Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

In conjunction with the exhibition The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg, YBCA presents A Mad Tea Party: Five Videos by Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, a selection of important works where complex and twisted narratives are performed by molding clay figures in constructed environments. Spanning the past eight years of the artists’ career, these animations depict their characteristically dark tales that plumb the depths of human psychology to dramatic effect, and include human and animal characters that are thrown together into strange and mythological scenarios laden with sexuality and violence.

Nayland Blake was one of the pioneers of performance art in the Bay Area in the 1980s. His work often explored aspects of the queer urban lifestyle. Though now based in New York, his most recent work is a return to his earlier processes from that period, where materials and spontaneity generate sculptural works that are informal, precarious, nonsensical, and odd or uncanny. For his upcoming solo exhibition at YBCA, Blake will create spontaneous sculptures using his life as the catalyst. Also included in the exhibition are a DJ booth stocked with Blake’s collection of over three thousand LPs, which visitors will be invited to spin; and the recreation of a mural by Chuck Arnett (1962), which decorated the wall of the Tool Box, a leather bar in what is now San Francisco’s SoMa district.

FREE!LOVE!TOOL!BOX! provides visitors an opportunity to explore Nayland Blake’s unique collection of over 3,000 LPs. You are invited to sign up for a DJ set to spin at the turntables within the installation, Ruins of a Sensibility.

Panel discussion led by Joël Tan, YBCA’s director of community engagement and a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence about “getting ready” for a drag identity, including presentations by Cliff Hengst and D-L Alvarez; Sister Mary Jaunita Higher Power, and Sister Selma Soul; Shannon Trumble, a former member of Club Uranus; a “getting ready” performance by Nayland Blake; and a wrap-up party in YBCA’s loading dock.

In partnership with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.