A Hxstory of Renting Signed Book 2nd Edition

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2022. Soft bound, Full color photography book, limited second edition, 5.5" x 8.5", 138 pages

Featured contributing writers: Weston Teruya (for second edition) David Woo Janet Delaney Jerome Reyes

Published by Lian Ladia (clamshell press, San Francisco, USA) and Jerlyn Jareunpoon-Phillips (Katalog Projects, New Haven, UK) Locally printed in by Lightning Press in the Bay Area

A Hxstory of Renting (2020)

[sold out] Hardcover, Full color photography book, limited first edition, 8” x10”, 134 pages

Alejo’s photography of San Francisco’s people, objects and spaces representing anti-displacement resilience from 2015-2020, with written entries by David Woo, Janet Delaney, Jerome Reyes and Alejo, who traces their family’s 60-year history of renting in the Bay Area. Published by Lian Ladia (clamshell press, San Francisco, USA) and Jerlyn Jareunpoon-Phillips (Katalog Projects, Brighton, UK).

Present AHOR Public Presence

AMERICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION
"The Latinx/Filipinx Commons: Artists in Revolt From the Islands to the Heart of Empire", panel with Dr. Karina Gutierrez, Cynthia Garcia, Jewel Pereyra, Erina Alejo; chaired by Dr. Angela Marino. October 7-10, 2021, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

SKYLINE COLLEGE
co-guest speaker with Jeremy Keith Villaluz for History 436 - Filipinos in America, taught by Dr. Rod Daus-Magbual, April 8, 2021.

BALAY KREATIVE's Kapwa in Excelsior
on view, April 3, 2021. Read here

LENSCRATCH
by Davida Carta, March 28, 2021. Read here

TALKING IN THE LIBRARY
review by Kim Beil and InHae Yap, March 5, 2021. Watch on YouTube

STRANGE FIRE
with InHae Yap, Jan 28, 2021. Read here

Scatter Piece, 2019-2020

Performance/ritual, 15 Days from November 2019 to January 2020

there was no time to memorize everything / all else discarded in a rush to vacate / no sooner did the landlord raise rent to market rate / no traces left / of a hxstory of renting

A site-specific performance in which I routinely scattered poetry addressing the ongoing displacement and gentrification in my working class neighborhood, Excelsior. This first iteration focused on 65 Ocean, a contested lot to be redeveloped into luxury housing. The poem (below) is translated into languages spoken in Excelsior, including: Tagalog, Vietnamese and Spanish, by artists and community organizers who are renters from Excelsior to Hanoi. Scatter Piece bears the multilayered physicality and cycle of displacement: 1) through the replenished copies of the poetry; 2) my Sisyphean ritual of scattering the poems; 3) the poems taking weight on the proposed luxury development’s lot; 4) passersby witnessing the foreboding message, and 5) the poem as ephemeral litter cleaned up weekly.

Neighborhood Alternative Tours, 2017 - ongoing

Intimate groups of 5-10, annually, 45-90 minutes each iteration

Alejo gathers local artists, community members and neighbors to their Excelsior family apartment of 17 years for an artist retreat and a neighborhood walkabout to collectively share and exchange knowledge on the economic, cultural, social, and political changes taking place in Excelsior and various neighborhoods where participants come from. Using Alejo’s perspective and experience as a San Francisco third- generation renter, they engage participants in a dialogue on the housing affordability crisis, renters’ rights, local grassroots organizing efforts and the San Francisco Planning Department and other city governmental structures’ roles in the displacement of families and gentrification in Excelsior. After Alejo welcomes, feeds and situates participants in their home, then take them around their block, where Alejo identifies apartment buildings, lots, business spaces, homes, and green spaces that continue to be impacted by ongoing displacement and gentrification.

Untitled (grief is a weightless thing), 2019

late grandfather’s security guard shirt and Alejo’s childhood clothing with screen printed poetry, thread, air, 12’ x 10’

Alejo’s late grandfather’s security guard shirts with screen printed poetry are threaded and suspended above gallery visitors at Kearny Street Workshop’s APAture 2019. This piece acknowledges families experiencing displacement on Ohlone Land, including Alejo’s grandfather who worked multiple jobs to try to keep their Mission apartment. From 2017-2019, the late Mrs. Iris Canada and the Masantol families were evicted at no-fault from their homes in the San Francisco Fillmore and SOMA via the Ellis Act, a state law giving landlords the unconditional right to evict tenants to “go out of business.” Mrs. Iris Canada (1917-2017) lived on 670 Page Street for over 60 years. She passed away one month after losing her home. The multi-generation Bonifacio, Ma Coll, De Vera and Bustos families, ranging from four to 94 years old (all from Masantol, Philippines) lived on 657-659 Natoma Street for over 25 years. Their eviction was finalized in January 2019, some moving out of San Francisco altogether.

Exodus in Ever Upward (or: throw out the 2000s, including those who had then moved here, to make way for shiny new objects, developments and people in Excelsior), 2018

a series of 18” x 12” framed photographs

A photography series documenting abandoned bulky television sets on San Francisco Excelsior’s sidewalks-- a neighborhood enmeshed in the early stages of gentrification. "Excelsior” is a Latin word translated roughly to “ever upward”, a phrase proudly claimed by the district’s working and middle class families. The disposal of these 2000s era and older televisions signify a technological change for households who dispose of them, and references the influx of immigrants and families of color who relocated to the district after facing mass move-outs and evictions in the 2000 dot-com bubble’s aftermath (including Alejo’s family). The series contextualizes the cultural and demographic shift in Excelsior homeowners and renters, part of the city’s tech- fueled gentrification crisis affecting historically redlined neighborhoods.

Solo Exhibition // Postponed due to COVID-19, TBD 2021
co-curated with Lian Ladia

Using the small domestic space of yucca, A Hxtory of Renting is a site-specific, sculptural gesture on using photography as an ethnographic tool. The exhibition examines one’s relationship to “neighborhood” seen in through a multivalent lens of a family, neighbors, organizers and stakeholders of gentrification on the issue of housing as a human right. 

Group Exhibition, May-June 2018
SF LGBT Center in Castro, San Francisco
Appendix’s </3, part of API Cultural Center’s United States of Asian America 2018