Banlieues/Centering the Margin: Oakland/Saint-Denis exhibition and enjoy an evening of readings by Bay Area poets and music by Kev Choice. Register here!

Readings by:

Tongo Eisen-Martin, San Francisco’s Poet Laureate Zouhair Mussa, Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Finalist (2019) ayodele nzinga, Oakland’s Poet Laureate Stay for light refreshments and an informal discussion amongst the artists about place, art, and movement in the context of development, gentrification, progress, place/space and culture.

About the exhibition: Whatever you call them - banlieues, peripheries, suburbs - the In the Banlieues/Centering the Margin: Oakland/Saint-Denis international exhibition highlights the symbolic pivot from the center to the periphery. Artistic movements, social struggles, urban innovations: Oakland, California and Saint-Denis, France are today exerting their influence and inventing solutions to the challenges posed by equity and the rapid urban development of metropolitan areas.

The exhibition is co-produced by the Villa Albertine in San Francisco and California Humanities, in partnership with the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, SPUR San Francisco, Oakstop, and la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Paris Nord; with the support of the foundation 836M, l’Institut Français, la Fondation Art Explora; in collaboration with the cities of Oakland and Saint-Denis, Périféeries and with the participation of ARTE.

The program is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Bios:

ayodele ‘WordSlanger’ nzinga, MFA, Ph.D. is a multi-hyphenated artist. Working at the intersections of cultural production, community transformation and change. Her work appears in numerous anthologies and journals including Black Bird Press & Review, Black Rootedness, Painting the Streets, The Patrice Lumumba Anthology, 14 Hills, African American Journal of Poetry, and Magnolia Journal. She is the author of Performing Literacy: A Narrative Inquiry into Performance Pedagogy; The Horse Eaters; SorrowLand Oracle; and Incandescent. Nzinga host Winter in America the SpeakEasy. Ayodele Nzinga is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Oakland, CA.

Image: Photograph of Reine Ruthza by Sophie Comtet Kouyaté (left) PAST PRESENT FUTURE by Oakland International Media Academy (right).