By Bernadette Cay
Most people waiting in the line to get coffee are glued to their devices. But for those at Coffee Mission who look up and notice, the art on the walls offers a visual, thought-provoking treat: cheerful colors, familiar pop culture icons and Bay Area landmarks. But that’s not all. On closer look, you’ll see that these vibrant pieces explore more weighty themes, including income inequality, gentrification and the impact of tech on the Bay Area.
This is No Window Shopping, a traveling artists’ residency curated by André Smith that first opened in New York last year. Smith exhibits emerging artists’ work in atypical places, aiming to give the public everyday access to art. The selected works are a visual response to local affairs and current events, and the title No Window Shopping refers to “things we cannot afford to ignore.” The San Francisco residency features artists Michael Covington, Analog Monsters, Fernando García, Nina Wright, DJ AGANA and Arrington West.
In New York City, the group show was hosted at The Yard, a coworking space that serves as a place of work, an entrepreneurial community and a symbol of today’s creative economy. In San Francisco, the show’s location bears a similar significance, as it’s a coffee shop where people work and forge real-life connections. Coffee Mission, which opened just a few months ago, is located right outside the 24th-and-Mission BART station, in the epicenter of San Francisco’s tech-boom gentrification.
As both a techie and an artist, I’ve worked as a product manager at Twitter and Google, started making art again while working full-time, and am currently working on a book about the journey. My experiences have allowed me to see both sides of the San Francisco divide. I’ve heard about early-stage start-ups unable to find affordable office space and watched art communities shut down and leave the Bay Area altogether. Yet making technology and making art are not that different. They’re both creative acts, and their makers need what all human beings need to thrive: affordable housing, stable employment, efficient transportation and access to education, food and healthcare.
Presciently, this group show succeeds in holding up a mirror to the Bay Area’s most contentious issues, especially gentrification. As I made my way through the series, the art began to depict increasingly dystopian scenes. In Analog Monsters’ Bit by Bit, Pac-Man, a video-game character near and dear to the hearts of many techies, munches on dots that expand across a map of the Bay Area.
Next to it, Nina Wright’s vivid Everything Is Under Control depicts a poisoned bay.
At the end of the wall, images of greed and inequality, devoid of color, suffocate the pages of Fernando García’s Not So Tender.
An ironic effect of our ever-connected world is a shortage of authentic connections. In Nina Wright’s Crowdsourcing, a sea of people standing shoulder to shoulder are either fixated on their phones or taking selfies. For me, the image first evoked the skewed version of reality that we live in as we consume and distract ourselves with social media. But the longer I looked at the piece, the more it also reminded me of the complexity around the rise of delivery apps, which boost efficiency while reducing opportunities for everyday interaction with the outside world.
No Window Shopping reflects the deep challenges facing the Bay Area and other major cities. We share the city as our home, which means we also share the responsibility of making it a livable place where all its residents can thrive. Smith got it right when he put together the San Francisco iteration of his residency: art is a first step toward meaningful dialogue, a catalyst for waking us up to the things around us we cannot ignore.
No Window Shopping is on display at Coffee Mission until February 29. A closing panel hosted by Smith and moderated by Alfonso Cosio, corporate art coordinator at SFMOMA and cofounder of SFArtEnthusiast.com, is planned for today from 6:00 to 11:00 p.m. Nab free tickets here.
