ACTIVATIONS

Artist Bio

Nanci Amaka is an interdisciplinary conceptual artist and writer whose work explores trauma, memory, and the liminal space between experience and language. Drawing from her formative years in southeastern Nigeria and her migration to the United States in 1993, Amaka's practice is rooted in personal history, ancestral knowledge, and the psychological impact of displacement. Her work spans photography, performance, installation, and text, often weaving together poetic narratives that examine vulnerability, social empathy, and the body as a site of memory. Influenced by West African animism and ecological thinking, Amaka engages landscapes as portals for healing and transcendence—particularly in her recent work created in Hawai'i, where she now lives and works. Amaka holds a BA in Visual Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from California College of the Arts. Her projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and she is recognized for her ability to create emotionally resonant, conceptually rigorous work that challenges dominant narratives and invites reflection on identity, autonomy, and care. Whether communing with ancestral terrain or amplifying the voices of the unseen, Amaka's practice is a call to witness and remember. Her work offers a space for reckoning and renewal—insisting that art can be both a vessel for truth and a tool for transformation.

Selected Works

Artist Bio

Mary W.D. Graham is a San Francisco based artist working in painting, sculpture and performance. Through portraiture depicting both historical and fictive subjects, she creates the opportunity for the audience to place themselves within history, contextualize the present, and aid in the illustration of the future. Her performance work is informed by her classical and jazz vocal training as she renders live improvisations of melody and story to draw focus to the significance of a moment or place. Working across disciplines, Graham connects herself and her audience to their common humanity. Graham was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a family of artists and educators. She attended California College of the Arts where she received her BFA in Individualized Studies in 2022. In 2024, she opened her first solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco as part of their Emerging Artists Program. She has been a visiting artist at UC Berkeley, the University of San Francisco and was a guest lecturer at San Jose State University in 2025. She has been awarded residencies at The Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado; Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine; Black [Space] Residency in San Francisco, and was a nominee for the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship. Her solo exhibitions at Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery and the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts will open in Spring of 2026.

Selected Works

Artist Bio

Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans collage, performance, video, sculpture, and social engagement. Drawing on archival research, embodied practices, and dialogical methods, she amplifies overlooked narratives of Black, femme, and immigrant identities. Her work interrogates systems of power and historical erasure, often using her own body and the bodies of collaborators to explore themes of citizenship, belonging, and resistance. Born to Ethiopian parents and based in New York City, Metaferia's practice is rooted in both African diasporic traditions and contemporary political critique. She engages visual art as ritual, creating works that are at once conceptual and deeply personal. Her "By Way of Revolution" series, for example, honors the labor of BIPOC women activists through layered collage and participatory performance. Metaferia holds an MFA from Tufts University's School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, RISD Museum, Museum of African Diaspora, and the Sharjah Biennial, among others. It is held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Art at Brown University, Metaferia continues to shape critical conversations around race, gender, and representation. Her work invites viewers to reckon with the complexities of American identity and the transformative power of collective memory.

Selected Works

Artist Bio

Trina Michelle Robinson is a San Francisco–based interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the relationship between memory, migration, and ancestral legacy. Using film, photography, printmaking, installation, and archival materials, Robinson creates emotionally resonant narratives that examine the fractures and recoveries within personal and collective histories. Her practice is rooted in research and somatic engagement, often drawing from her own family's migration stories and the erasures embedded in historical archives. Robinson repurposes fragments of memory—whether through handmade paper infused with ancestral fibers or glitch-based video techniques—to evoke both trauma and transcendence. Her work invites viewers to reflect on the invisible forces that shape identity and belonging, and to consider how movement, loss, and recovery are shared across generations. Robinson holds an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BA in Political Science from DePaul University. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), ICA San José, Minnesota Street Project, the San Francisco Art Commission Main Gallery, and the BlackStar Film Festival, among others. She is a 2024 SFMOMA SECA Award finalist and was recently nominated for the Anonymous Was A Woman Award. Robinson's practice offers a powerful lens into the emotional terrain of migration and memory, affirming that art can be a tool for reckoning, release, and reconnection. Through her layered storytelling, she creates space for viewers to engage with histories that are often hidden, yet deeply felt.

Selected Works

Artist Bio

Lava Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersections of race, gender, representation, and collective memory. Grounded in an ethos of social justice, her practice spans drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and site-specific installation. Thomas engages historical archives, African American protest traditions, and intersectional feminism to amplify visibility and honor those whose contributions have been overlooked or erased. Born in Los Angeles and based in Berkeley, California, Thomas studied at UCLA's School of Art Practice and earned a BFA from California College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at leading institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of the African Diaspora, and the California African American Museum. It is held in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, among others. Thomas's Mugshot Portraits: Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott reclaims the visual legacy of civil rights heroines, while her public monument Portrait of a Phenomenal Woman, honoring Maya Angelou, marks a historic moment in San Francisco's civic art collection. Her work has been recognized with awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Artadia, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Through acts of remembrance and reimagining, Thomas challenges dominant narratives and invites viewers to engage with the emotional and political dimensions of history. Her practice affirms the power of art to heal, disrupt, and transform.

Selected Works

Artist Bio

Jasmine Narkita Wiley is a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose practice explores the intersections of temporality, lineage, and repair. Her exhibitions include presentations at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Wiley's practice has been recognized through prestigious awards including the Murphy Award and the Cadogan Scholarships (2025), Ted Purves Social Practice Award (2025), the Center for Art + Public Life Impact Awards (2025), and the HEAR US Award from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts (2022). Wiley earned her Bachelor of Science in Public Relations in 2010 and her MA in Arts Politics from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2022. She is currently pursuing her Fine Arts MFA at California College of the Arts, and is expected to graduate May 2026.

Selected Works