Born and raised in Oakland, Adrian L. Burrell explores in Venus Blues the idea of history as a living phenomenon in the face of duress and erasure. The exhibition highlights Burrell’s large-scale sculptures and life-sized photographs created specifically for the exhibition, as well as the debut of a new iteration of the artist’s ongoing film project, The Saints Step in Kongo Time.

Curated by Dr. Tiffany E. Barber and presented with the generous support of the Paul L. Wattis Foundation, Venus Blues will be the first exhibition to utilize the entire MSP Foundation space at 1201 Minnesota Street since its May 2023 debut, including both its 17,000 sq. ft. interior and 3,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art screening gallery. Accompanying the installation will be live performances, community programs, and film projections that oscillate between the found and the fictional, that together spotlight the importance of preserving cultural heritage and family legacies in the afterlife of slavery.

Venus Blues honors the mysteries of the past and the powerful matriarchs — the Venuses — at the center of Burrell’s extended family. Rather than the classical image of white Western beauty or mythological figures, the women in Venus Blues embody the effects of loss and rupture that issue from being systematically torn from family, home, and country. The artist’s female ancestors — known and unknown, living and dead — fill the space, surfacing and resurfacing in family photographs, in pools of water, in haunting monologues, in subtle tremors, and on screens. The color blue also recurs as a material and conceptual motif vis-à-vis light rays, sound, and the sobering testimonies of the artist’s subjects. Burrell’s kind of blue represents a liminal space between day and night, between consciousness and unconsciousness. In the Black Atlantic tradition, this is a space where memories, dreams, and spirits interact. Notes Dr. Barber, “Through Burrell’s unique mode of visual storytelling, he reimagines his family’s ongoing search for abolition and liberation across generations and geographies. In so doing, he creates environments that function as roadmaps for building new worlds."

One of the main arteries of Venus Blues is a site-specific installation inspired by Burrell’s 2016 photograph of La Maison des Esclaves, or the House of Slaves, and its now-iconic Door of No Return. A contemporary memorial believed to mark the final departure point for enslaved Africans, the Door of No Return in Senegal has become a symbol of redress and reverse migration for travelers of African descent searching to reconnect with bloodlines from which they were severed as a result of the transatlantic slave trade. New portraits of various Venuses, hung and wheat-pasted throughout the space, and letters from Burrell’s family members punctuate the artist’s rendition of this important site of memory. Sugarcane as a material and plantation cash crop also recurs throughout the exhibition, comprising mounds and barriers that act as portals for Burrell’s muses. God rays emanating from skylights and gel-covered windows resembling stained glass saturate the raw warehouse space in ethereal washes of light and color. A new iteration of the artist’s ongoing film project, The Saints Step in Kongo Time, will also premiere as part of Venus Blues. Featuring never-before-seen footage, the film will be on view in 1201 Minnesota Street’s state-of-the-art screening gallery.

Taken together, the works in Venus Blues coalesce a different knowledge system that stems from Black radical feminist theorizing. Burrell draws on Saidiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts,” Robin D. G. Kelley’s “freedom dreams,” Christina Sharpe’s “wake work,” and Vanessa Agard-Jones “going to ground” to chart a path to Black liberation.

“Ultimately,” notes Dr. Barber, “Venus Blues asks visitors to reflect on individual and collective practices of mourning and re-memory. Each exhibition element simultaneously conjures melancholic longing, the passage of time, and aspects of the natural and supernatural world — the sky, the ocean, ghostly apparitions, and more. In so doing, Venus Blues heeds Black feminist calls to sit and stand with the dead, to go to ground as a form of wake work. Tracing the artist’s roots from Jim Crow Louisiana to modern-day Oakland to Senegal and back again, the exhibition animates rituals of healing as well as visions for a future that is perpetually unsettled and in motion. Amid cycles of catastrophe, Burrell creates space for collective storytelling as a means for survival and care.”

PUBLIC PROGRAMS & EVENTS

ARTIST TALK
In Conversation: Adrian L. Burrell & Dr. Tiffany E. Barber
Saturday, October 7, 6:30 pm
1201 Minnesota Street

Join artist Adrian L. Burrell and curator Dr. Tiffany E. Barber for an in-depth discussion of the why and the how behind the work in Venus Blues. They will walk visitors around the entirety of the 20,000-square-foot exhibition space and provide special insight into Burrell's artistic practice and the themes and ideas found in the photography and sculpture on view.

PORTRAIT SESSIONS
Family Ties: Making the Archive
Saturday, October 14, 1:00–5:00 pm
Sunday, October 15, 1:00–5:00 pm
1201 Minnesota Street

As we seek to highlight ways to disrupt the archives of our collective past, it’s important to also create new ways of being in and holding this moment. Family Ties: Making the Archive provides an opportunity for local communities in San Francisco and Oakland to create new family portraits. This experience is presented in collaboration with SF-based City of Dreams, a youth development and mentorship organization dedicated to the alleviation of generational trauma and cultivation of community healing. Each photo session will last approximately 15 minutes. Participants will receive a copy of the vintage polaroid and a second copy of the portrait will remain as part of the exhibition.

SCREENING & PERFORMANCE
My Mother’s Child: Still Waters with The Song Remedy
Saturday October 21, 1:00 pm
1201 Minnesota Street

Building on Venus Blues’ themes of collective healing, the exhibition space will be taken over with a dual presentation. A screening of award-winning film Still Waters, directed by Aurora Brachman will be followed by an immersive healing circle ritual facilitated by The Song Remedy’s Brittany Tanner.

Still Waters is a 12-minute short film by filmmaker Aurora Brachman. Through a series of extraordinarily honest and intimate conversations, Brachman examines the intergenerational fallout of experiences her mother endured as a child. Together, they forge a path forward that offers them a new beginning. Still Waters will be premiering on PBS’ POV on November 20.

The Song Remedy is an opportunity to be in community, share, learn and bear witness to collective struggle. If you’ve yet to experience a Sound Bath, we will take you on a journey to unburden and release anything that’s weighing you down. Led by founder and vocalist, Brittany Tanner (also a vocalist in SOL Development), we are guided through the sharing of Affirmations in song, deep breaths and rhythmic movements. Transformation takes place as we find our Remedy in Song.

WORKSHOP
When We Share Our Stories: SOL Affirmations with Karega Bailey and Dr. Felicia Gangloff-Bailey
Sunday, October 22, 1:00 pm
1201 Minnesota Street

Karega and Felicia Bailey became “angel parents” to their daughter Kamaiu SOL when she passed away in 2019. Since then, they have found a radical tenderness and gentleness afforded them concerning their grief, unlike anything experienced in their work surrounding social justice and gun violence. Their SOL (Source of Light) Affirmations workshops facilitate self-reflection and investigation of grief by providing self-guided and communal support and processing prompts for personal growth, grief care, and wellness. They seek to create a healing space through various forms of grief with the reminder that grief is love — it is just love after a loss. For Venus Blues, the couple will lead participants in an interactive session that focuses on embracing your story and tapping into the power of communal love.

POETRY READING & MUSICAL PERFORMANCE
Ayodele ‘WordSlanger’ Nzinga with Mia Pixley
Thursday November 30, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
1201 Minnesota Street

Venus Blues’ final evening program features a special performance by Oakland Poet Laureate, Ayodele ‘WordSlanger’ Nzinga and acclaimed cellist, Mia Pixley.

Inaugural Poet Laureate of Oakland, CA., Ayodele ‘WordSlanger’ Nzinga is a multi-disciplined artist, community advocate, arts educator, and cultural architect invested in designing structures that facilitate cultural production. Working at the intersections of community well-being, cultural sovereignty, transformation, and change, Nzinga is a renaissance woman, an author, director, producer, thespian, and dramaturge. 

Dr. Mia Pixley, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, composer, and musical artist who uses her cello, voice, and performance to study and represent aspects of self and other, community, and the natural world. Pixley received her professional studies diploma in cello performance from San Francisco Conservatory of Music, studying with Jennifer Culp, and has performed on Grammy award winning albums (Fantastic Negrito), off-Broadway musicals (Futurity), and in national tours (Windham Hill Winter Solstice). 

Venus Blues is presented by the Minnesota Street Project Foundation. Funding for Venus Blues was made possible thanks to support from the Paul L. Wattis Foundation. The Saints Step in Kongo Time was originally commissioned as part of an installation at the ICA San José (2022). In Her Garden, the Venus Blues programming space, was designed in collaboration with Alexcia Sundra.

The Minnesota Street Project Foundation would be unable to present world-class exhibitions without the support of art lovers like you. Consider making a donation to support future projects.

Image: Adrian L. Burrell, Cyclical Symphony, 2022