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Sat January 29, 2022

Sofía Córdova

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Oakland-based multimedia artist Sofía Córdova, in partnership with the Chinese Culture Center (CCC) in San Francisco, presents a long form video work, entitled dawn_chorusii. It presents the stories of six Bay Area women who journeyed to the United States as refugees, fleeing lives made untenable by political and religious persecution, extreme poverty, and gender violence.

In it, Córdova muddles the distinctions between the documentary and fantastical to reveal the nuanced complexities of migration and to complicate its hard truths.

It is on view free to the public at the Chinese Culture Center's 41 Ross gallery in the heart of Chinatown December 3, 2021-January 29, 2022.

The project was inspired by a previous collaboration with CCC through the San Francisco Art Commission's 2018 public art project A Body Reorganized in which the Puerto Rico-born artist examined the meaning of sanctuary through the lives of six individuals from various cultural backgrounds living in the Bay Area. As a result of that project, several women reached out spontaneously to Córdova to share their stories, just to feel heard by someone. The artist was struck by the need to make space for women from around the world to share their stories of displacement and migration--a perspective often overlooked and unrecorded. Córdova proposed the idea of a long form storytelling project to CCC in order to create a space for immigrant and refugee women's voices.

For dawn_chorusiii, Córdova and CCC worked through community-based agencies such as Gum Moon Women's Residence and El/La Para Trans Latinas to find women interested in sharing their stories and participating in an artistic collaboration. Córdova worked individually with each to craft a retelling of their journeys from China, Columbia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and more.

In the resulting hour-long video work, the storytelling takes on layers that seem drawn from the imagination as Córdova jumbles and intermingles the stories, animating some and interspersing them with photos shared by the women that Córdova then painted over and altered. The piece is constructed in such a way that visitors can enter and exit the story at any point in the narrative.

About Sofía Córdova

Sofía Córdova (b. 1985, Carolina, Puerto Rico; based in Oakland) makes work that considers sci-fi as alternative history, dance music's liberatory dimensions, climate change and migration, and most recently, revolution - historical and imagined - within the matrix of class, gender, race, late capitalism and its technologies. Recent works have included performance, video, music, sculpture, taxidermy, and installation. She is one half of the music duo, XUXA SANTAMARIA. In addition to discrete projects, performances, and albums, the duo collectively scores all of her video and performance work.

Córdova's work has been exhibited and performed nationally and internationally at SFMOMA, the ASU Museum, The Berkeley Art Museum, the Vincent Price Museum, the Wattis Institute, and was featured in 2018's Bay Area Now at San Francisco's YBCA. Her work is in the permanent collections of Pier 24 and The Kadist. She has recently participated in residencies at Eyebeam, New York; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito; Mills College Museum, Oakland; and the ASU Museum in Phoenix. She has also composed and choreographed performances for the SF Arts Commission, Merce Cunningham Trust, and Soundwave Biennial.
Oakland-based multimedia artist Sofía Córdova, in partnership with the Chinese Culture Center (CCC) in San Francisco, presents a long form video work, entitled dawn_chorusii. It presents the stories of six Bay Area women who journeyed to the United States as refugees, fleeing lives made untenable by political and religious persecution, extreme poverty, and gender violence.

In it, Córdova muddles the distinctions between the documentary and fantastical to reveal the nuanced complexities of migration and to complicate its hard truths.

It is on view free to the public at the Chinese Culture Center's 41 Ross gallery in the heart of Chinatown December 3, 2021-January 29, 2022.

The project was inspired by a previous collaboration with CCC through the San Francisco Art Commission's 2018 public art project A Body Reorganized in which the Puerto Rico-born artist examined the meaning of sanctuary through the lives of six individuals from various cultural backgrounds living in the Bay Area. As a result of that project, several women reached out spontaneously to Córdova to share their stories, just to feel heard by someone. The artist was struck by the need to make space for women from around the world to share their stories of displacement and migration--a perspective often overlooked and unrecorded. Córdova proposed the idea of a long form storytelling project to CCC in order to create a space for immigrant and refugee women's voices.

For dawn_chorusiii, Córdova and CCC worked through community-based agencies such as Gum Moon Women's Residence and El/La Para Trans Latinas to find women interested in sharing their stories and participating in an artistic collaboration. Córdova worked individually with each to craft a retelling of their journeys from China, Columbia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and more.

In the resulting hour-long video work, the storytelling takes on layers that seem drawn from the imagination as Córdova jumbles and intermingles the stories, animating some and interspersing them with photos shared by the women that Córdova then painted over and altered. The piece is constructed in such a way that visitors can enter and exit the story at any point in the narrative.

About Sofía Córdova

Sofía Córdova (b. 1985, Carolina, Puerto Rico; based in Oakland) makes work that considers sci-fi as alternative history, dance music's liberatory dimensions, climate change and migration, and most recently, revolution - historical and imagined - within the matrix of class, gender, race, late capitalism and its technologies. Recent works have included performance, video, music, sculpture, taxidermy, and installation. She is one half of the music duo, XUXA SANTAMARIA. In addition to discrete projects, performances, and albums, the duo collectively scores all of her video and performance work.

Córdova's work has been exhibited and performed nationally and internationally at SFMOMA, the ASU Museum, The Berkeley Art Museum, the Vincent Price Museum, the Wattis Institute, and was featured in 2018's Bay Area Now at San Francisco's YBCA. Her work is in the permanent collections of Pier 24 and The Kadist. She has recently participated in residencies at Eyebeam, New York; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito; Mills College Museum, Oakland; and the ASU Museum in Phoenix. She has also composed and choreographed performances for the SF Arts Commission, Merce Cunningham Trust, and Soundwave Biennial.
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Chinese Culture Center (CCC) 2 Upcoming Events
750 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

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