Kapwa in Excelsior Finalist: Erina Alejo
Balay Kreative is honored to announce that Erina Alejo, our first grantee, is also one of our finalists for “Kapwa in Excelsior”!
The Kapwa in Excelsior program was designed in collaboration by Make it Mariko and Balay Kreative to celebrate the Filipina/o/x community in Excelsior. These artworks bring unique perspectives on how each artist sees kapwa, our shared identity or inner self, in this community. We are excited to present works by Chelsea Calalay, Erina Alejo, and Juke Jose; three talented Fil-Am artists whose experience of community in the Excelsior has made a deep impression on them. These artworks respond to the question: “How do you live and experience kapwa in the Excelsior every day?” We hope you can join us in celebrating community connections through these beautiful creative reflections.
About the Artist
Photo of Erina by Evelyn Anderson
Erina Alejo’s lens-based ethnographic works incorporate public space and social practice to center care, community action, and cultural preservation through their experience as a third-generation renter in San Francisco. Born and raised in the Mission and SOMA, Alejo, since the 2000s, rents with family in the Excelsior’s Persia Triangle.
Photo from Erina Alejo depicting A Hxstory of Renting cover with a photo Alejo took of Aubrey, Chelsea Calalay, and Kate Dash.
The Design
Aubrey, Chelsea Calalay, and Kate Dash, May 5, 2019.
Powerful Pinays gaze from the entrance to an Excelsior home. The photo is on the cover of Alejo’s photography book, A Hxstory of Renting (clamshell press and Katalog Projects, 2020), which archives Alejo’s long-term investigation of anti-displacement resilience along SF’s Mission Street threading Excelsior, Mission, and SOMA-- all resisting varying rates of urban renewal and planning through neighborhood-based grassroots organizing. Aubrey, Chelsea, and Kate gaze upon us, reminding: one has the right to a history of renting; it is a personal history integral to one’s intergenerational wealth, family, and community legacy.