August 5, 2024
Artists

San Francisco artists protest Israeli massacres in Gaza by “vandalizing” their own works


A group of San Francisco artists last week carried out a protest against the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the silence of leading US arts institutions about the horrific crime by altering their own works.

The protest took place during a public event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), the multidisciplinary contemporary arts venue in San Francisco, on the evening of February 15. Eight artists, whose work was part of Bay Area Now 9, a show of 30 Northern California artists and the Center’s triennial exhibition, entered the space and spray-painted or draped pro-Palestinian messages over their own work.

The artists called their protest “Love Letter to GAZA” in response to the February 15 event’s title, “Love Letter to SOMA [South of Market, a neighborhood in San Francisco].” In response, the Center closed its doors for the weekend.

The artists unfurled a banner that read “Stop Funding Genocide.” Several of them went to work on their own art pieces, using fake blood as well as paint. According to KQED public radio, “Ceramic artist Paz G spray painted their sculpture You Have a Broken Heart in bright pink letters reading ‘Viva Palestina—Free Palestine.’ Jeffrey Cheung, whose colorful, large-scale paintings of abstracted nude forms hang in the main gallery, hung a sign reading ‘Ceasefire Now!’ over his works.”

In addition, “the artist champoy, along with several people wearing masks and keffiyehs, turned champoy’s boat sculpture into an altar for Gazan people killed in Israeli airstrikes, with their names and ages written on notecards. Tracy Ren laid a banner on their wool rug installation that read ‘No more blood money—ceasefire now.’”

The other exhibition participants who modified their works were Sholeh Asgary, Courtney Desiree Morris, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo and Leila Weefur. The Center had advertised the “Love Letter to SOMA” in part by pointing to “a new public artwork by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo,” as well as “public art works” by Cheung and Weefur, among others.

In addition to the artists’ efforts, supporters dropped leaflets with the artists’ demands from the Center’s upper balcony, bitterly echoing the Israeli military’s practice of alerting the Gazan population they are about to be bombed and killed. Various groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Bay Area, Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), Palestinian Feminist Collective and Bay Area Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), participated in the protest.



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