Adrian Arias / Visual Poet

New drawings

“Magnolia on Thursday of May”, ink and watercolor, 22×30 in.

“Harry Belafonte, lignum vitae flower”, ink and watercolor, 22×30 in.

“Cuerpo / body”, ink and watercolor, 22×30 in.

“Yellow orchid for new beginnings”, ink and watercolor, 22×30 in.


SOLAZ Multidisciplinary flamenco show


I am happy to announce my collaboration with La Tania Baile Flamenco, in the creation and co-direction of SOLAZ, which will be presented at the Teatro Presido on July 21, 22 and 23. You can see the complete information and get your tickets HERE.


After my artistic trip to Paris, a collection of new pieces. More art HERE


MURAL at FREIGHT & SALVAGE

I’m so happy to announce that I was selected to create a mural at the iconic Freight & Salvage in Berkeley

LINK HERE

And FaceBook page for comments here


MARCH-APRIL-MAY PERFORMANCES

Saturday March 25, Grand Opening and Party for the Tarot in Pandemic & Revolution at CAST & 5M Park

LINK HERE

Saturday April 1st, I’m curating MAPP-Illusion show at the Red Poppy Art House

LINK HERE

Sunday April 2nd I will be performing a special poem, as part of John Santos

LINK HERE

Saturday April 15 and Sunday April 16, Adrian will be performing with his group PERFORMANCE L.A.B. at D.I.R.T. Festival, at Dance Mission Theater

LINK HERE


 

May 20 & 21. Performance LAB presents “Pieces of Time”

More info and Buy tickets HERE


Tarot in Pandemic & Revolution

I am happy to announce that The Tarot in Pandemic and Revolution will have a great public birth on Saturday March 25, 2023 on CAST. Full information here

And you can contact me at  adrian.arias@gmail.com  if you like to buy a deck


Image reclaiming the power of the Indigenous Woman

Indigenous Woman of the Americas is not invisible (3)
Watercolor and ink on Arches paper, 26 x 40 inches


Indigenous Woman of the Americas is not invisible (2)
Watercolor and ink on Arches paper, 26 x 40 inches / Private Collection


New work – Pandemic Art

The New Monolith (1) -negative-. Acrylic on canvas, 30×40 inches

“Flooding in my used covid test cabinet, while a california golden trout streaked across the sky casting ancestral blessings”. Acrylic and watercolor on Arches paper. 26 x 40 inches

“Strange Totem from the 21st century found in an old abandoned house in the desert in a full moon night”. Acrylic, ink and rainwater on Arches paper. 22.5 x 30”. Acrylic and watercolor on Arches paper. 26 x 40 inches


Live painting at the Berkeley Museum

 

As part of the Full Long Moon celebration, and dedicated to the Tarot in Pandemic & Revolution

Adrian in a news article on KQED, NPR, Click HERE


New private mural in Lima, Peru

The image represents the birth of a bird when two people meet. The iconography and graphic images are inspired by Mochica-Chimu designs, ancestral cultures of ancient Peru, and in nature.


Adrian’s new book of poetry

will be presented in Lima on November 29, 2022. Edited under the Peisa publishing house, and with a preface by Mario Bellatin.


Visual collaboration with “Archipielago”, play created by Begoña Caparrós in Madrid, Spain


Altar Sound-installation by Adrian will be at the Exploratorium

Opening November 10, closing December 4th.

This altar sound-installation, with music specially composed by Anais Azul, was part of the Day of the Dead organized by the Marigold Project at the Potrero del Sol Park.
More images of Adrian’s Día de los Muertos installations HERE


Adrian in new book about Artists in San Francisco, 2022
I am very grateful to be a part of this book edited by Shizue Seigel with 16 pages of my multidisciplinary art.

If you want to buy it go to this LINK


MURALS

“River to the Sky”

A mural on the corner of Turk and Hyde in San Francisco, honoring Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, the Blackhawk Jazz Club, BLM, the sacred water and rivers under the ground, the California Poppies, the Ohlone territory, my ancestral Mochica land.
Thank you Darryl Smith of Luggage Store Gallery and Someland Foundation
Thank you Kasey Rios Asberry and the Tenderloin neighborhood, Caleb, Krissy and Stella for your incredible help.
 
69 second video showing the making of River to the Sky HERE
Images from the process and the finished mural

Complete Statement and meaning of RIVER TO THE SKY HERE

Mural at GOOGLE

Very proud to have been part of an Art Residency at the new Google facilities, creating a two stories four walls mural dedicated to my grandparents: Love story of Hummingbirds and Ancestors
These hummingbirds tell us a love story that made my grandparents’ hearts beat on their night of love, after which my family grew like a garden, always visited by more hummingbirds. Hummingbirds are sacred messengers between life and death, between what must be transformed to stay alive.

CLICK HERE to read about the 9 selected artists and Adrian’s explanation and images at the end of the article.

Official opening TBD

  


New Mural @ MAGIC THEATRE in San Francisco

“Indigenous Women are not invisible”

The image of this indigenous woman is based on four native women from the territory that we now call America. Woman of Mochica ancestors in Peru, my culture, mixed with Nukak Woman native to the Colombian Amazon, from which I have been inspired in her face painting. Ohlone woman, who also painted her face with that black line and other parts of her body. And Yuma and Pápago Woman from the border area between what we now call Arizona and Mexico, whose hat I have used, which is a basket, and also features of her face.

On her chest you can read “My Body Not Yours”, and also in Spanish “Mi cuerpo, Mi Alma”. It bears the image of the fallopian tube, as a sign that indigenous women also have reproductive rights. In her right ear she wears a “Chakana” which is an aboriginal symbol of the indigenous peoples, of what was the Tahuantinsuyo (now part of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina) that is more than four thousand years old, and represents a four-sided ladder, connecting the four elements and the four directions. And in her left ear she wears an earring with the inscription “Say Her Name”, which is a social movement that emerged to denounce police brutality against black Women, and in this case, it is also a claim for indigenous Women.


“Dreams and Suitcases” ephemeral mural at The Red Poppy Art House

Adrian Artist in residence at the Red Poppy Art House. Several events and art pieces will be created at the RPAH. Here the link to see Live painting by Adrian on June 18, 2022 LINK

Mini ILLUSION show 10.1 @ Red Poppy Art House

Mini Illusion show 10.1 created by Adrian on June 4, 2022. With special guests Mara Brown, Pancho Peskador, Tongo Eisen Martin, Josiah Alderete, Lucia Lilikoi, The Genie and Monica Maria Fimbrez.


 TAROT in Pandemic & Revolution

24 visual artists and 43 poets from the Bay Area participating in this unique Tarot deck, whose idea came from a dream of Adrian.

More about this Tarot HERE

You can order your deck HERE


Adrian in Instagram:


Dia de los Muertos @ SOMArts

dedicated to five human beings who lost their lives due to police brutality


Altar for Jack Hirschman

With tremendous pain, I am drawing this life-size portrait of Jack, unstoppable poet, friend, and mentor, who rests in the pantheon of revolutionary poets.

Jack Hirschman, December 13, 1933 – August 22, 2021

Jack and Adrián at the entrance of the Red Poppy Art House in 2004.

My first poetry reading in San Francisco was with Jack at Café Boheme in 1999

Gracias querido poeta


Adrian´s statement here

 


New Flower series

  


Anna Halprin, teacher and friend who is always with us. Her wisdom will continue to inspire us, to create artistic spaces that help us reconcile life with the body, humanity with social justice, inner strength with the energy of our senses. Thank you Anna for everything you gave us.

Altar for Anna at MCCLA 


Adrian 15 minutes collaboration online with Darren Johnston in trumpet, Shania Rasmussen in dance and Amy Seiwert as producer. February 2021


“Adrian´s Art in Pandemic & Revolution” a virtual exhibition, at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco.

Dance and painting collaboration with Mimi Cezanne Stoll at the Red Poppy exhibit “Adrian´s Art in Pandemic & Revolution”


Another mural at Grand Ave in Oakland, supporting local business


New temporary murals at Lakeshore in Oakland

@ Good Vibrations, first sex-positive and women-friendly store in the United States, founded in 1977 by Joani Blank. In 1992 it became a cooperative of its workers and in January 2012 open its 6th store in Lakeshore Ave. in Oakland, where this temporary mural is located. As part of their recognition as a leader in sex-positive culture and education, GV received a Certificate of Honor from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.


Last live-performance-painting @ Machina Loci Space in Berkeley

50 seconds time-lapse here

New Mural @ Machina Loci space in Berkeley. Life is a Treasure was a live paint improvisation, for 3 hours while Anais Azul played music on September 27th 2020.
Thanks to Carol Mancke for the commission to create this piece.

You can see 3 hours work in one minute time-lapse HERE


 

Also here the Adrian Time-lapse collection and more in his VIMEO page


 

Adrian Arias is an American poet, visual artist and performer. He was born in Peru and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2000. Adrian reinvents animals, creates dream-based languages and codes, explores the absurd and the surreal visually and creates paintings in action and murals related to the pandemic and the social revolution that we are experiencing.

Adrian use movement as a form of art, as a choreographer and visual poet. Adrian is also a cultural promoter, art teacher and artivist actively working in the community, receiving commissions to create murals in the San Francisco Bay Area and other parts of California.

 Letter A as part of Black Lives Matter on the asphalt of Petaluma Public Library


“8:46” Altar installation for Day of the Dead at SOMARTS San Francisco, 2020

Mural commission in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

“Adrian Arias, the ever brilliantly inventive poet of the gesturing Word” Jack Hirschman, poet and activist, San Francisco Poet Laureate.

Here you can see his new series of painting in pandemic

Here my 2019 paintings

Here PANDEMIC CREATIONS in collaboration

Here my STORE with small paintings

Adrian lives and works in Oakland, California.

 


 

DREAM #8 @ BAMPFA

On Saturday, November 23, 2019 at 4:14 pm, my most recent creation, DREAM # 8, will be presented, thanks to FLACC, Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers, which this year invited me to be part, with a performance in the Berkeley Museum, BAMPFA.

DREAM # 8 started at my art residence in BENAMIL, Spain, after receiving the news that a father and his daughter had died while trying to cross the border, I began to have a series of dreams that gradually became This performance.

DREAM # 8 has the participation of members of Anna Halprin Scoring Lab: Amy Cranch, Sue Heinemann, Darcie Luce, Marguerite Etemad, Carol Naber and Craig Amos. Production Assistant Mara Hernandez.

Artist in residence SUEÑO en BENAMIL, Spain

From July 1st to 21st, Adrian will be creating art in BenAmil, an art space in the nature of the Sierra Valenciana in Spain

Day 1, 2 and 3

Paintings dedicated to Oscar and Valeria, father and daughter who drowned trying to cross the US border

DREAM #6 @ FLACC, Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers

I thank FLACC for being part of a festival that grows with strength and beauty in San Francisco. Thanks to my collaborators at DREAM # 6, Kenya Moses in the voice and Mara Hernandez performing.
DREAM # 6 is a dream where a person is plasticized while listening to strange explanations about who the people of America are. After being completely covered in plastic, the body hears a voice and initiates the liberation ritual, until it can leave space.
This piece was conceived in the Young Museum in 2010, as part of my artistic residency in the museum, where I created 5 pieces related to the use and abuse of plastic.

Dance Mission Theatre, November 9, 10 and 11, 2018

 

Day of the Dead @ Somarts and MCCLA

In collaboration with Mara Hernandez, we created two installations for “Dia de los Muertos 2018”.

At the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts is a video-installation altar in memory of Mariee, the 18-month-old girl who died after leaving the ICE facility where she was detained and was not medically treated.

At SOMARTS an Alley-altar dedicated to our teacher, mentor and friend Rene Yañez, the Chicano artist who brought Dia de los Muertos to San Francisco more than 40 years ago, and who was always willing to help emerging artists, creating opportunities in the Arts.

Parades and Changes & Blank Placard by Anna Halprin

Blanck Placard (1970) and Parades and Changes: Dressing / Undressing and Paper Dance (1965) are two of the most iconic creations of Anna Halprin, and will be happening in the Young Museum this Saturday 20 and Sunday 21, and it is an honor to participate in them.

Parades and Changes (1965–67 and revivals)

Parades and Changes is always evolving; it is never performed in the same way. Although it includes distinct scores, which specify activities over time in space with people, these are not fixed; they simply tell people what to do, not how to do it. Certain scores may be dropped or new ones added to fit the demands of a particular performance environment or social situation. One of the best-known scores involves dressing and undressing, revealing how an ordinary task can become a dance when it is done with awareness by the performer. When the piece premiered in Sweden in 1965, this revolutionary use of nudity onstage was seen as a “ceremony of trust,” but two years later, in New York City, it led to a warrant for Anna’s arrest.

Blank Placard Dance (1970 and revivals)

At a time of multiple protests against the Vietnam War and social injustices, Anna invited people on the street to voice their concerns. A group of white-clad performers marched down city streets carrying blank placards, and taking care to keep 10 feet apart to avoid the need for a permit. When asked, “What are you protesting?” the performers inquired, “What do you want to protest?” and collected the answers. After writing the responses on the placards, they walked back, bearing the spectators’ messages. This piece has been reenacted several times, including the  performance What Matters to Us in 2015 in San Francisco’s diverse Mission District, home to many colorful murals addressing cultural and sociopolitical issues.

Adrian’s Open Studio

   

Sunday September 2nd, was a beautiful afternoon at the Red Poppy Art House, where we shared stories of my paintings, my theory of dreams, I painted live, with the guitar accompaniment of my dear friend Genie, and we took pisco sours with friends. Thank you Renee Baldocchi for all the curatorial work and the great help to carry out this art adventure.