Gavin Benjamin

Mixed media collage and photography convey my experience of being a Black man in America today. I use appropriated images from fashion, pop culture, interior design, and the legacy of iconic Black portraitists and photographers to inform my practice, touching on themes of masculinity, identity, race, family, and history. Found images are collaged and varnished, embellished with Swarovski crystals to embolden my subject matter (often myself, friends and family members) to new levels of luxury, social status, and hierarchy. I seek to subvert traditional preconceived notions about Black, immigrant families (like my own) to encourage audiences to question their own assumptions about race.

I expand on this practice by working in new communities outside my own, with a focus on portraiture, to shed light on people who have been forgotten by art history. My aim is to recontextualize communities into the canon of American art, uplifting them and their stories. This practice is a celebration of the vibrancy that is often overlooked in the Rust Belt and in disenfranchised groups.

The series Museum Pictures originated from my residency at the Westmoreland Museum of Art in Greensburg, PA. This exhibition combines the installation of a domestic space owned by a fictional Black family for nearly 250 years with psychologically rich portraits of the Museum’s community. Initially aiming to connect with the African American residents of Greensburg during his residency, Benjamin invited numerous community members historically underserved by institutions—recent immigrants, first-generation Americans, and people of color—to sit for portraits and imagine their place within the museum.

Learn More about Gavin:

Website: www.gavinbenjamin.com
Instagram: @gavinbenjamin

Daniel Fenstermacher

Together Kwesi and Kurt care for 6 horses, 12 chickens, 4 goats, 3 dogs, and their families. Facing racism both in the ranching industry and at home from several police officers, former gang members from Richmond, California found their purpose in starting a ranch built from the ground up in Benicia, CA, and now mentor local youth through summer kids camps and introducing them to a different way of life. 'Cowboying' is a lifestyle they have embraced, and a positive way of giving back to community through their annual campouts and parade rides through downtown Oakland for the Black Joy Festival.

This is a story of perseverance and fortitude, as they have battled flooding at their ranch the last 2 winters and recently took home 1st place in the Relay Race at the Bill Picket Rodeo in Los Angeles, CA in July 2022.

Learn More about David:

Website: www.danfenstermacher.net
Instagram: @danfenstermacher

Jy Jimmie Gabiola

Jy Jimmie Flora Gabiola is a lens based, image making Poet living in Oakland and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His practice reclaims personal & collective narratives surrounding the echoes of immigration. His work creates dialogue centered around the multiplicity of what being an American means today – oftentimes exploring the photo collage, candid portraiture and visual poetics.

Having moved to America at a young age, he became a US Citizen through naturalization at 10 years old. Growing up a military dependent, this shaped the way he engages with the world. His relationship with the camera started with 35mm disposable cameras and scrapbooking as a way to document and make sense of his life experiences.

As a recent graduate from the California College of the Arts with a bachelor's degree in Photography with High Distinction and a minor in Literature, his academic background has equipped him with a strong foundation in both visual arts and critical thinking. This interdisciplinary education has profoundly influenced his artistic practice, providing him with a multifaceted approach to storytelling and conceptual exploration. Focusing on traditional analog, digital and alternative processes, He likes to build bridges and conversations with the history of Photography while creating conversations around his identity as a Filipino.

His artistic focus revolves around reclaiming narratives of immigration, postcolonialism, futurism and ethnic identity from his point of view of an immigrant Filipino American who is part of multiple communities throughout the Bay Area. Professionally, he has honed his skills as a creative strategist and marketer focused on branding, leveraging visual storytelling to connect with diverse audiences and amplify underrepresented voices especially within SOMA Pilipinas, the Filipino Cultural District in San Francisco and the artist communities of first generation immigrants, children of immigrants & refugees of Oakland, where he resides.

Learn More about Jy Jimmie:

Website: jimmieflora.com
Instagram: @jimmie.flora

Laura Plageman

At the core of my series, Reverse of a Ruin, is a meditation on the contrasting scales of human timelines versus the vast expanse of deep ecological time. I think about the outsized impact our species has on the natural world despite our fleeting presence. Though human life cycles are brief, our footprint and consumption have significant effects on environments evolved over millennia. Through digitally deconstructing and recombining my photographed scenes, I explore the diverse moments and fragmented experiences that cumulatively shape an overall sense of place. By breaking down landscapes into layered compositions, I slow down and contemplate the multiplicity of transient instants that form our impressions and memories of a location.

Learn More about Laura:

Website: photolp.com
Instagram: @lauraplageman

Sophia Ramirez

In 2021, my attention turned to the phenomenon of the disappearing lesbian bar-- summing less than 30 in operation nationwide. I spent 2 years researching and photographing the architectural remnants of once active lesbian bars in California; over time, they have been bought and sold, turned into restaurants, store fronts, and on occasion, left vacant. Confronted by these changing architectural profiles, I used a 4x5 field camera to map together memories of the past and clues about our future.

Through much of the 20th century, these bars had both practical and ideological functions as sites of political action, radical expression, community building, and pleasure for women.They have also not been immune to racially or economically exclusionary practices, nor rigid ideas of sexuality and gender. Collectively, Lavender Rarities, tells a story about the complex intersections of liberation, community, and capitalism.

This series gains a physical body through the use of light boxes. Encapsulated, painted faint lavender, with sporadically placed peepholes; they create an intimate environment for viewers to engage with the images nestled inside. The peephole references both the voyeuristic and “hidden” nature of queer bars, while the use of lavender calls upon McCarthy’s 1950’s “Lavender Scar”, and later “Lavender Menace” a radical queer human rights group of the 70’s.

Lavender Rarities explores the formation and limits of what bars offer as community spaces while calling attention to the voids left after their closures-- diving into the implications of these sites in ever evolving lexicon of queer identity.

Learn More about Sophia:

Website: sophramirez.com
Instagram: @sophramrez