Interviews with Essential Workers and Artists for My Ancestors Followed Me Here (2020-21):

Photo by Evelyn María Anderson.

CV here

Keywords: visual ethnography, b-roll madyik, community cultural wealth, socially engaged art

Artist Statement

I am a lens-based artist whose work incorporates performativity, social practice, and public space to center and respond to care, community action, and cultural preservation. My ethnographic practice as a timekeeper and oracle sustains long-term collaborative relationships with micro communities-- including families, tenants, and service workers-- that, in turn, protect and archive these important narratives of anti-displacement resilience.

As collaborators, we examine our environment and urban planning initiatives that affect our lived realities through the lens of visual culture, grassroots movements, and neighborhood organizing. We take ownership of our stories with simple, effective gestures like documenting the world through photography while acknowledging the medium’s origins in imperialism and colonization.

Bio

Erina Alejo (they/them/siya) is a cultural worker, artist, and arts administrator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Centering care, youth empowerment, and project management, Alejo is dedicated to sustaining long-term collaborative relationships with micro communities– from university students, to families, tenants, service workers, and organizations-- towards nurturing their narratives, power, and community cultural wealth. Their work as an artist informs their grantmaking work at the Office of the Vice President for the Arts at Stanford University, and organizing work with neighborhood-based grassroots organizations like San Francisco’s SOMA Pilipinas Filipino Cultural Heritage District. They are the recipient of Center for Cultural Innovation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Southern Exposure, Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center grants; Alejo has also participated in juries for several of these organizations. They are a third-generation San Francisco renter with family, and has work acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Erina prefers to surf at dawn, pending conditions.