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Artist conversation between Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo & David Wilson

Wednesday, June 23, 6 pm PT
In Person & Online

Join us for an intimate artist conversation between David Wilson and Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo on Wednesday, June 23 at 6pm. Drop by in person, or tune in on Instagram Live @500cappstreet. David Wilson is the resident artist of The David Ireland House while artist Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo is the curator of Southern Exposure’s current exhibition, We use our hands to support. They have previously collaborated with one another and now find themselves in the same neighborhood doing collective exhibition work. Join the artists as they check in on each other, share stories and, exchange experiences of their work processes in an intimate one-on-one dialog.

This program will take place outdoors on The David Ireland House terrace. Free and open to the public.

Doors: 5:30 pm PT
Program: 6:00 pm PT

Links to the shows:
We use our hands to support, Curated by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo at Southern Exposure @southernexposuresf

Sittings, David Wilson exhibition after 4 months of residency at The David Ireland House @500cappstreet

About the artists:

Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo is an artist, activist, educator, storyteller & curator who lives/works between Ohlone Land [Oakland, CA] and Powhatan Land [Richmond,VA]. Their work has been included in exhibitions and performances at Konsthall C [Stockholm, Sweden], SEPTEMBER Gallery [Hudson, NY], EFA Project Space [New York City, NY], Leslie Lohman Museum [New York City, NY], San Francisco State University Gallery, Signal Center for Contemporary Art [Malmo, Sweden], Yerba Buena Center for the Arts [San Francisco, CA] and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive [Berkeley, CA], amongst others. For the past 5 years, Lukaza has been the Lead Curator at Nook Gallery [Oakland, CA], collaborating with over 80+ artists, writers, performers & musicians, in a gallery located in their apartment kitchen. They are currently enrolled in an MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.


David Wilson creates observational drawings based on direct experiences with landscape and orchestrates site-based gatherings that draw together a wide net of artists, performers, filmmakers, chefs, and artisans into collaborative relationships. He organized the experimental exhibition The Possible at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) and received the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) 2012 SECA Art Award. He has exhibited his work with SFMOMA, was included in the 2010 CA Biennial, and presented a Matrix solo exhibition at BAMPFA. Wilson has received grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation, Southern Exposure, The Center for Craft and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. He is based in Oakland, CA.


Elisa Isaacson (she/her) is a writer and fundraiser with a deep commitment to supporting the
Bay Area arts and nonprofit ecosystem. She has worked for the San Francisco Art Institute, the
UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Luggage Store, and range of other local
arts and education organizations and is currently the Director of Corporate & Foundation
Relations at the University of San Francisco. Elisa has taught writing at the middle, high school
and college levels and has served on the Board of the School of Theatre at the Oakland School
for the Arts. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of Michigan
and a Master’s in Creative Writing from New York University.

Milk Teeth

Annie Albagli

Annie Albagli’s artist residency at 500 Capp Street focuses on an origin story – where myth and materiality collide in a form of a score, engagement dinners with other mothers, and a sculptural installation at the 500 Capp Street dining room.

Maintenance Actions For Dis/Repair

“Maintenance Actions for Dis/Repair” features a collection of archival ephemera that enlivens the history of politics and activism across institutions and art organizations in the Bay Area curated by 500 Capp Street’s 2024 Collections and Archive Fellows Alexander An-Tai Hwang, and Lesdi C. Goussen Robleto. The exhibition will run from July 20 to August 16, 2024.

Borrowing from local archives, including SFAI, SFMOMA, Galeria de la Raza, Kearny Street Workshop, we weave together a tapestry of local interventions and community actions at the intersection of art, politics, and experimentation. Presented in the Paule Anglim Archive room, which once was the basement of 500 Capp Street during David Ireland’s time, we are interested in mining the conceptual and historical conditions of the basement– as land, as thinking space, as source material, as art object– and now, as archive. 

We come to this project during a time of global reckoning and calls to action urging for a ceasefire in Palestine and the end of Israeli occupation. Heeding the call of artists and cultural workers in the Bay Area, who condemn the complicity, silence, and censorship of art institutions and organizations– “Maintenance Actions for Dis/Repair” invites us to meditate on local histories, community actions, and solidarity in the arts.

Through the exhibition, ephemera of the past provoke intergenerational encounters that invite us to revisit how artists, cultural workers, and community members have utilized art to speak out against genocide, apartheid, and US imperialism. Through these connections, we delve into the synergy and tension between experimental frameworks and liberatory praxis, and the discrepant legacies of conceptual art and alternative art spaces from the 1970s to the present. 

“Maintenance Actions for Dis/Repair” takes up the labor of maintenance to recuperate the entanglement between experimental aesthetics and social political practice to uphold the legacies of flourishing activism in the arts. 

Looking toward the future, we ask: How can we expand the narratives of what this house was/ is/ and can be? How can we lean into speculative histories and potential futures within the walls of this space? How might we honor intergenerational resistance, past and present? How can we cultivate intergenerational knowledge against oppression and toward collective liberation? How can we serve as a site that actively resists the censorship of this moment?

Working out of David’s engagement with the basement and the foundation of this house, we anchor in his historical “Maintenance Action”–which involved stripping, sanding, repairing, and sealing the walls to propose a maintenance action of our own, as an intervention into this space, its foundations, and its archive. While David’s maintenance actions preserved the material histories of the house – the cracks, the scratches, the dents – our maintenance action extends outside of the physical structure of 500 Capp St to maintain local histories of activism in alternative art spaces, while questioning the status quo, inviting the public to reckon with what needs to be un-maintained, un-done, and un-repaired.

Images: 1. SFAI student actions in protest of U.S. intervention in Central America and in solidarity with revolutionary moments of the time, including the 1984 SFAI exhibition Artist Call: Against U.S. Intervention in Central America. Courtesy of SFAI Archives 2. 500 Capp street Archival photo of the basement 3. Rachael Romero, Wilfred Owen Brigade, Defend Human Rights in Chile, ca. 1976. Courtesy of SFMOMA Archives.

The 500 Capp Street 2023-2024 Collections and Archive Fellowship is generously funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Reading and Conversation with Tom Marioni

One of California’s celebrated figures of conceptual art, Tom Marioni shares stories and reads anecdotes from his new book, Social Art: The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the highest form of Art (1970 -) Join us at 500 Capp Street on Saturday, August 17 at 3pm – 4pm.

Tom Marioni is an American artist and educator, known for his conceptual artwork. Marioni was active in the emergence of Conceptual Art movement in the 1960s. He founded the Museum of Conceptual Art (MOCA) in San Francisco from 1970 until 1984. He is currently living and working out of San Francisco, California.

YOUTH EDUCATION: Artivate – Our Food, My Work, Our Land/Recipes of Resilience

Artivate is an education program led by City Studio artists/educators Amy Berk, Chris Treggiari with summer guest artists Oscar Lopez, Annie Albagli, Cheryl Meeker. Programs are held at 215 Haight Street in San Francisco and at the David Ireland House at 500 Capp Street and at other locations.

This summer 500 Capp Street’s education program led by City Studio is participating in a project with renowned muralist Oscar Lopez and his investigation of food justice in the project Artivate – Your Food, My Work, Our Land; with artist Oscar Lopez in support of California farmworkers.  10 youth artists will be making prints inspired by his incredible project and working both in the studio and hopefully in the field to meet actual farmworkers and teens who are affiliated with farm work.

The youth education program will also be exploring the work of the conceptual artist David Ireland at 500 Capp Street and engaging with artists in residence at that venue including artist Annie Albagli whose multimedia work explores personal and environmental narratives inextricably bound together by different forms of power, including the government, military, and industry. In the end, they will produce imaginary narratives that tap into biology, geography and personal histories. Interns will also participate in a dinner salon featuring the Recipes of Resilience David Ireland Project.