The Art of Healing
How Creative Expression Can Enhance Mental Health
soft defiance Artist + Curator Talk
6–8 pm
June 30, 2023 (Friday)
Harvey Milk Center for the Arts
50 Scott St, SF
Resisting negativity and hatred is a constant uphill battle that requires a firm commitment to centering one’s own mental health and wellness, especially for many historically marginalized queer and trans communities.
Through the last several years, pandemic and politics have taken a major toll on our collective mental health. soft defiance is a celebration of this commitment to our sustained emotional and spiritual well-being.
On Friday, June 30, join soft defiance exhibition contributors Adiean dae Neón (artist), Fiona Jane F. Orolfo (artist), KayKay Essien (artist), KB Bullock (therapist, Queer LifeSpace), Nicola Bosco-Alvarez (curator, Harvey Milk Center for the Arts) and Vin Seaman (artist + curator, Diamond Wave) in the Harvey Milk Photo Center Gallery for a conversation about the exhibition, and the relationship between creative expression and mental health.
Accessibility: 50 Scott Street is located at the corner of Scott and Duboce Streets, adjacent to Duboce Park. The Harvey Milk Photo Center Gallery is located on the park side of the building on the ground floor. There are two all gender, wheelchair accessible bathrooms on the ground floor, and an elevator to access the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts upstairs. Masks are encouraged but not required.
About the Artists
Adiean dae Neón (xhe/hir) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works throughout the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ohlone peoples (SF/Oakland bay area). Xhe is grateful for the lives of all of hir ancestors of the Carrizo/Comecrudo, Iloko, and the Españoles and Celtic Britons that have lived, endured, and created their lives and passed it all down to Adiean.
As an autistic person xhe has always had a special ability to hyper-focus on whatever interesting thing that piques hir interest: photography, performance, jewelry, music, and everything in between. Xhe organizes hir skills into different personas, currently including DJ Ki0 Gabi, and drag queen Gloamy Dawn.
Fiona Jane F. Orolfo (she/her) is a Filipino-American visual artist passionate about storytelling. She is passionate about producing images that speak to the fashion and beauty industries as they struggle to include the stories of diversity. Whether it is chronicling her own experience or bearing witness for another, Fiona Jane's skills as a creator become palpable when she is behind the camera lens.
Fiona Jane graduated cum laude with her MA in Photography from the Academy of Art University. She specializes in capturing people's essence, stories, and inner beauty. Her images have been published in several magazines and Double Scoop, a statewide media outlet covering the visual arts in Nevada. She founded OK-What, a media company dedicated to collaborating with artists and individuals in the entertainment industry to tell their stories.
Born in Nigeria in 1993, Kaykay Essien (he/they) is a queer immigrant artist in the Bay Area, whose work explores sensuality, mythos, and softness. They attended African Leadership Academy in South Africa, and then University of Notre Dame where they studied Physics and aerospace engineering, before they started their career as an artist in 2020. They have had three solo exhibitions since, and have also been part of group shows such as at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival and Art Basel Miami. Their pieces that are part of the Soft Defiance exhibit are from their All My Pride (2021) collection, a rainbow series of portrait and figure watercolours of queer AMAB black and brown bodied people, in their signature soft, colourful, psychedelic style.
KB Bullock (they/them) is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area pursuing a Master’s in Counseling Psychology at The Wright Institute, while residing on Muwekma Ohlone land, otherwise known as San Francisco, CA. Throughout their 7 year career working in mental health care settings, they have had the opportunity to provide relational, person-centered, strengths-based, and multiculturally-responsive interventions in various helping roles. Formerly, they facilitated support groups for young adults living with mental health diagnoses before transitioning to their continued role providing crisis counseling, family preservation, and other resolution services at a crisis shelter for youth and families in San Francisco. In turn, they have expanded their fluency in trauma-informed, attachment-based, and integrative approaches of care, while working with people who have experienced complex grief and trauma.
Nicola Bosco-Alvarez (she/her) is the Director and Choreographer for the Young People’s Teen Musical Theatre Company (YPTMTC) at the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts. YPTMTC is an accessible and inclusive musical theatre company for teens within the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department. Nicola led the creation of the annual Art + Pride exhibit at Harvey Milk Center for the Arts, and has co/curated many large scale art shows with Dave Christensen, former Director of the Harvey Milk Photo Center.
Vin Seaman (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and the director of Diamond Wave. They have been featured on Shondaland and Vice.com, were an inaugural APAP Leadership Fellow, and received the 2017 Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Award, the 2019 Theatre Bay Area Legacy Award, and a 2022 CALI Catalyst Award. Their creative work exploring queer identity and drag culture has been presented at The Stud, Brava, Oasis, CounterPulse, the de Young, Frameline, the Austin International Drag Festival, SATELLITE ART SHOW Miami, the National Queer Arts Festival, Stolt Scenkonst, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Yale School of the Arts.
About soft defiance
How can we remain soft in a hard world? What is gained by refusing to “toughen up”?
A new arts & performance project exploring the intersection of softness and queer mental health
soft defiance is a collaboratively-curated exhibition and programming led by Harvey Milk Center for the Arts and Photo Center, queer arts organization Diamond Wave, and LGBTQIA+ mental health service provider Queer LifeSpace with Rosen Creative House, and is supported by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and the San Francisco Arts Commission