Manifest Differently Exhibition opening:
Carolyn Castaño | “Cali Es Cali – Home Here and There”
September 2-26th
ATA | 992 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 2nd, 3:00 – 5:00 pm
In “Cali es Cali”, or “Cali is Cali”, artist Carolyn Castano plays with two popular expressions: the first, “Cali es Cali”—is an expression from Carolyn’s father’s hometown of Cali, Colombia, which is akin to the American adage, “There is no place like home;” the second is a nickname for California: “Cali”—a term popularized by LL Cool J in his 1988 hit song, “Going Back to Cali.”
As a point of departure and inspiration, Carolyn uses their late father’s photographic archive—comprised of 4,000 photographs, films, and videos—to consider the fragility and ephemerality of memory and identity. The photographs in the exhibition are juxtaposed next to drawings of the landscape (inspired by Von Humboldt’s landscapes and botanical studies) and considers the ways in which the land figures in the trajectory and memory of the migrant/ immigrant.
Led by Clarion Alley Mural Project, Manifest Differently, is a new project co-curated by Megan Wilson, Kim Shuck, and Trisha Lagaso Goldberg. Over the next year, 2023/24, we’ll be working together with 38 diverse, multigenerational visual/media artists and poets to interrogate the history of Manifest Destiny and its legacies of inherited and perpetuated violence, trauma, and addiction, and the outgrowth of resistance and resilience – giving fire to movements for social/ culture change. The project is supported by California historian Barbara Berglund Sokolov, humanities advisors Mary Jean Robertson, Kyoko Sato, Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, Anita Chang, David A. M. Goldberg, and visual designer Drake Cepriano Dalmacio Manalo.
