Our Mission: No Eviction!

Brava! For Women in the Arts announces:

~Our Mission: No Eviction! A community action to benefit Rene Yañez & Yolanda López~

In solidarity with this important event held at Brava Theater, The Red Poppy Art House has canceled it’s evening programming to support the efforts of this fundraiser and tribute to longtime Mission district residents and artists: Rene Yañez & Yolanda López.

Featuring: Culture Clash, Marga Gomez, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Las Bomberas de la Bahia, Alejandro Murgia, Dr. Loco, Cherrie Moraga, Celia Rodriguez, Maya Chinchilla, Loco Bloco y mas

Art Auction with work by Enrique Chagoya, Ester Hernandez, Dignidad Rebelde, Faviana Rodriguez, Ana Teresa Fernandez, Juan Fuentes, Rio Yañez, Rene Yañez, Yolanda López, Jean Melesaine, Xuxo Perez and special donation from singer songwriter Meklit Hadero. 

TICKETS: $10-$35 reserved seating available at www.brava.org, or by phone 415-641-7657

INFORMATION: 415-641-7657 x5; www.brava.org 

Join us for an evening of performance, art and tributes to long time San Francisco Mission artists and residents Yolanda López and Rene Yañez. Yolanda and Rene have both been issued Ellis Act Evictions from their home of more than 35 years and are facing serious health issues. This fundraiser will be to raise funds to help cover some of the lawyer expenses, medical expenses and moving expenses. Yolanda and Rene have made huge contributions to the Chicano art world and the uniqueness and beauty that so many of us love about the Mission and San Francisco. Please come out to celebrate these two amazing humans and help them fight this eviction and raise some funds to help them.

Performers include Culture Clash, Marga Gomez, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Las Bomberas de la Bahia, Alejandro Murgia, Dr. Loco, Cherrie Moraga, Celia Rodriguez, Loco Bloco, Maya Chinchilla y mas. In addition, a Silent Art Auction will be held with works by Enrique Chagoya, Ester Hernandez, Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes, Ana Teresa Fernandez, Rio Yañez, Rene Yañez, Yolanda López, Xuxo Perez, Jos Sances, Jean Melesaine, Alexa Treviño, Art Hazelwood, Patrick Piazza, Robbin Henderson and many more! There will also be a raffle of items donated by local businesses and friends including a private set donated by Bay Area singing sensation, Meklit Hadero.

ABOUT RENÉ YAÑEZ

René Yañez is a widely recognized artist, curator and producer who has been a strong role model and vital cultural force in the San Francisco arts community. As a curator and mentor, Yañez has galvanized a large community of Latino and Chicano artists and their allies from all communities. The list of artists he supported at early stages of their careers reads like a who’s who of internationally-recognized Latino artists, including Rupert García, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Ester Hernández, Yolanda López, Carmen Lomas-Garza, Enrique Chagoya, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Gronk, and ASCO. Active as both a visual and performance arts curator and artist, Yáñez co-founded the successful Chicano performance trio Culture Clash. He has curated numerous exhibitions including Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge, an art exhibit featuring works by Chicano artists from around the United States that toured the US for five years. A founder and former Artistic Director of Galeria de la Raza, Yañez was one of the first curators to introduce the contemporary concept of Mexico’s Day of the Dead to the United States with Rooms for the Dead and Labyrinth for the Dead at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Since the early 1970s, René Yañez’s Day of the Dead celebrations, with co-director Ralph Maradiaga, were marked by increasingly large exhibitions, ceremonies, processions, and school-based activities and quickly spread beyond the Mission District, encompassing various communities in the Bay Area, California, the American Southwest and Mexico. Throughout his decades of work in the arts, René has remained a stalwart supporter of grass-roots organizations and community artists, collaborating with organizations such as SomArts, Oakland Museum of California, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Kearny Street Workshop, Mission Cultural Center and the San Francisco Arts Commission. In 1998, he received the “Special Trustees Award in Cultural Leadership” from the San Francisco Foundation for his long-standing contribution to the cultural life of the Bay Area. He is currently Director of Special Projects for SOMArts Cultural Center.

ABOUT YOLANDA LÓPEZ

Yolanda M. López is a celebrated painter, printmaker, educator and film producer. López obtained international celebrity for her ground-breaking Virgen de Guadalupe series of drawings, prints, collage, assemblage, and paintings. The series, which depicted “ordinary” Mexican women (including her grandmother and López herself) with Guadalupan attributes (usually the mandorla). The works attracted praise for “sanctifying” average Mexican women, who were depicted performing domestic and other labor. She continued her artistic investigation of women’s labor issues with a series of prints called Woman’s Work is Never Done, one of which, “The Nanny”, attempted to study some problems faced by immigrant women of Hispanic descent in the United States. Her famous political poster titled Who’s the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim? features an angry young man in an Aztec headdress and traditional jewelry holding a crumpled-up paper titled “Immigration Plans.” López has also curated exhibitions, including “Cactus Hearts/Barb Wired Dreams”, which featured works of art concerning immigration to the United States. The exhibition debuted at the Galería de la Raza and subsequently toured nationwide as part of an exhibition called “La Frontera/The Border: Art About the Mexico/United States Border Experience”. López has produced two films, Images of Mexicans in the Media and When you Think of Mexico, which challenge the way the mass media depicts Mexicans and other Latin Americans.

She has taught art in studios and universities, including UCSD and the University of California, Berkeley. The Yolanda M. López papers, housed in the library at UC Santa Barbara, is a collection of her personal and professional writings from 1961-1998.

BRAVA! FOR WOMEN IN THE ARTS

Brava! For Women in the Arts celebrates its 27th year as a professional arts organization dedicated to cultivating the artistic expression of women, youth, LGBT, people of color and other unheard voices through the ownership and operation of Brava Theater Center. BRAVA’s producing history includes award-winning premieres by Diana Son, Eve Ensler, Debbie Swisher, Reno, Cherylene Lee, Suzan-Lori Parks, Culture Clash, Joan Holden, Anne Galjour, Elizabeth Summers, Kate Rigg, Dan Guerrero, and Mabou Mines, as well as works by internationally known playwrights like Jesusa Rodriguez and Liliana Felipe of Mexico, Jorge Drexler of Uruguay, and Ojos de Brujo and Ismael Serrano of Spain. BRAVA’s current artistic programming includes traditional and contemporary music festivals, a variety of film festivals, contemporary and experimental theatrical productions, international comedy shows, lectures and professional dance productions – making BRAVA one of the most eclectic and multi-faceted arts venues in the Bay Area. BRAVA’s resident youth programs include the long standing SF Running crew which pairs youth with professional mentors and hands on opportunities for technical theatre training; Cuicacalli Escuela de Danza, traditional and contemporary dance training for youth, Famooly Productions Salsa Band workshops and Loco Bloco dance and drum ensemble. Brava is committed to providing affordable space for artistic development and presentation and quality professional arts training for underserved youth in the San Francisco community.