Join us on Wednesday September 1, 2021 at 6:30 pm EST for a ZOOM conversation with artist Jose Figueroa.

Presented in conversation with SNMA Executive Director Hunter O’Hanian, Jose Figueroa will discuss his drawing practice, and his first public mural project he completed in his West Oakland neighborhood titled, Hello, Caution for Children.

The event is free, open to the public and conducted via ZOOM.

Jose Figueroa on Hello, Caution for Children:
“In the summer of 2020 during Covid-19, I created my first public mural: HELLO, CAUTION FOR CHILDREN, a 7-panel painting depicting radical black queer resistance throughout modern history commissioned by neighbors in the intersection of Dr. Huey P. Newton Way and Center Street in Oakland, CA. I undertook this challenge diligently and intuitively inviting frequent inspection by those being depicted: digesting neighbors’ and passersby’s feedback while learning a complicated history outside of my own. The mural starts with the collision of the Black Panthers Party in 1966 depicting the 10 point program, the free food program, and the women of the party. The mural also reference images of events including the Stonewall Riots, the Million Man March, and socially distanced protests incited after the killing of George Floyd; centering valuable contributions of black trans lives on the path towards liberation. The journey ends in an imagined future, where the Pointers Sisters -who grew up in the neighborhood, precede a ball full of joy.”

About Jose Figueroa
Jose Figueroa is an Oakland based artist born in Caracas, Venezuela. Figueroa uses postmodern strategies to create artworks that reflect on the fragility of fleeting moments, the complications of interlayered identities, and the impossibility of a single perspective. Figueroa has exhibited at Southern Exposure, Berkeley Art Museum and Embark Gallery, all in the bay area; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Bogotá, Colombia; Longwood Arts Project in New York, among others. He attended Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in 2009, received his B.F.A in arts from the Cooper Union in 2014 and his M.F.A. from U.C Berkeley in 2016.