Come to Your Census: Who Counts in America?

Free to the public

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) presents Come to Your Census: Who Counts in America?, an art and civic experience intended to drive awareness and mobilize the diverse communities of the Bay Area around the urgent, long-term impact of the 2020 US Census.

The results of the census determine the allocation of federal funding and political representation for the next decade and impact the health of every community throughout the United States—from affordable housing and transportation to education and arts funding. In San Francisco alone, each person who completes the census directs USD 20,000 to community programs, potentially putting more than USD 17 billion into the city over the next ten years.

Launching as a Digital Art & Civic Experience
YBCA will open Come to Your Census: Who Counts in America? with a digital art and civic experience that will allow our community to engage with the artists in addressing these issues on March 27 at YBCA.org as our community manages the evolving situation of the COVID-19 virus. In the face of a growing sense of isolation and powerlessness, we invite you to join us on our digital platforms as we develop programming committed to offering inspiration and hope. We look forward to inviting all to YBCA in the days to come. 

Art-Based Responses
For this unique art and civic experience, YBCA has engaged more than 25 Bay Area artists working across a range of disciplines to offer art-based explorations of identity, visibility, and citizenship against the backdrop of a city that many historically marginalized and undercounted communities call home. Ranging from site-specific and participatory installations to paintings, films, ceramics, and photographs, the works interrogate the social, political, and cultural implications of being counted. 

There are more than twelve opportunities for the public to touch, respond to, or co-create work on a daily basis. Who are you? / How do you want to be counted?, an interactive work by Rodney Ewing, upends the typical fingerprint by encouraging participants to share cherished personal histories that go beyond bodily descriptions and statistics. SOMOS VISIBLES (WE ARE NOT INVISIBLE), an activation station by Ana Teresa Fernández and Arleene Correa Valencia, invites participants who have taken the census to iron “SOMOS VISIBLES” (“WE ARE NOT INVISIBLE”) in reflective vinyl letters onto high-visibility shirts which they can then take. The idea is to encourage those from traditionally underrepresented communities such as the undocumented, immigrants, and laborers to visibly claim their fair share of resources and political representation.

A number of artists will offer new artworks, including Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, who will debut existing works alongside a new mural, Who Gets Counted? (2020), which furthers her practice of re-creating and retelling her personal tales and those of the people around her. Cece Carpio responds with four new works, Ilhan Omar, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Miss Major Griffin Gracy, and Victorina Morales (2020), that illustrate the concerns of underrepresented populations, such as whether federal funds will be properly distributed once the census is over. June Grant debuts We See Ourselves (2020), a visual survey of International Boulevard and 14th Street in Oakland, overlaid with images of everyday people and their environment.

Additional contributions include Lava Thomas’s Freedom Song No. 5 (We Shall Not Be Moved) (2019), which engages the intimate and civil act of bearing witness. Between Memory and Landscape, 1105-D (2017) by Mark Baugh-Sasaki is a scale replica of a single-family barrack using materials from the Japanese internment camp where his father was imprisoned during World War II. Richard Misrach will draw on his Border Cantos Project (2009–present) and contribute photographs of the physical remnants of immigration at the California-Mexico border. These photographs will appear alongside composer and artist Guillermo Galindo’s sound-based sculptures constructed from the same fragments of trash and debris in Misrach’s photographs.

Participatory On-Site Engagement
Significant threats such as escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric, built-in language barriers, and cybersecurity concerns present challenges to a safe and accurate census count. Through Come to Your Census: Who Counts in America?, YBCA will offer multiple census-taking stations throughout its galleries and lobby where communities can safely participate in the census. Printed directions in four languages—traditional Chinese, English, Spanish, and Tagalog—will assist with navigation of digital completion of the census. Staff will be on hand to provide assistance and information about how the census impacts individual rights, neighborhoods, and cities. YBCA will also host a monthly tour in each of the four designated languages and have translators present to assist visitors in completing the census in their preferred language.

Artists and organizations such as the Census Open Innovation Lab, Social Justice Sewing Academy, and Ramkeon O’Arwisters have been invited to lead  workshops that will offer visitors inspiration and tools to develop in-language, in-culture materials for census outreach and mobilization efforts in their own communities. Various play areas for children, including storytelling hours and self-guided making stations, will provide a safe and inspiring place for families and youth to experience art and civic engagement.

Come to Your Census: Who Counts In America? is presented by a coalition of curators including Martin Strickland, YBCA’s Associate Director of Public Life; Sarah Cathers, YBCA’s Director of Public Life; Amy Kisch, Art+Action Founder and Artistic Director of Social Impact; Brittany Ficken, Art+Action Executive Producer and Project Director; Candace Huey of re.riddle; and curator Ashara Ekundayo. They are supported by Art+Action’s curatorial committee, comprised of Micki Meng, Founder of Art & and Friends Indeed Gallery; Dorothy Santos, writer, curator, and artist; Christo Oropeza, Founder of Incline Gallery; Rozz Nash, Founder of the People’s Conservatory; Meklit Hadero, YBCA’s Chief of Program; and Isabel Yrigoyen, YBCA’s Curator of Performing Arts.