HOLDING, CEREMONY

OCTOBER 16, 2022 – NOVEMBER 11, 2022
CLOSING RECEPTION: November 11, 6 pm – 9 pm

Lynette Betancur, Alma Leppla, Tricia Rainwater, Loreum, Steven Flores, and Angelica Trimble-Yanu

Public Programs
October 16 from 12–5PM: Opening Reception, Queer Rain Pop Up, and performance by Steven Flores
November 11 from 6–9PM: Closing Ceremony with artist talks by Alma Leppla, Tricia Rainwater, Lynette Betancur, and Angelica Trimble-Yanu

From October 1-16, Artist in Resident, ANGELICA TRIMBLE-YANU will be using the gallery as a studio space to continue a site-responsive body of sculptural work, entitled Strata. As Berkeley Art Center holds space with the artist for her practice, she has also invited artists who explore themes of the body and movement, intertwined with place and identity.

LYNETTE NICOLE BETANCUR

About the work: Ridges are seen throughout my sculptural vessels, soft curves and overlapping shadows, with canyons, tucked away — my forms hint at a perspective that I’ve familiarized myself with, an in-betweenness I resided in; becoming knowledgeable about the liminal space stretching between the Great Basin and the Bay Area, illuminating a fluidity and its everlasting movement. The act of creating my forms provides a sense of solace, the clay and its process being used as my foundation.

LYNETTE NICOLE BETANCUR (she/they) is a second-generation Colombian-American interdisciplinary artist & designer who was born and spent her formative years in Reno, Nevada, and the rest of her adolescence in San Francisco, California where she currently resides. Lynette has been primarily using clay to create sculptural vessels that are hand-built and formed with coils, with the tactility of the clay body creating paced moments of quiet; this process has become a ritual for grounding, processing feelings from her lived experiences, intergenerational stories, and her subconscious including the unraveling of memories. The vessels are an exposure to a specific isolation from community, which translates as a desire for connection. Each form has a relationship to one another; a synchronized fluidity to them, a dance. Lynette’s sculptures are reminiscent of various organic expressions, surrounding environments, and past drawings. Texture and movement are both components Lynette mindfully accentuates throughout her work. She’s drawn to curvaceous, asymmetrical silhouettes, how light and shadow interact simultaneously and habitually.

STEVEN FLORES

About the performance: In the time before invaders, most Native Tribes had their clowns. The clown spirit dances to communicate that.

STEVEN FLORES Hola, hello, yahtahey! I am a multi-disciplinary artist, actor, painter, puppet-maker, and jeweler. Other times I'm paid to be a Teacher and student. Look at me, I'm visibly Brown: Native to the western continents - a product of the traumas and blessings of the people that once walked this land they call "The Americas". I continue in my ancestors footsteps- journeying, growing, rejoicing, living, healing. I grew up to young adulthood in Northern California amongst orchards and mountains. I've lived in LA for a bit too long, working as high-wire stuntman, and guest starring in TV. I had a brief foray to New Mexico learning lessons of the desert, despair and the bittersweet of love lost, I then moved to New York to test my salt, honing my skills and love of the craft and what truthful art is. And after a short spurt in Ashland Oregon, love and duty brought me back to NorCal, San Francisco, where I explore the abstract underbelly of all that performance art and experiential theatre can be. The adventures continue.

ALMA LEPPLA

About the work: Alma explores concepts of code switching and the co-construction of identity based on perception. Their work uses drawing and painting techniques as a way to engage in this dialogue, allowing each mark to inform the next. Alma’s practice ranges from intimate works on paper to large-scale art installations. For Holdings, Ceremony they created a new body of work through an intuitive and emergent process. Through this process Alma is exploring themes of embodiment, noticing the ways the body can be our greatest teacher. Some of the works were made with the artist’s own body as reference, while others were made in collaboration with models. Each work is a unique expression of the emerging feelings from that moment in time.

ALMA LEPPLA (they/them) is a queer Latine multidisciplinary artist and educator whose work seeks to build community through the exploration of intersectional identities. Leppla received a Masters of Arts in Art Education from the Maryland Institute College of Art. They have shown work nationally and internationally through solo exhibitions, group shows, and artist residencies. They have served as an arts facilitator and educator, working with schools, community organizations and institutions since 2008.

LOREUM

LOREUM is the artistic practice of Tyler Eash (1988, Turtle Island), who currently lives and works in London (UK) and the forests of the Maidu in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. LOREUM has exhibited at Four Fourteen Gallery (Marysville, CA), NICOLETTI (London, UK), B. Dewitt Gallery (London, UK), Jägerschere (Niederer-Fläming, DE), Galerie Joseph (Paris, FR), R/SF Projects (San Francisco, CA) and more. Loreum graduated with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London, with a Masters degree of Fine Arts.

LOREUM works in a post-disciplinary fashion, using movement, sculpture, drawing, painting, film, music, poetry, and performance as means to embody Loreum’s modes of being. Loreum is a response to the removal of one’s own history, ancestral culture, and sense of self. Loreum engages the medium of identity to express our inherent imaginations as the last frontier of true sovereignty. The body politic is presented as a working document, an avatar to represent desires of a post-capitalist, post-colonial, post-gender self. Loreum becomes an interface between a queer rural artist of the Indigenous American and Irish diasporas and elite anglo-colonial realms of contemporary art and high culture. Deriving from ‘Lore’ – meaning folklore or knowledge of a particular group or Culture – Loreum is the name of a crystallizing desire, the labyrinthine identity of a body becoming myth as a means to be remembered.

TRICIA RAINWATER

About the work: In these works, Tricia processes the wounds held in her body and mind as a survivor, and the child of survivors. Starting with ‘Hide in memory lost’ from the last of her self portrait work in Golden Gate Park. She shares ‘Vba Isht Taola’ words from a Choctaw hymn meaning “Sinners can you hate the savior”. In the photograph she stands in the rubble of her grandfather's small town church in the deep south. Falamvt ish via chi ho? (Will you be returning?) taken on Diné land where she spent her youth, is a visit to feelings of the past that linger in the present. She wonders how we revisit places that both harmed us and taught us valuable lessons that we carry with us. In ‘What was ours?’ taken on her recent journey along the Choctaw route of the Trail of Tears she visits the places her people created safety and home.

TRICIA RAINWATER (she/her) is a Choctaw Indigiqueer multimedia artist based on Ramaytush Ohlone land. Her work has been featured nationally and internationally through group shows and artist features. In her work Tricia focuses on creating pathways to a resilient and hopeful future. Her work centers healing and process through grief and mourning. Tricia’s work ranges from self portraiture to large sculptural installations along with smaller works. Ikhish Tree (Ikhish from the Choctaw word for medicine) was created as a featured work in SOMArts main gallery with the Sowing Agency exhibition. The work, an act of ‘personal ceremony’ was created in Golden Gate Park where Tricia creates many of her works. Through the work Tricia engages in photography and video recording and in the installation bits from the ceremony are brought into the gallery to join the viewer in real life.

ANGELICA TRIMBLE-YANU

Works made during residency: Angelica has been utilizing the BAC gallery during her residency to install a series of works (Iyeska II A,B,C,D), created and sculpted on site. She references her 2019 site-responsive sculpture project Iyeska, where she produced a large series of monotype sculptures while traveling through her sacred homelands in the He Sapá and Makȟóšiča mountainscapes adjacent to Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. She addresses the movement of her forms on her ancestral land as a place of reclamation and connection, allowing the landscape itself to shape and form with the surface of the monotypes. This intention nurtures power and authenticity to her black and white landscape sculptures. Iyeska II was produced primarily by the artist’s body weight and hands. By repeatedly leaning into the delicate paper hung loosely on the wall, Angelica focuses on the body and imprints the sculptural forms through a reimagined personal landscape and ceremony.

ANGELICA TRIMBLE-YANU (1995, USA) raised in Oakland, California is an enrolled member of the Oglála Lakȟóta Nation from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Angelica has received a Bachelors of General Fine Arts at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon with a focus in printmaking and sculpture. Angelica currently lives and works in Oakland and Berkeley, California. She is represented by Mrkt Gallery in San Francisco and works at the Kala Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited at the De Young Museum and she was recently nominated for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 2022 SECA Award. Her Monotypes are featured in the permanent collection of the Five Oaks Museum, Lakota Dream Museum and Monument, SGC International Archives, Portland Community College, and the Zuckerman Museum. Angelica has previously shown with Grayloft, Shoh, Mata, BlackFish, Envelope, and Blanc Space galleries. She is a two-time recipient of the Artist in Residence Program at Kala Art Institute and has received two awards in writing and printmaking from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Angelica has participated in public artist talks with the De Young Museum and Oregon State University at the Eena Haw Native American Longhouse. Her work has been published locally and internationally by Divide Magazine, Howl Magazine, The Racket San Francisco, PBS News Hour, SF Bay View, Together Magazine, and Oregon Artswatch.