Take This Hammer, revolutionary art at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Ahhh San Francisco.  Once you cross that glorious old Bay Bridge, one almost feels as if they are entering into a magical fairy tale kingdom. In this land, where justice and fairness prevail, people can think freely and live passionately. It's a land unsullied by the realities that slog down pretty much everywhere else in the world: ultra-conservatism, crime, ugly stuff. Lofty San Francisco floats above it like a castle in the sky. Almost.

Remains of an apartment fire at 24th and Valencia, loaded with metaphor 

         It only took a few hours of being back to realize that San Francisco is definitely not what it used to be. There is break neck development going on everywhere that is turning quaint quiet corners of the city into glittering gems of banality. There's a sense of vacancy in the Mission, as if all the weird vibrant people and their culture have been handed smallpox blankets by the patriarchal money worshipers that run the city. All around, people are being evicted, their homes are being destroyed, and new monuments that say absolutely nothing are rising in their place. San Francisco has fallen.

That's a little dramatic, but not totally off the mark. San Francisco has always been a place for change, and these days there's little that is not changing. For better or for worse, it is under going what I think of as Disneyland-ification. It's an attempt to scrub the city clean of anything real or gritty like the rather awesome graffiti that used to cover my old building. Or to slowly make 6th street a parade of expensive eateries while not so subtly forcing all the Black inhabitants to find somewhere new to live.  It's as if they are trying to turn San Francisco into a family friendly theme park, a parody of a real city. These negative changes, that are forcing more and more of the poor people out, have created an emotional backlash that artists have been documenting. Take This Hammer, the current show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is comprised of art that is rebelling against the injustices and growing disparities in San Francisco, the US, and the world.

Still from Google Google Apps Apps,Persia Ft. Daddie$ Pla$tik, 2013

The first thing you hear when you walk in the door of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is a TV screen playing the music video. The 2013 song, by drag artist Persia, is titled Google, Google, Apps, Apps. Be warned, it will bore into your subconscious and lay eggs there.  Persia, a fixture in the dwindling San Francisco drag scene, plays with the seriousness of the situation facing anyone who isn't making over 100,000 dollars a year.  The refrain "I really want to be white" is a poke at the increasing segment of affluent white population while other ethnic groups melt into the larger bay area or even Sacramento. LGBTQ culture, once a key pillar that held the city aloft, is slowly being eroded. LGBTQ people (and anyone else) are welcome in San Francisco as long as you uphold the status quo.  As long as you don't spray paint art on abandoned buildings. As long as you don't drink beers in Dolores Park. As long as you've got the money. Otherwise you will be kicked out this little theme park. 

Oree Originol, Justice for Our Lives, 2013-present

Racial violence is a topic many of the artist the exhibition address. Artist and Black Lives Matter advocate Oree Originol creates simple black and white portraits of those who lost their lives to an increasingly "shoot-first" police policy throughout the country. Oree's work also offers a stack of the images of those slain for the public to take and color, fostering a connection to one of the countless faces on the wall.  The internet connects the dots, and these previously isolated incidents have a emerged as a definitively racist murder policy by US police forces.  This work serves not only as a memorial to those who have lost their lives, but as a reminder to those who are largely removed from the realities of poverty, discrimination, and violence, that life is not all Disneyland for many in San Francisco and the rest of the US.

Dignidad Rebelde (Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes), Various posters, 2015

          The works by Dignidad Rebelde, a collective from Oakland, are a series of beautifully designed and printed revolutionary posters.  In the works, one sees the immediacy and youth culture of 60's music posters, 80's street art, Wadsworth Jarell and Emory Douglass.  My particular favorite features a native Hawaiian bearing the slogan "Free Hawaii." I also have been contemplating the merits of a California that is no longer part of the US. 

           The show is a melting pot of not only different backgrounds and issues, but different mediums, with technology 
taking a greater role in the works.

Indira Allegra, Blackout, 2015

Pieces such as Indira Allegra's Blackout series utilize the overwhelming visual inundation of information in her pieces as metaphor for our emotional reaction to the barrage of headlines and news we can't escape or ignore. 

Technology and the internet have also provided unprecedented access to groups, information, and communication that other generations of activists would have had to expend much larger amounts of resources on acquiring.  Handheld devices make it possible to do all the work a computer did ten years ago, and do it discreetly. A factor that artist Ruby Mountain capitalized upon to record police brutality experienced during the Occupy Movement in Oakland.  

Ruby Mountain, Revolution, 2012

Tucker Nichols, Op-Ed Drawings, 2005-2016

Tucker Nichol's political op-ed cartoons use satire to amusingly critique a variety of issues from censorship to fracking.  By appropriating actual pages of the New York Times and altering them, the viewer is left to question what was altered and what was actually printed. Unfortunately, they did seem a bit out of step with the earnestness with which other artists are addressing these issues even if his heart is in the right place. 

      The show was inspiring to me. It sometimes feels like being in school and working is informally compliant with the system.  I have let issues that I feel passionate about stay submerged in my subconscious because it's easier to not to care. I convince myself that as a white male, there is little for me to contribute.  Few people are remotely interested in the concept of revolution.  Living passionately and discussing ideas fiercely, is a rare quality once you reach your 30's. Nobody wants to talk about the harsh realities of the world anymore. We get comfortable, find decent jobs, buy houses, and these injustices and tragedies that are happening right outside our doors become as removed as tv shows.  Most people, consciously or not, have chosen defeat.   Take This Hammer reminded me that these issues shape my work.  I decided to get a degree in art because I felt like it was the purest vehicle for change in myself and the world around me. What the world needs now is change, and yes, I will take that hammer.