An initiative of AKArt, Collect For Change™ offers original artwork by emerging and established contemporary artists, underscored by the goal of creating social change. We collaborate with artists across disciplines to offer a unique, as well as socially-responsible, means of collecting. With a percentage of all sales benefitting an organization personally selected by each artist, we aim to cultivate the artist-collector connection—providing new and seasoned collectors the opportunity to develop a deeper comprehension of the artist’s creative and world visions.
Our mission is to be a force for positive change in the art world, and the world at large.
The inaugural Collect For Change™ exhibition, Object Action: The "F" Word in a Post-Truth Era opened in January 2018, as a group exhibition
that was a feminist response to the one-year anniversary of the U.S.'s 45th presidency. The show highlighted “objects” and works by female artists “objecting” to a dominant paradigm through innovative media in the feminist realm. Artists across disciplines offered artwork with a portion of sales benefitting a charity personally selected by each artist.
Featured artists Ana Teresa Fernández, Chitra Ganesh, Michelle Hartney, Angela Hennessy, Nadja Verena Marcin, Sanaz Mazinani, and Michele Pred donated a portion of all artwork sales to Art & Abolition, The Center For Popular Democracy’s Puerto Rico Rebuilding Fund, NARAL
Pro-Choice California, Planned Parenthood, Girls Inc., and 350.org.
Curated by Amy Kisch, Founder + CEO of AKArt and Collect For Change™; Danielle Smith and Kimberly Verde, Founders of state
and Principals of FRAMEWORK; and Heather Zises, Founder of
(READ)art and Author of 50 Contemporary Women Artists, the show was accompanied by a Community Action Station highlighting benefitting organizations, as well as others doing work on the feminist front. The
show also featured a Pop Up Shop of zines, editions and gear by a roster including Sadie Barnette, Deborah Castillo, Serena Cole, Kelly Inouye, Katrina Majkut, Lisette Morales, Piyali Banerjie’s The Sacred Labyrinth, a curatorial selection by Aimee Rubensteen [of Rojas + Rubensteen Projects] of works by Phoebe Rose Gittelson, Meirav Ong, and Monica Uszerowicz, Diana Kane's Feminist Gold clothing line, The Nouveau Classical Project’s #fffp tees, and Allie Pohl's Ideal Woman jewelry. A ‘Feminist Library’ will feature publications from Torz Dallison and Aliza Edelman, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Beth Pickens, Fjords, BITCH Magazine, and Ms. Magazine, among others.
Featured in the exhibition are photographic works from Ana Teresa Fernández’ Arrastre series, taken during a performance in which the artist stages and subverts a traditional ‘rite of passage’ of a boy entering manhood through mastery of a horse at Tulum’s cenote sinkholes—where Mayans sacrificed virgin women; Mixed media work from Chitra Ganesh’s Protest Fantasy series which depict portraits of women who struggle with protest everyday; An interactive performance piece and installation, The Weight of Words II, by Michelle Hartney which addresses the president’s use of divisive, hate-filled language; A site-specific installation and large-scale sculptural works by Angela Hennessy that explore racialized identity, visibility, and materiality; How To Undress in Front of Your Husband, a video by Nadja Verena Marcin, which turns a 1960s how-to video on disrobing, into a punctive performance that delightfully combats the male gaze; A photographic tapestry by Sanaz Mazinani, May you make your dreams longer than the night: 1968-2018, which responds to the Women’s March protests; and multiple objects and installations by Michele Pred such as Wage Gaps, which features vintage purses with neon feminist slogans from her Pred-a-Porter series, and Riot Shields which sport feminist slogans painted in pink nail polish on police shields. The shields were first was carried on Inauguration Day in Washington D.C., and most recently during Art Basel Miami Beach at the artist’s Parade Against the Patriarchy.
On Thursday February 8, 2018, a conversation with artists Angela Hennessy, Michele Pred, and Piyali Banerjie took place on the role of the arts in activism. The artists spoke about their own work, both in and out of the social practice realm, and their featured pieces in the group show. Concluding the discussion, Angela Hennessy performed a reading of her The School of the Dead manifesto, after which a reception followed.
A ‘sister’ parade was held as part of Object Action: The “F” Word in a Post-Truth Era on Sunday, January 21 at 12pm from state to Pacific Felt Factory arts complex—where a satellite exhibition exploring feminist perspectives will be held. Both the Miami and San Francisco performances seek to reflect and amplify the notions of shared and collective experience within the feminist movement, by bringing together the unique voices and expressions of artists advocating reflection, justice, and change.
re:home, the second Collect For Change™ exhibition, developed in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut San Francisco, is a For Freedoms exhibition + community action, on view December 1 - 29 in San Francisco at Minnesota Street Project. The show examines how the broad societal crises of sanctuary city, homelessness, and the flight of the creative class intersect in the San Francisco Bay Area. Curated by Amy Kisch of AKArt + Collect For Change™, Candace Huey of Re.riddle, and Suzanne Zuber, re:home hopes to bring the communities of the Bay Area together as a local response to the inevitable challenges posed by global migration and displacement.
Featured artists include Marina Abramović, Mark Baugh-Sasaki, Randolph Colosky + Alison O. K. Frost, Rodney Ewing, Summer Lee + Laura Boles Faw, Julio Cesar Morales, Joel Daniel Phillips, Travis Somerville, Sound Made Public, and Shadi Yousefian, with additional works, performances, interventions, and community activations by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, Miguel Arzabe, Patti Bartelstein, Bahar + Shamsy Behbahani, Sofía Córdova, John Craig Freeman, Eliza Gregory, Somaieh Amini, Michelle Hartney, Anna Hentschel + Invisible Playground, Astrid Kaemmerling + The Walk Discourse, Shireen Liane, Hung Liu, Ericka Mcconnell, Rachel Neumann, Lisette Morales, Rasta Dave + CatchLight, Sanctuary City Project (Sergio De La Torre + Chris Treggiari), Brian Singer / someguy, and Weston Teruya, among others. Through Collect For Change™, portions of proceeds from works offered in re:home will go to organizations personally selected by each of the participating artists.
re:home looks back on a trajectory begun with Making Heimat. Germany, Arrival Country, presented by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) in the German Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, in response to the 2015 controversy surrounding German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of accepting nearly 1 million migrants and refugees as part of Germany’s “Willkommenskultur,” or culture of welcoming. To carry this timely conversation forward, the Goethe-Institut posed this question globally, asking curators in cities including Prague, Caracas, Liverpool, Mumbai, Boston, Marseille, Karachi, Lima, Santiago de Chile, Chicago, and San Francisco, to explore the role of their respective cities and regions as sites of ‘arrival’ and ‘integration.’ re:home aims to reflect upon and critique the lights and shadows of the San Francisco Bay Area as a ‘homeland’ (Heimat) or 'sanctuary city,’ (arrival city)—and more importantly, to present and model ways in which it might become a more effective one.
The exhibition is accompanied by a Community Action Center, for attendees to connect with organizations working on the forefront of the issues reflected in the show. To further democratize access to the artwork and concepts within re:home, a Pop-Up Shop of prints, artist editions, and books, is presented in conjunction with the exhibition, as well as a For Freedoms Reading Library of books focused on the relevant topics. Throughout the exhibition + community action, public programming, performances, and workshops, are complemented by a lineup of collaborative events with entities including Creative Capital + artist Maria Elena González, SFMOMA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art), SFMOMA Development Department, Artadia, Keenlee, The Battery Group, Immigrant Rights Commission, and SF Office of Civic Engagement & Immigrant Affairs.
On Saturday December 8, from 11am-2pm a re:home Family + Community Day featured free art-making workshops and interventions by Sanctuary City Project (supported by Facebook Art Department), and Ramekon O'Arwisters' Crochet Jam (with the generous support of Pamela + David Hornik). A For Freedoms Town Hall event took place in Minnesota Street Project’s Atrium on Saturday, December 15 moderated by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, current Chief of Program and Pedagogy at YBCA—and newly-appointed Vice President and Artistic Director of Social Impact at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.. The Town Hall began with a reading by students from Oakland International High School (OIHS) featured in the book I AM HOME: Portraits of Immigrant Teenagers (edited by Rachel Neumann, foreword by author + artist Thi Bui, photography by Ericka McConnell, published by Parallax Press). Joseph will then perform a poetic response to Douglas Saunders’ ‘eight theses’ on what constitutes an ‘arrival city,’ posed in his book Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World, which became the basis for the original Making Heimat exhibition. Other key participants include Kids in Need of Defense (KIND)'s Katie Annand; Founder and CEO of Lava Mae Doniece Sandoval; Taylor D. Duckett, author, songwriter, educator, spoken word artist, and Founder and Creative Director of Conviction 2 Change publishing company; Founder of Love Beyond Walls + The Dignity Museum Terence Lester; artists and activists Rodney Ewing, Ana Teresa Fernandez, Alison O. K. Frost, Thi Bui, and Jasko Begović; Co-Founder of Minnesota Street Project, Deborah Rappaport; Executive Director of Headlands Center for the Arts, Sharon Maidenberg; and Owen Levin from Community Arts Stabilization Trust.
re:home has been developed with the support of Minnesota Street Project, Facebook Art Department [(Facebook Artist in Residence (FB AIR Program), Facebook Analog Research Laboratory (ARL), and Creative Education programs)], Pamela + David Hornik, and a powerful creative community dedicated to meaning and action.