Tayo’y Amoy Araw! We Smell Like Sunshine!
Tayo’y Amoy Araw! We Smell Like Sunshine! builds an archive examining the role of community power in anti-displacement organizing to advocate for our right to open and green spaces and sunlight. The project examines the multiracial, intergenerational, and cross-class grassroots efforts in protecting San Francisco SOMA's largest green space, Victoria Manalo Draves Park, from encroaching luxury development, led by neighborhood-based organizations like SOMCAN (South of Market Action Network). Presently, the park remains unshadowed by towering buildings through the Prop K Sunlight Ordinance, passed in 1984 out of concern for building shadows and related ramifications impacting community health for community surrounding SF Chinatown’s Portsmouth Park.
A mass of people looking at the camera atop a grassy field, with a backdrop of trees and open sky. Youth and educators from FEC Galing Bata, YMCA, West Bay, United Playaz; staff and community part of SOMCAN, Bayanihan Equity Center, SOMA Pilipinas, Kultivate Labs, Bindlestiff, and more, with lawyer Sue Hester, celebrate the historic win of protecting Victoria Manalo Draves Park from a luxury housing development overshadowing the park, April 23, 2019; © Erina Alejo
Components:
Installed at SOMArts Cultural Center for Sowing Agency by Asian American Women Artists Association, April 30 - May 23, 2021. In collaboration with SOMCAN (South of Market Community Action Network) and Steve Belale.
Part of United States of Asian America 2021 “Forging Our Futures - SoMa & Chinatown” by Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center. Public Interventions in San Francisco:
With Jai Severson and Friends of Cyphers and Solidarity, at Portsmouth Square on May 30, 2021. Part of Chinatown: Our Future is Now.
With Francesca Balagtas and Keeley Arnold of K-Pop-Up at Victoria Manalo Draves Park and Kapwa Gardens on June 5, 2021.
Special thanks to Tita Tetet Naval and Gene Alejo for proof reading and grammar-checking the Tagalog translation of the project title.
A young child, Maja, in a pink shirt and a pink sweater tied to her waist is running towards the frame. Behind her, a group of older kids are standing and watching an out of frame basketball game. They are all bathed in afternoon light with the backdrop of Cece Carpio's "Tuloy Po Kayo" mural for the Bessie Carmichael Filipino Education Center Middle School Campus, SOMA, spring 2017; © Erina Alejo
K-Pop-Up and Tayo’y Amoy Araw! We Smell Like Sunshine! collaboration logo. Design by Keeley Arnold. Courtesy of K-Pop-Up.
About the Collaborators
Archival installation in collaboration with SOMCAN and Steve Belale at Sowing Agency presented by Asian American Women Artists Association, SOMArts Cultural Center, April 30 - May 23, 2021.
SOMCAN (South of Market Community Action Network) has been serving low-income immigrant youth and families in SoMa, Excelsior, and greater San Francisco since 2000, providing social services, community organizing, and community planning.
San Francisco born-and-raised Steve “Stevie B.” Belale is artist and designer whose extensive creative background encompasses fine art, graffiti, murals to company branding, creative campaigns to molding, casting and everything in between.
Cyphers and Solidarity, a collaboration between Jai Severson, Erina Alejo, and friends. Part of Chinatown: Our Future is Now, Portsmouth Square, San Francisco May 30, 2021 at 3:30pm - 4:30pm. Register for the free event.
Jai Severson (@mxpluvement) is a neurodivergent Pilipinx-mixed-white, non-binary dancer-researcher associated with the Bay Area Disabled Dance Collective (BA-DDC; @bay_area_disabled_dance). Jai is also the Bay Area Prince of the Kiki House of Peaches, a house family in the California Region of the “kiki scene” (which is a community-fostering and training side of the Ballscene the culture that vogue comes from). Jai and their friends and colleagues from various street and club dance cultures together present: Cyphers and Solidarity, a brief look into the various games that dancers use to relate to each and the intertwining those games have with community building. Collaborators include: DJ Varsha, Gail Burks, Shayna Vu, Mers Tran, Tori Villamil, and Al Quin Ang.
Francesca Balagtas, Keeley Arnold, and the K-Pop-Up Community. Dance workshop at Victoria Manalo Draves Park (1:00pm - 2:00pm — Register here) and Kapwa Gardens (3:00pm - 4:00pm — Register here). June 5, 2021.
K-Pop-Up's Francesca Balagtas and Keeley Arnold, in collaboration with Erina Alejo's "Tayo'y Amoy Araw! We Smell Like Sunshine!", will teach a kpop dance workshop as a form of public intervention at SOMA Pilipinas's Victoria Manalo Draves Park and Kapwa Gardens. Both workshops will take place on June 5, where participants will learn a routine from "Hola Hola" by KARD. Registration required per each event.
