From January 11, 2025, to March 9, 2025, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) co-presented Here and There – Now and Then, a deep dive into San Francisco’s collective memory featuring Kota Ezawa’s video works and installations that blend historical events with contemporary art practices. Here and There – Now and Then was the second exhibition presented by FMCAC and SFMOMA since their 2015 co-presentation of Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet.
The site-specific exhibition included Alcatraz Is an Idea (2024), a collaboration with writer Julian Brave NoiseCat (Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen, Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie) highlighting the 2019 Indigenous Peoples’ Day Alcatraz Canoe Journey commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1969 occupation; Grand Princess (2024), reframing the COVID-wracked ship’s journey as a movie at Fort Mason FLIX; and Merzbau 1, 2, 3 (2021) and Ursonate (2022), reimagining Kurt Schwitters’ lost home studio installation.
Catalog
A fully illustrated catalog, featuring contributions from local writers and curators Dodie Bellamy, Rudolf Frieling, and Julian Brave NoiseCat (Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen, Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie), with an introduction by Frank Smigiel accompanied the exhibition.
$40.00
RELATED PROGRAMMING:
Ezawa’s National Anthem (2018/2024), a tribute to Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 protest, was featured in SFMOMA’s Count Me In exhibition. Fraenkel Gallery exhibited new Ezawa works from October through December 2024. A closing symposium featured participants from the 2019 Alcatraz Canoe Journey, writer Dodie Bellamy, and SFMOMA curator Rudolf Frieling, culminating in a performance by the Red Room Orchestra, featuring Petra Haden.
Kota Ezawa (b. 1969, Cologne, Germany) is best known for his light-boxes, works on paper, and animations using found images and film to comment on contemporary culture and historical events. His work reduces complex visual information to essential two-dimensional elements. Ezawa received his MFA from Stanford University and lives in Oakland, California. His work has been exhibited at Whitney Museum of American Art, SFMOMA, Hirshhorn Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.
From January 11, 2025 to March 9, 2025, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture presented Kote Ezawa: Here and There – Now and Then in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art:
SFMOMA.org
Kota Ezawa:
KotaEzawa.com
Artsy.net
Julian Brave NoiseCat:
JulianBraveNoiseCat.com
JNoiseCat.SubStack.com
SugarCaneFilm.com
We Survived The Night Book
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