In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with visual artist and educator Marcel Pardo Ariza.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today, Emily chats with Columbia-born & Bay Area photographer and installation artist, Marcel Pardo Ariza.
About Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza:
Marcel Pardo Ariza (they/them) is a trans visual artist, educator and curator who explores the relationship between queer and trans kinship through constructed photographs, site-specific installations and public programming. Their work is rooted in close dialogue and collaboration with trans, non-binary and queer friends and peers, most of whom are performers, artists, educators, policymakers, and community organizers. Their practice celebrates collective care and intergenerational connection. Their work is invested in creating long term interdisciplinary collaborations and opportunities that are non-hierarchical and equitable.
Their work has recently been exhibited at the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Palo Alto Art Center; San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Palm Springs Art Museum; and the Institute of Contemporary Art San José. Ariza is the recipient of the 2022 SFMOMA SECA Award, the 2021 CAC Established Artists Award; the 2020 San Francisco Artadia Award; 2018-19 Alternative Exposure Grant; 2017 Tosa Studio Award; and a 2015 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award. Ariza is a studio member at Minnesota Street Project, and the co-founder of Art Handlxrs*, an organization supporting queer, BIPOC, women, trans and non-binary folks in professional arts industry support roles. They are currently a lecturer at California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University, and based in Oakland, CA.
Follow Marcel on Instagram: @MarcelPardoA
Marcel's 500 Capp Street Exhibit, Orquídeas is on view now through February 17. CLICK HERE for more info.
Visit Marcel's Website: MarcelaPardo.com
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2024-0116 - AIA - EP017 - Marcel Pardo Ariza
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: [00:00:00] What I try to do with my artwork is gather a lot of the documentation around this history so that we get to know it and we don't forget when we feel attacked and that we also have a sense of belonging.
Host Emily Wilson: That's Marcel Parda Ariza on the importance of learning your history.
Welcome to Art is Awesome. I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts. And I've been meeting such great people that I created this bi weekly podcast to highlight their work. Art is Awesome is now carried on KSFP LP, 102. 5 FM, San Francisco, on Fridays at 9 a. m. and 7 pm.[00:01:00]
Marcel Parta Ariza, an artist in residence at 500 Cap Street in San Francisco wanted to bring new audiences to the house where conceptual artist David Ireland lived. Marcel teaches at the California College of the Arts, and their work in constructed photos and installations has been exhibited in the Bay Area and around the country.
With this exhibit, Orquideas, Orchids, they're doing something different. Welcoming people to the house through public programming. For the opening, they hosted a drag show on the balcony so anyone could see it from the street. There have been a variety of workshops. And there's Memoria Trans SF, developed with writer Julian Delgado Lopera, where people were invited to come by, share their stories, and create an archive.
The last event is this Friday, January 19th. Marcel will give an artist talk, and there's a celebration [00:02:00]for the launch of the book Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects. I met Marcel at the house, where they talked about getting to photograph objects underwater as well as lights in front of the Diego Rivera mural when they were at the San Francisco Art Institute, and wanting Orcadias to be for people who might not go to galleries and museums.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: So I really started seeing the house as a gathering space. And then I was gathering with different like queer and trans leaders in the community. A lot of people who have lived in the mission for a very long time, who maybe didn't have access to the house. And I would invite them for coffee and tea. We would have conversations. We would talk about the legacy of queer and trans communities in the Mission district.
Host Emily Wilson: Marcel wanted to show the history of the neighborhood, but they also wanted people to interact. So along with the archive, they put on different workshops.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: So we did drag makeup workshops and we got makeup [00:03:00] donations from the Transgender District and BOMO Beauty.
And people were allowed to come to the house. Set up in the dining room space. And we had two different workshops, one by Grace Towers and another one by Mod the Two Spirit, who are two big folks in the drag community. And so it was just fun to try to use the house in a different way. We also did Café Porno with Sarema Tumabevi, where we did this sort of like dessert pop up, we were projecting queer porn and all of the proceeds from that night went to the Naughty Nurse Mobile, which is this van that goes on Capp Street supporting sex workers.
Host Emily Wilson: For Marcel, the best part of the David Ireland house is not the house, it's the garage, which they made as welcoming as possible, leaving the door open while doing installations.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: We would have music playing, like salsa or some cumbia, and then people would stop and ask us what we were doing, and I painted the garage like sort of like this fluorescent orange [00:04:00] to invite people into the room, and to invite them to be curious about what was happening and I feel like in that exchange of the house to me the garage is like the most exciting part of the house because it's on the first level people can Sort of wander in and see what what is happening and then we design all this printed matter with Jorge Gonzalez a Mexican designer to give to people so that they would come to all of the events that were happening.
Host Emily Wilson: The first director of San Francisco's Transgender District, who also appeared on the TV show, RuPaul's Drag Race, emceed the drag performances on opening night.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: We had Honey Mahogany, who is an amazing political and trans activist in San Francisco, be the emcee, and for me this was really important because I really believe in sort of bringing these two worlds together of politics and trans activism into the art world.
And we also had two [00:05:00] performances by the one and only Rexy, who, you know, started as a very young trans activist here in the Mission District, like went to Mission High School, and then Muneca, who's another sort of new person in the community. So for me, bringing all of these voices in and having DJ Dreams, who's an amazing DJ, DJ from the top of the balcony, just felt like this sort of like welcoming. Like a block party, that's kind of how I wanted it to be, like really take over the house in a completely different way, in like a much more organic and fun way.
Host Emily Wilson: Last year, Marcel was one of the winners of the prestigious SECA award at SFMOMA. The title of their show was, I am very lucky, very lucky to be trans.
Marcel isn't pretending there aren't awful things happening, but they've chosen to focus on joy. Learning about trans history gives Marcel hope.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: What I try to do with my artwork is sort of like document and gather a lot of the documentation around this history, um, so that [00:06:00] we get to know it and we don't forget when we feel attacked, and so that we also have a sense of belonging, and at the same time also propose ways in which we can collaborate and live in like a visual mark so that young people can see themselves represented.
Host Emily Wilson: The walls of the garage are plastered with scans from publications and photos and old flyers of some of the history Marcel uncovered with collaborators.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: There's like a couple of things that I really love learning about. There is, uh, I learned about this different sort of publications called The Guidelines for Transsexuals that were published in the seventies and they were funded by the Erickson Educational Foundation, which was actually owned by a trans man who was very wealthy and wanted to do this philanthropic endeavor.
But the cool thing for me to see this is that these are like printed matter that were being passed around in the 70s for people to learn about gender affirming health care or how to interact with your family or how to go to the [00:07:00] DMV as a trans person, how to deal with your birth certificate. So all of these questions that to us feel like something that's very very recent, but that people have been having to deal with for like decades, right?
So there's this magic there that to me feels like, you know, ancestors sort of like talking to me and being like, yes, like you're on the right path to sort of like uncover some of these things.
Host Emily Wilson: Marcel found out more surprising history doing research at the GLBT Historical Society.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: This other pamphlet made by Louis Sullivan, who is like a very well known trans activist here in the Bay Area.He was one of the founders of the GLBT Historical Society. He wrote this called Information for the Female to Male in like 1974. Obviously the language has changed, but there is something about going to see these archives and seeing parts of, like, my own story, of my friends stories, of my community's stories being written in ways that, like, You really don't have access to, um, on a [00:08:00] daily basis.
So for me, the idea was to bring these things out and to invite people to see this so that we understand that we have a very long legacy. There's something so beautiful about really seeing that legacy and seeing those photos and seeing that sort of like. kinship with people that you may not have known, but with people who did leave something for us that we're still sort of benefiting from today and building upon.
Host Emily Wilson: Marcelle also learned about a North Beach bar, Finocchio's, that started during Prohibition.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: It was one of the earliest places to have drag performances. Since the 1930s, which is really wild, I've talked to some. trans elders in the community who remember some of those performances, because it was around for a while actually, and it was one of the only places that allowed people of color to perform too.
The production value of those performances was absolutely incredible. There was a publication with all of these photos of people just completely dressed up, and [00:09:00] it just feels amazing to see that, and to see that people were putting so much Time and care and attention in putting these shows, right? I think later on it became a little more touristy.
To me, what feels so exciting is thinking about the 1930s and thinking about how all of this movement also started in San Francisco. How people were like navigating the city that we live in today.
Host Emily Wilson: Another well known bar in the Mission stayed open until 2014. Photos taken there are also part of the show.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: Esta Noche was the first gay Latinx bar in San Francisco. It was on 16th street. I actually never got to be in it, which is really sad because I hear that the owners sold their house in order to buy this. There's so much homophobia and transphobia within Latina like communities. From what I hear from all the stories, it was a place where people could actually be themselves, where they could get to know each other.
And in the project that we've been doing with Julian, [00:10:00] Uh, we met Rick Gerter, who is this photographer that used to photograph for BAR, for the Bay Area Reporter. As part of the installation here at 500 Capp Street, there's a big contact sheet from Estanoche from 1995. So we've been digitizing some of his photos, because he used to spend time there, and it's been really interesting for people to recognize the people that were in those photos, right? Just finding the small treasures allows for the conversation to keep going.
Host Emily Wilson: Marcel's commitment to equity is no joke. And at the SECA awards, they and the other artists made sure people who worked on the show were included.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: For SFMOMA's opening, I think each one of the artists would get like a plus 10 or something for the opening and I had 34 collaborators, so I had to fight really hard to get plus 34 plus all of their plus ones.
To me that sort of speaks to the ways in which we are talking about art in that. [00:11:00] You know, we are, some people can see it. Some people are allowed to be part of the celebration. Also at SFMOMA, initially the art handlers weren't invited to the opening. And we've drafted a letter with all the artists saying that if they weren't going to be invited, that we will pull out.
They ended up getting invited to the show. Which is amazing. And some of them hadn't been too many shows that they've put together. In the art world, there's all this exclusionary practices that I think are so outdated and for me doing shows in more alternative art spaces or spaces that are so close to the street, there's this magic where everyone who's around can sort of like be included in it. And so that was the idea with the opening night. It was to have the DJ outside in the balcony and to have people just wander into the house and see what was happening here. And I really love that magic of just like, we are throwing something and everyone's welcome to come inside.
Host Emily Wilson: The name of the show has meaning for Marcel.
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: I chose the name [00:12:00] Orquideas because when I did top surgery, my orchid was about to bloom and when I came back home, it had bloomed and it was blooming for a very long time. It bloomed for weeks even when I was healing, so to me it felt like this sort of like parallel of both the orchid and me sort of transforming. I feel like orchids are very specific. I mean, they're like, not to be cliche, but they're like the national flower of Colombia. And so I grew up sort of with this orchid, but there are so many of them. They're a little bit androgynous. To me, what's so beautiful about orchids is that they require specific type of care.
I really wanted to bring this idea of multiplicity and this idea of like specific intentional care into the exhibition.
Host Emily Wilson: This is the part of this show, three questions, where I asked the same three questions to find out more about the person they are. When did you know you were an artist? What was [00:13:00] some work that made a big impact on you? And what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Artist Marcel Pardo Ariza: Well, it's hard to think about the first time that I knew I was an artist, but I do remember this moment, which sort of like marked my life, which was when I was studying photography in Indiana. We did this assignment where we had to respond to another artist. And I responded to Dwayne Michaels, who does this sort of photo sequences.
And I asked my friend and his. to post for me and it was my first time sort of photographing two people in an intimate setting and the idea was to do like a photo sequence with both of them and I remember just being very tall on this ladder looking down with my 35mm camera and both of them sort of Embracing and sort of having more of an intimate engagement together and reconnecting as former lovers, which now looking back, I really put them in [00:14:00] a very vulnerable position.
But to me, that moment where two people really trusted me to document a part of their life and a part of their intimacy felt super powerful. And what was interesting was that when I showed that photo later on in a gallery in school, there were a lot of homophobic people because we were in Indiana. So, a lot of people asked for the photo to be taken down because it was a photo between two gay men.
It really sort of became this school thing where my art professors were really defending the right for the work to be there and for other people to take it down because it would sort of like solve some of those tensions. And I feel like in that moment I really realized like how powerful art can be, right?
Especially according to the context that the work is exhibited in.[00:15:00]
I definitely think about Zanele Muholi's work. When I was in undergrad, I came across their work, and I remember seeing the series where they document different folks, different queer folks in South Africa, and learning about some of them. I do remember feeling There was this important work that was being done by, by just having that interaction with people one on one.
I also got to work with Alejandro Almanza Pereira, this Mexican artist, when he was in residence at the Art Institute. And he does these beautiful photographs of still lifes underwater. I was sort of like an art handler student then, and we helped build this pool where we got to photograph all these objects underwater.
And we also got to build like a scaffolding in front of the Diego Rivera mural. So it was a scaffolding of lights. It's in front of the Diego Rivera mural. And I feel like both of those moments [00:16:00] to me felt like this, both the bonding that was happening between all of us working on this show was so special and also the gestures that he was doing felt so fun and so creative and so out of the ordinary, right?
Like I would finish my work and I would come home and people would ask me what my day was like and I was like, Oh yeah, I'm taking photos underwater or I'm lighting lights in front of a fresco. And to me, there's that magical playfulness that can happen when you are so engaged in art practice.
One of the most creatively inspiring places for me in the Bay, it's a little biased, but I grew up in Bogotá, which is in the middle of the country, so there's no access to the sea. So for me, living close to the water always felt like this. It's sort of like [00:17:00] fancy livelihood or something like that. Like it felt so, so bizarre and so unobtainable.
And I feel like when I first moved to San Francisco, I would get to bike all around Embarcadero and that just would blew my mind. I'm like, the water is there. This is so close to me. I get to just bike around there. Later in 2020, a friend of mine taught me how to kayak. And so we were kayaking underneath the Golden Gate and again the water to me just kept blowing my mind that I had access to water and now I live in Emeryville and I get to run on the Emeryville Marina and to me running that trail while looking at the city of San Francisco with the water, it just never gets old.
It's like a little bit cliche, but I also love it. How the light changes at every time of the day. I love that I get to like hear my thoughts while moving and feeling the wind. And it's something that I try to do many [00:18:00] times a week. Finding those places of like solace. I get to think and I also feel the water of nature and like smells are places where it reminds me that I'm a human being, that I'm alive and that I also get to process things at my own pace.
Host Emily Wilson: Marcel Pardo Ariza will give an artist talk at 500 Capp street in San Francisco this Friday, January 19th at six o'clock. It's also a book launch party for trans herstory. And 99 objects. Thanks for listening to Art is Awesome. And thanks to Marcel. The exhibition they created, Orquideas, is at 500 Capp Street through February 17th.
Please subscribe. We're on Apple and Spotify and other platforms. And join us next time when we talk to photographer Charles Lee, who has a solo show, Sweat Plus Dirt, at SF [00:19:00] Camera Work, documenting contemporary Black Rodeo Culture.
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Goto of Goto Productions. It's carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM, San Francisco on Fridays at 9 a. m. and 7 p. m. Our theme music is provided by Kevin MacLeod with Incompetech Music.
Be sure and follow us on Instagram at artisawesomepodcast or visit our website. Till next time.[00:20:00]