Orestes Gonzalez & Zulfikar Ali Bhutto:
I am to see to it that I do not lose you
Curated by Roula Seikaly
Exhibition Dates: November 1, 2018 - January 12, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 1, 2018, 6 - 8 PM
Artist Talk: Tuesday, November 6, 2018, 6 - 8 PM
Anum Awan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Orestes Gonzalez, and Christopher Martin
Co-presented by SF Camerawork and SOMArts

PRESS RELEASE
Orestes Gonzalez and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Are Not to Be Forgotten, KQED, Harry Tafoya, December 18, 2018

SF Camerawork is proud to present I am to see to it that I do not lose you, an exhibition of work by Orestes Gonzalez and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto curated by Roula Seikaly.

I am to see to it that I do not lose you presents two bodies of work that, when paired, establish a vital temporal line between a retrieved history and a proposed future: Julio’s House - Gonzalez’s photographic tour of his late uncle’s home in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood — invites audiences into Julio’s space to witness a life lived unapologetically amidst rigid twentieth-century social mores that rejected queerness outright. Gonzalez’s work records the luxurious decor and memento troves throughout his uncle’s home, and deconstructs the family and culturally-driven narrative about who Julio was as a gay man, immigrant, and hard-working provider.

Bhutto’s multimedia series Tomorrow We Inherit the Earth fuses textile, performance and lens-based practices to envision a rebellious queer future. Bhutto seeks to subvert the western gaze as it otherizes Muslim, queer, and black and brown bodies by creating high femme guerrilla warriors who are not easily categorized or consumed, and who fight for a world in which all are embraced.

Presented under a title drawn from Walt Whitman’s 1855 poem “To a Stranger,” I am to see to it that I do not lose you invites viewers to witness a history that was almost lost, and a future born of resistance.

ARTIST BIOS:

ORESTES GONZALEZ is a New York-based photographer whose work chronicles issues of memory and the impact brought on by time, politics, technology, and economic forces. His work is held in the Perez Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Architectural League of New York, and Queens Library collections. His monograph, Julio’s House, was published by Kris Graves Projects (+KGP) in 2017.

ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO // Faluda islam\\ is an artist, performer, zombie drag queen, and curator of mixed Pakistani, Lebanese and Iranian descent. His work explores complex identities formed by centuries of colonialism and exacerbated by contemporary international politics. Bhutto unpacks the intersections of queerness and Islam and how it exists in a constant liminal and non-aligned space. Bhutto was a curatorial resident at SOMArts Cultural Center where he co-curated, The Third Muslim: Queer and Trans Muslim Narratives of Resistance and Resilience and is a fall artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Bhutto is currently based in the Bay Area from where he received his MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in the summer of 2016. Today, he works as teaching artist, community arts facilitator, and part time unicorn in San Francisco.