Nexus 2026: Full Schedule

Join us for our annual San Francisco/ Bay Area Black Art week from Wednesday September 30th - Sunday October 4th, 2026!

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11:30am PDT

Open Studio x Artist Talk: Ashara Ekundayo in Conversation with Emory Douglas

Friday October 2, 2026 11:30am - 2:00pm PDT

Minnesota Street Project Artist Studios @ 1240 Minnesota St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA

Open Studio x Artist Talk: Ashara Ekundayo in Conversation with Emory Douglas

Join Artist As First Responder at our SF artist Studio on the 1st stop on The BLAC Map Tour - a guided multi-location experience for arts and culture lovers to explore BLACspace’s ecosystem.

Emory Douglas is a renowned political artist and activist whose work has been central to the Black liberation movement since the 1960s. His style has influenced numerous artists over many decades. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1943 and raised in San Francisco, he studied commercial art at City College of San Francisco. Douglas joined the Black Panther Party in 1967, serving as Minister of Culture until the early 1980s. His bold graphic designs defined the visual identity of the Black Panther Newspaper, amplifying the Party’s politics and the voices of the Black community for over 500 issues. Douglas continues to create art that educates, inspires, and mobilizes, staying deeply committed to justice and liberation.Black Panther, The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas published in 2007, provides a comprehensive collection of his posters and graphics from the 1960s through the early 2000s. His work has been collected around the world and can be seen at New York’s Museum of Modern Art as well as many other institutions around the world.

Ashara Ekundayo is a Black feminist cultural theologian with a creative practice rooted in joy-informed pedagogies and the study, creation and exhibition of Black archives. She explores cultural identity, memory, liberation, and place and space through spellcasting, spirituality, architecture, and history as an interdisciplinary independent curator, archivist, arts administrator, and visual maker. She is the founder and Executive Creative Director of the Artist As First Responder collective located in Oakland, CA and Detroit, MI centering the work of artists whose practices heal communities and save lives.

Arts & Culture Leaders

Ashara Ekundayo

Creator, Founder, Executive Creative Director at Artist As First Responder

Ashara Ekundayo is a Black feminist cultural theologian with a creative practice rooted in joy-informed pedagogies and the study, creation and exhibition of Black archives. She explores cultural identity, memory, liberation, and place and space through spellcasting, spirituality, architecture, and... Read More →

Artists

Emory Douglas

Artist

Emory Douglas has deep roots in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has been a resident since 1951. He attended City College of San Francisco where he majored in commercial art. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale named Douglas as Revolutionary Artist and later Minister of Culture for the... Read More →

AAFR Open Studio x Artist Talk Nexus 10.02.26 jpg

Friday October 2, 2026 11:30am - 2:00pm PDT
Minnesota Street Project Artist Studios 1240 Minnesota St, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA

Artist Talk

Website https://www.artistasfirstresponder.com/

4:00pm PDT

Artists in Conversation: Taylor Smalls, Jasmine Renee Ross and Akintunde Ahmad

Friday October 2, 2026 4:00pm - 5:00pm PDT

Kinfolx @ 1951 Telegraph Ave Ste 4, Oakland, CA 94612, USA

Taylor Smalls + Jasmine Renee Ross + Akintunde Ahmad in conversation @ KINFOLX

Artists

Akintunde Ahmad

Artist

Born and raised in East Oakland, CA, Akintunde Ahmad is an entrepreneur who centers equity in all of his work. After graduating from the Oakland public school system, Akintunde earned a BA in Sociology from Yale University and an MS in journalism and documentary film from Columbia... Read More →

Jasmine Renee Ross

Artist

Jasmine Ross is a lens-based artist from Oakland, California, now living and working in the Bay Area. Her commitment to supporting artists is rooted in her academic background. A recent graduate of Yale University, Ross earned a B.A. in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, as well as... Read More →

Taylor Smalls

Artist

Taylor Smalls is a contemporary palette knife painter based in Oakland, California, whose practice celebrates the depth, resilience, and beauty of Black and brown skin. Since 2012, she has centered her work on amplifying the kaleidoscopic nuances of melanated womxn, countering their... Read More →

Friday October 2, 2026 4:00pm - 5:00pm PDT
Kinfolx 1951 Telegraph Ave Ste 4, Oakland, CA 94612, USA

Artist Talk, Event

5:00pm PDT

Exhibition Walkthrough with Lava Thomas, Sadie Barnette, and Cornelia Stokes

Friday October 2, 2026 5:00pm - 7:00pm PDT

Jessica Silverman Gallery @ 621 Grant Ave, San Francisco, CA 94108, USA

Join Lava Thomas and Sadie Barnette for an exhibition walkthrough during NEXUS: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week, led by Cornelia Stokes, Assistant Curator of the Art of the African Diaspora at SFMOMA and the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD). The walkthrough will bring the artists’ concurrent solo exhibitions at Jessica Silverman into conversation, exploring how each draws upon personal and collective histories to consider memory, family, place, and Black life across generations.

Arts & Culture Leaders

Cornelia Stokes

Assistant Curator of the Art of the African Diaspora, Museum of the African Diaspora | SFMOMA

Cornelia Stokes‘ curatorial practice is based in Pan-African practices and kinship, focusing on building community through the arts and philosophies of the Black diaspora. Looking to complexify the oversimplification of Blackness within mainstream culture, Stokes invests in opportunities to pr... Read More →

Artists

Lava Thomas

Artist

Lava Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersections of race, gender, representation, and collective memory. Grounded in an ethos of social justice, her practice spans drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and site-specific installation. Thomas engages... Read More →

Sadie Barnette

Artist

Sadie Barnette is a multimedia artist who engages family legacy and black femme narratives. Through photography, text-based drawing, sculpture, and installation, she explores collective possibilities across space and time. Incorporating bright colors and sparkling rhinestones, Barnette... Read More →

Lava Thomas Looking Back jpg

Friday October 2, 2026 5:00pm - 7:00pm PDT
Jessica Silverman Gallery 621 Grant Ave, San Francisco, CA 94108, USA

Artist Talk, Event

5:45pm PDT

The State of Black Artists in San Francisco: Artist Panel

Friday October 2, 2026 5:45pm - 7:00pm PDT

ICA San Francisco @ 345 Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94104, USA

The State of Black Artists in San Francisco
Jacqueline Francis, S. Renée Jones, Trina Michelle Robinson and moderated by Makeda Best

Panel: Friday, October 2, 2025, 5:45 PM - 7:00 PM
Location: ICA San Francisco, 345 Montgomery St, San Francisco

This talk will update and continue the discussion we launched at Nexus in 2025: a research survey we are conducting about the state of Black Artists in San Francisco. A large focus will be on supportive resources, such as studio space and funding—access to them, and awareness, use, and precarity of them.

Artists

Jacqueline Francis

Author, Activist, Educator

Jacqueline Francis is the author of (2012). She is the co-editor of and contributor to two anthologies: Romare Bearden: American Modernist (2011) Is Now the Time for Joyous Rage? (2023)—writings and art placed in conversation with the work of the late conceptual artist Lorrain... Read More →

S. Renée Jones

Photographer

S. Renée Jones has been a photographer for more than four decades. She studied Art Therapy with an emphasis in black and white film photography at San Francisco State University. For the past 23 years, she has been working with adults living below the poverty level through San Francisco’s... Read More →

Trina Michelle Robinson

Artist, Curator

Trina Michelle Robinson is a San Francisco–based interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the relationship between memory, migration, and ancestral legacy. Using film, photography, printmaking, installation, and archival materials, Robinson creates emotionally resonant narratives... Read More →

Friday October 2, 2026 5:45pm - 7:00pm PDT
ICA San Francisco

Artist Talk

Website https://www.threepointnineartcollective.com/

6:30pm PDT

Artists in Conversation: Mildred Howard and Adrian Burrell

Friday October 2, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT

Oakland Museum of California @ 1000 Oak St, Oakland, CA 94607, USA

Artists

Adrian Burrell

Artist, Filmmaker, Photographer

Adrian Burrell’s practice includes photography, film, installation, and experimental media. His work examines the intersections of race, class, and intergenerational dynamics, inviting moments where collective storytelling creates space for remembrance.

Burrell’s work has been the subject of the recent solo exhibitions Venus Blues at the Minnesota Street Project Foundation (2023), and Sugarcane and Lightning pt 3 at the San José ICA, CA (2022), each investigating his own family history — archival, speculative, and fictional... Read More →

Mildred Howard

Artist

Born in San Francisco in 1945, Howard has been a lifelong resident of the East Bay. In the 1970s, she began making art influenced by textiles, African Diasporic dance, and fellow artists like Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, and David Ireland. Howard’s studio became a space for experimentation... Read More →

Friday October 2, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Oakland Museum of California

Artist Talk