Quarterly Indoor Screenings
LAS MURALISTAS: our walls, our stories
TUESDAY, MAY 28, 2024
6:30 to 8:00 pm
Bernal Branch Library
500 Cortland Avenue
Seating is limited and first come, first serve. Reserve your space, below
This is an indoor event
LAS MURALISTAS: OUR WALLS, OUR STORIES is a 25-minute documentary directed by Javier Briones and edited by Claudia Escobar, in partnership with SFMOMA. Hear from artists Juana Alicia, Smokie Arce, Susan Kelk Cervantes, Elaine Chu, Priya Handa, Yolanda López, Consuelo Méndez, Irene Pérez, Patricia Rodriguez and more on their experiences, the impact of femmes in the movement and the effort to make space for future muralistas.
As explained by Patricia Rodriguez, “One big motivation for us was recognizing that there had been no successful women muralists in the Mexican mural movement. We wanted to show that women could also paint large outdoor murals…We had the freedom to paint whatever we wanted, and we chose the beauty of women and their Mexican and Latino cultures. As Muralista Irene Perez put it, ‘We brought fine art to the streets and added the beauty of women in our culture.’”
Post-screening, join some of the featured artists for Q&A:
Camilo Garzón is a Colombian-American writer and filmmaker who is the founder and creative director behind Cuentero Productions, a bilingual multimedia production house founded in 2023 in Oakland, California. Among Camilo’s many and varied credits in multimedia production include consulting producer, sound recordist, and interviewer for the award-winning short-documentary film LAS MURALISTAS: OUR WALLS, OUR STORIES (2022) as well as voice director, lead producer, co-writer, and editor of the award-winning “Mission Muralismo Audio Zine” (2022), an experimental audio collection in which local writers Olivia Peña and Josiah Luis Alderete interweave their perspectives on the history of the San Francisco Mission Muralismo movement with stories from the muralists themselves.
Susan Kelk Cervantes, artist, educator, veteran of the San Francisco community mural art movement, founding director of Precita Eyes Muralists in the Mission District. Established in 1977, Precita Eyes is one of only a handful of community mural arts centers in the United States creating over 700 murals locally and internationally. Cervantes is responsible for some of the finest community murals in the Bay Area such as Leonard Flynn Elementary School, Mission Playground Pool, Precita Valley Community Center, Bayview Foundation, the S.F. Women’s Building, and many others. Through a collaborative art process, Cervantes is dedicated to social change by transforming the environment and lives of the participants through the creation of community murals. In addition to studio and mural painting Susan works in various media including mosaic, painted ceramic tile, bronze relief and “polyfresco.”
Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong are the dynamic duo behind the mural arts collaboration Twin Walls Mural Company which they formed in 2013. They believe in the power of visual narratives to capture and reflect a community’s history, struggles, dreams and intentions. Both San Francisco natives, Elaine and Marina met at the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 1997 and instantly formed a friendship. They began painting murals with Precita Eyes Muralists Association under the guidance of Susan Kelk Cervantes who became their mentor and close friend (Or as they call her “art mom”). Twin Walls Mural Company continues to set an example for future generations of strong independent women of color in the art world. Though they may be small in stature, they paint their dreams BIG! “The smaller the world expects us to be, the larger the surfaces we’ll paint!