Eastside Arts Alliance and ProArts Gallery and Commons presents 

InterGalactic Blvd : an Oakland Portal

an exhibition by Rigo 23 and Collaborators 

October 14, 2023 - December 15, 2023 

Eastside Arts Alliance - 2285 Gallery 

Oct 14 / 12pm-3pm: Reception / CompArte: The Emiliano Zapata Community Festival 

Oct 22 / 1pm: Writing Ourselves into Oakland Spaces - East 14th Writing Workshop with Dr. Kailey Heitz

Nov 17 / 11am: Intergalactic Walk for Life

Dec 7 / 7pm: Holla Back Intergalactic Poetry Night 

Rigo 23’s Intergalactic Boulevard - an Oakland Portal is a project rooted in radical solidarity among people and communities in the anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles. Inspired by the Zapatista concept of Intergalacticism and the Black Panther Party’s concept of Intercommunalism, this project opens an intergalactic portal at Eastside Arts Alliance that aims to connect people and movements within E14th Street, Oakland and around the world to each other -  through art, poetry and shared strategies.  

Rigo 23’s Intergalactic Boulevard - an Oakland Portal is a project rooted in radical solidarity among people and communities in the anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles. Inspired by the Zapatista concept of Intergalacticism and the Black Panther Party’s concept of Intercommunalism, this project opens an intergalactic portal at Eastside Arts Alliance that aims to connect people and movements within E14th Street, Oakland and around the world to each other -  through art, poetry and shared strategies.  

InterGalactic Boulevard - an Oakland Portal incorporates sculpture, embroidery, drawing, painting, time based movement and spoken word to create an immersive installation at East Side Arts Alliance - 2285 Gallery and in collaborating venues across a vast geographical reach. 

Rigo 23 and his many collaborators re-imagine International Boulevard as Intergalactic Boulevard, a location for an autonomous portal for intercommunal connection. Acknowledging the deep history and connections people have with International Blvd. (formerly known as East 14th Street), Intergalactic Blvd invites the community to envision East Oakland as the epicenter for intercommunal and intergalactic solidarity; with visual art and poetry deeply intertwined with grassroots community organizing; enlisting images and sounds as mighty allies in the struggles for autonomy and self-determination, countering colonial, capitalist, racist, white supremacist and patriarchal systems.

The aim of the Portal at Intergalactic Boulevard is to provide a space for connection, dialogue and contemplation. The focus is both on the local and the intergalactic, as such this project will engage people, communities, and organizations that call International Blvd. home, as well as the far reaches of our imaginings. Through a mapping and socially engaged approach this project invites people to contribute stories about their lives and perspectives on International Boulevard. Moreover, through collaborations with Oakland-based artists and organizations this exhibition will connect and mark the extensive grassroots networks that make up Oakland’s strong revolutionary movements. In a wider scope, this project will develop collaborations with artists and organizations in other geographies - namely, Chiapas, Havana and Viena. 

For this exhibition and programming series, Rigo 23 will showcase artworks resulting from a wide ranging series of collaborations - the still incarcerated human rights defender Leonard Peltier; Indigenous Chiapas, Mexico, based artists involved in the ongoing process set in motion by the EZLN - Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional; contemporary urban Bay Area artists and organizations; freed members of the Black Panther Party, namely the Angola-3; and other organizations including Pro-Arts and Chiapas Support Committee in Oakland; Centro Bahia, in Havana, Cuba; Galeria Muy, in San Cristobal de Las Casas, México and the WeltMuseum, in Vienna, Austria.

Intergalactic Blvd.  is an extension of Rigo 23’s Autonomous Intergalactic Space Program (AISP), an art collaboration with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas that attempts to realize the possibilities of intercommunal and intergalactic dialogue through art that give shape and voice to the Zapatista community’s struggle for autonomy in the face of globalization. The planetary constellations and vegetal spacecrafts that form the basis of the art piece, illustrate the Zapatista’s radical politics, its belief in the ability to overcome the constraints of time and space, and its commitment to the redistribution of land ownership. 

The Intergalactic Space Program is currently on view at the Welt Museum in Vienna, Austria as part of the exhibition, Science Fiction(s): If There Were a Tomorrow. 

Intergalactic Blvd. and all related public programs and events are made possible with generous funding from California Arts Council and The Zellerbach Family Foundation, and produced in collaboration between Pro Arts Gallery & COMMONS and East Side Arts Alliance.

Barthélémy Garcia has recently created an association called Värmeelementens Förbund --The Radiator Association -- as a platform for his artistic practice. Värmeelementens Förbund is coming for the first time to the US where it will invite the local communities of Oakland to explore the possibilities such associations can offer through city walks and conversations.

Hosted by Common Knowledge Platform, Pro Arts’s international artist residency in Oakland, the Association will take on the task of examining our material environment and its impact in our lives. The Association is a symbol, and the radiator stands for the most banal material things that together form our living environment.

Decisions about our living environments are made in spaces that are not usually considered as “political,” where material things are playing a crucial role. How can the issue of inequality be resolved without taking material things into account?

Garcia’s interest lays in material things and this is also what will be at the center of The Radiator Association’s inquiry. His residency will run from September 25 until October 15, 2023 with a public program and opening for the project, scheduled for First Friday in October (October 6th 2023) at Pro Arts, now at Omni Commons, Oakland, CA.

CKP is a residency for an open knowledge production and exchange in the form of peer-to-peer artist collaborations, commissioned projects in research and print, and collective action through the medium of art and law that embody community ethos and philosophy. the international residency puts artists and cultural organizers at the center of artistic and cultural knowledge production, and as the main instigators of civic and community empowerment.

Garcia is a is a French born artist based in Sweden, working with photography combined with installation and vinyl text. In his practice, he starts from the idea of the material as something inherently meaningful. He believes that things possess an independent existence that extends beyond what we humans ascribe to them. He holds a bachelor degree and master degree in photography from Valand Academy (Sweden) and previously studied art history and archaeology in Aix-en-Provence (France). His work has been exhibited at Röda Sten Konsthall in Gothenburg, Galleri Format in Malmö, at FG2 in Gothenburg and most recently at Duo Contradiction in Stockholm. In 2020 he was awarded the Swedish Arts Grants Committees assistant grant, together with Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt, and in 2022 he was awarded the IASPIS residency in Stockholm, Sweden.