Hokusai to Hiphop: See You Space Cowboy...

See you Space Cowboy … From Hokusai to Hiphop shines light on centuries of aesthetic interventions

against elitist concepts of the “fine arts.” Contributing artists move our imaginations and encourage

contemplations of freedom through fantasy in the four themes that we name: yōkai, Afrofutures,

hiphop and floating worlds, 1 representing the sonic, mythic, folkloric and mundane. The intersections

and overlaps of the art included capture the multidimensional, multisensory forms of art instruction and

community building that take place at San Francisco State University Fine Arts Gallery, host to the

exhibition.

The works in the exhibition capture concepts that we now refer to as fanworlds: a democratized vision

of identity formation and an amplification of cross-cultural, transnational artistic exchanges. Referencing

popular culture and representing “unseen” every day and mundane acts, be it drunken monks or the

crashing claws of tsunami waves, this exhibit opens the door to visibility and vulnerabilities that have

been historically curated separately and not in conversation.

I grew up with these worlds in direct conversation, at the foot of my mother and her circles of comrades

who were building global social movements. Seeing the brilliance of a variety of movement-related arts

and cultural productions being centered, valued and in dialogue, mattered. I appreciated galleries and

museums that did not force Asian and African diasporic art to be in comparison to (white) US-centered

and colonized “European” ideas. Given these transformational experiences at an early age, I have

remained bothered can be frustrating to see how --that even in current times--Black and African

diasporic anime and hiphop arts continues to be separated from Asian diasporic or transnational

Japanese art, 2 such as ukiyo-e, manga and anime. Entering the exhibit, experiencing these

interconnected yet often catalogued in ‘differnce’ now artistic tradiitons and innovations together in

this way, including drag performers’ fashion, music-inspired action figures, hand felted sculpture, and

Hokusai prints all here together creates an opportunity for people to view anime- and manga-inspired

art in a way that they may not have seen centered before offline.