Libations and Spirits: An Evening of Film and Performance with The Black Aesthetic

Inspired by the history and legacy of The New Eagle Creek Saloon, San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar, curatorial collective The Black Aesthetic (TBA) presents an evening of film, moving image, and performance within Sadie Barnette’s installation. Featuring music videos, excerpts from James Baldwin’s trip to San Francisco, and original film works by Marlon Riggs, John Sanborn, and H. Lenn Keller, their response to Barnette’s work is curated to depict and uplift the queer rhythms and cuts of life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Drinks will be available for purchase at the bar. Please note, the bar is cash only. There is no ATM on site.

About The Black Aesthetic

The Black Aesthetic (TBA) is a curatorial collective that critically engages and experiments with a living and evolving archive of Black visual culture. With Black film as a point of departure, they organize screenings, exhibitions, and publications. Through practices of study, resource sharing, and collaboration they advance queer, liberatory, and accessible alternatives to the contemporary art landscape.

Members of The Black Aesthetic

Jamal Batts, PhD is a curator, writer, and scholar. His work considers the relation between Black contemporary art, sexuality, and risk. Recently, he curated the 2022 University of Pennsylvania MFA thesis exhibition, Imperative of Struggle. He is currently a Stanford University IDEAL Provostial Fellow in the Department of Art and Art History.

Nan Collymore is a mother, writer, interdisciplinary artist, and independent scholar. Her focus is on film, Black studies, critical fashion practice, and the subsequent intrinsic tension between practice and theory, touch and vision, and color and light. She is the Founder of L’habillement, publishing There Are Black People in The Future with Alisha B. Wormsley, Contributing Editor of Contemporary, and advisory board member of the Association of Dress Historians.

Ra Malika Imhotep, PhD (Ra/They) is a Black feminist writer, performance artist, and cultural worker from Atlanta, GA. Currently a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside, they are also co-convenor with miyuki baker of a spiritual-political education project called The Church of Black Feminist Thought. Their debut poetry collection, gossypiin, was published by Red Hen Press in 2022.

Leila Weefur (He/They/She), is an artist, writer, and independent curator based in Oakland, CA. Their practice, centered around video installation, examines systems of belonging, present in Black, queer, gender-variant life through eco-geography, erotics, and the sensorial memory. Weefur latest work, Tillage & Fury, is showing at the ICA San Francisco as part of the group exhibition, Resting Our Eyes, through June 25, 2023. Weefur is an educator at Stanford University.

Accessibility Information

Seating is available at this event. For any other accommodations, please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org 10 days prior to the event, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.