How can a contemporary artist approach urban architecture with themes of Black Power, Black Space, shaping new urban forms?

Artist Binta Ayofemi discusses her practice with Joseph Becker, SFMOMA’s Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design. Ayofemi’s GROUND is generating a new discussion of race, architecture, and contemporary art. Ayofemi’s work addresses voids in the urban landscape as a point of departure.

Binta’s art practice is centered on regenerative urban spaces in formerly vacant sites, with major new works in San Francisco and Oakland resonating with Black West legacies throughout San Francisco and West, East, and Downtown Oakland.

Inspired by both Black Panthers and Black Shakers, Binta’s works infuse an Afrofuturist narrative with objects gathered, honed, milled and performed.

Binta’s first building as artwork, COMMONS transforms a formerly vacant music building in downtown Oakland, into a portal for gathering, sound, and sustenance,opens in 2020.

Binta and Joseph will explore the remaking of corner stores, making, manufacturing, performance, and new authorship around public and private space, while reviving a Black Panther legacy of mutual bases in Oakland and San Francisco.

About the Architecture + the City Festival (September 11-30)

Co-presented by AIA San Francisco and the Center for Architecture + Design, the 17th annual Architecture + the City goes virtual and will continue to offer behind-the-scenes programs, walking tours, literature, live presentations and more that provide an excellent opportunity for all communities to experience architecture and design in a myriad of ways throughout the city. Every September, the festival reveals the many facets and layers of San Francisco, and how ­architecture and design play a key role in this ever-changing urban landscape.

For more info visit www.archandcity.org