Virtual Arts Event

LH Horton Jr Gallery presents:

To Imagine is To Resist: Asian Pacific American Arts Activism at Kearny Street Workshop produced and hosted by Dara Del Rosario, Kazumi Chin, and Michelle Lin, producers and hosts of We Won't Move: A Living Archive, a Kearny Street Workshop podcast.

To Imagine is To Resist, explores how cultural production activates our understanding of personal, collective, and political identities and histories. This event looks specifically at the work of artists and organizers that have worked through Kearny Street Workshop (KSW) in San Francisco, the oldest multidisciplinary Asian Pacific American (APA) arts organization in the country. In this particular moment in American history, given the rising awareness around anti-Asian violence, what can we learn from our experiences with APA arts? How can we
continue to imagine and create more just futures?

About the Kearny Street Workshop

KSW was founded in 1972, during the height of the Asian American cultural movement. It is the oldest Asian Pacific American multidisciplinary arts organization in the country. Their mission is to present, produce, and promote art that empowers APA artists and communities.

About the Presenters

Michelle Lin is a literary and mixed media artist who serves as the Northern California Regional Co-Chair of Kundiman and as co-curator of Kearny Street Workshop’s key reading series KSW Presents. She works to build radically loving and transformative spaces with Asian Pacific American, LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC artists.

Dara Katrina Del Rosario is a non-profit arts professional and curator whose practice is rooted in Community Cultural Wealth and Critical Performance Pedagogy. Her recent projects include Postcolonial Revenge (co-curator, 2019), From My Body (co-curator, 2019), Passionate Engage- ment: The Art of Nancy Hom (exhibition coordinator, 2019), and Liwanag vol. 1 relaunch (steering committee, 2019).

Kazumi Chin is a poet, scholar, educator, and student of Cultural Studies at the University of California, Davis. Their work examines the way contemporary Asian American artists make legible the carceral histories and geographies of San Francisco, creating space for us to differently experience, remember, and imagine the history of this city, grounded in an abolitionist perspective.

We Won’t Move: A Living Archive, is a podcast that brings radical Asian Pacific American (APA) artists, curators, and activists to the forefront. Once the anti–eviction rallying cry for the International Hotel in the 1970’s, We Won’t Move: A Living Archive features hosts Michelle Lin, Dara Katrina Del Rosario, and Kazumi Chin as they illuminate the legacies of intergenerational APA arts activism.

Thank you to our event sponsor Delta College Cultural Awareness Program.