Join us for the finale of our 2023 FabLab series: Celebration of Life, a cabaret style show. Enjoy an afternoon full of visual art, music, poetry and performances from Bay Area’s best QTBIPOC artists hosted be Indigenous drag legend Landa Lakes.
Help us celebrate this season's Queer Ancestors: Audre Lorde, Francis, and Justin Chin.
Artists include Celeste Chan, April Axé Charmaine, Tina D’Elia, Tiff Lin, Lotus Boy, and many more!
Join us for an evening of creativity in remembrance of recently departed queer ancestor, Justin Chin. Chin was a mainstay of queer San Francisco performance poetry, and we aim to revive his passion and politics in this free zine-writing workshop.
Led by queer activist, artist, and sparkly-zine-revolutionary Celeste Chan, this participatory workshop provides zine-making materials for all attendees. Hosted by the amazing experimental theatre and community hub Cutting Ball Theater, this FabLab playshop is a partnership between Eye Zen Presents and Latinx Mafia.
Space is limited, so reserve your tickets now!
Queer Ancestor: Justin Chin
Poet, essayist, and performance artist Justin Chin was born in Malaysia and educated in Singapore and at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. With humor and raw vulnerability, Chin’s poems interrogate the personal, political, and commercial implications of claiming a queer Asian American identity. Fiercely political, Chin stated in an interview with Frigate magazine, “Every work of art that works as art is a critique.”
Chin was the author of several collections of poetry, including Bite Hard (1997), Harmless Medicine (2001), and Gutted (2006), which won the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award for Poetry and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His prose collections, which weave criticism with memoir and fiction, include Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes, & Pranks (1998), Burden of Ashes (2002), Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms (2005), and 98 Wounds (2011). He lived in San Francisco before his death in late 2015.
Teaching Artist: Celeste Chan
Celeste (she/her) is a writer and artist, schooled by Do-It-Yourself culture and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx, NY. Celeste co-founded and directed Queer Rebels, a performance project devoted to LGBTQ of color artistic histories. She was a longstanding guest curator of experimental film programs for MIX NYC and OUTsider Festival. Celeste toured with feminist literary roadshow Sister Spit, and she served on Foglifter Literary Journal’s board of directors. Her writing has appeared in Alta Journal, cream city review, Gertrude, Mixed-Race/Feminist & Queer, and The Rumpus, among others. With support from the SF Arts Commission, she’s creating a new zine about Chinese and Jewish histories of resistance. Her favorite color is glitter-leopard-rainbow, and she’s currently writing her family memoir.
FabLab is made possible by the generous support of:
Discover Your Drag Persona!
Guests had an amazing time at this empowering event celebrating the art and drag of queer ancestor Francis, the Queen of Queens.
Inspired by Francis’ talents in drag, comedy, and multi-disciplinary arts, attendees of this will explore their multi-disciplinary artistry and develop a drag persona.
Teaching artist and San Francisco’s most beloved drag queen Per Sia will lead participants in this playshop.
Supplemental makeup and supplies were provided by a generous donation from Kryolan and direclty from Eye Zen.
Queer Ancestor: Francis
Francis was born José Francisco García Escalante in Campeche, Mexico in 1958. She was an actress, comedian, singer, lip-syncher and choreographer/dancer appearing in several movies, telenovelas, variety shows and broadcasts of her comedy shows. She was the first openly gay celebrity in the country and a passionate activist for gay rights when homosexuality was considered a minor crime in Mexico. She became an international hit in the 80's and 90's with her 'El Show de Francis' drag show. She was a beloved public personality and a pioneer in Mexican showbiz.
Teaching Artist: Per Sia
From weekly performances at the iconic Esta Noche, Per Sia’s career has gone on to include art curation, stand-up, television, and maybe a quinceañera or two. She has performed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and México. Currently she is a regular performer in the nationally acclaimed "Drag Story Hour" as well as an educator in residence at an after school arts program in San Francisco profiled on KQED National Public Radio.”
FabLab - Audre Lorde
Revolution is Not a One Time Event
A somatic exploration with April Axé Charmaine
Friday, Dec 16 2022 from 7pm to 9pm
ACT Studios
30 Grant Ave. San Francisco, CA 94108
Explore practices inspired by Audre Lorde through movement and dance devoted to our well-being.
“In this two-hour somatic exploration into themes of the revolution introduced by queer ancestor Audre Lorde, we will find solace in a communal activation that includes: heart-centered discussion, attuning to personal rhythm with movement and embodiment practices, and creating a collaborative manifesto devoted to our personal well-being as an act of continuous revolution.” - April Axé Charmaine
Guests are encouraged to come with comfortable attire. At the end of the playshop guests will produce a written manifesto to be published and memorialized at the Celebration of Life June event. Activities include:
Intro: FabLab, LatinX Mafia, April, Audre
Reading: Revolution from Within
Writing: Free-Write prompt
Activity: Group Sharing
Writing: Group Manifesto
Activity: Movement Expression
Activity: Group Closing Ritual
WE had a fabulous year!
June 2022 FabLab Celebration of Life event at YBCA was a massive success. We were so psyched with the amazing community that turned up to celebrate Guan Yin, Walter Mercado, James Baldwin, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Kapaemahu! Thanks to the California Arts Council and our community partners Latinx Mafia and Sol Vida we’ll be launching an all-new season later this December.
Photo Credit: Tiff Lin
Photo Credit: Seth Eisen
Fab lab’s mission
FabLab provides a vital space for QTBIPOC culture bearers to conjure and celebrate the legacies of our queer ancestors through a series of monthly creative playshops igniting a fabulous re-telling of queer history facilitated by the fiercest QTBIPOC creative voices. Facilitators introduce participants to queer ancestors as inspiration for the creation of fresh new work exploring dance, performance, visual art, video, music, and spoken word.
Participants help us introduce these ancestors to a wider audience with creative projects that weave their inspiring histories back into community consciousness. Participants are invited to share their inspired creations on social media and tag us @eyezenpresent and #FabLab. Participants will also share their ancestor inspired art at two Celebration of Life events in honor of the highlighted ancestors.
History of FabLab
Originally launched by Eye Zen Presents in 2014 and then with April Axé Charmaine and SOL VIDA in 2019 to provide an interactive communal experience to learn about our QTBIPOC ancestors. Visit archival pages of our past workshops at Eye Zen and at Sol Vida.
FabLab connects Bay Area residents to the lives and legacies of QTBIPOC ancestors that have been omitted from our mainstream media and cultural knowledge. Historically, many QTBIPOC ancestral stories have remained silent, hidden, or lost. Many factors have created this historical void: queers practicing silence as self-defense during oppressive times, failures of academia, AIDS, and the general racial-, gender-, and hetero-normativity of dominant cultures steeped in the voices of settler colonialism.
Photo Credit: Seth Eisen
Community Partners
Latinx Mafia is a collective of diverse Latinx/e identified artists. The group was born out of a need to address our collective experiences with racist, problematic and misunderstood casting and storytelling practices of Latinx/e stories in a white-dominated media space. We come together in community to advocate for our radically accurate representation, to provide support and resources for Latinx-identified artist and to uplift our talent. Our mission is to empower and support Latinx teatristas by reclaiming, demystifying and recreating Latinx representation in theatre/media and ensuring that Latinx representation in theatre and media radically and accurately embraces historically marginalized communities including but not limited to: the LGBTQiA2 community, indigenous and Afro-Latinx people, differently-able folks, migrants regardless of immigration status, and the many linguistic backgrounds in Latin America.
SOL VIDA is shifting normalcy from systemic oppression to radical freedom utilizing dance and expressive arts as tools for personal transformation, collective liberation and embodied healing justice. We are dedicated to preserving Afro-Diasporic cultural traditions, creating progressive, multigenerational dance communities, and affinity spaces for education, empowerment, leadership and advocacy. To provide safe spaces for Queer, Trans, Black and Indigenous People of Culture (QTBIPoC and BIPoC) as well as Two-spirit, lesbian, gay, trans, queer, intersex, aesexual and gender expansive identities (2SPLGBTQIA+ ). We are a global movement company that uses dance and expressive arts to release people from feeling traumatized, isolated, stressed out, ashamed, shut down, afraid and insecure and give them safe, sacred inclusive havens to express themselves fully, restoring confidence, sparking life creativity and sharing tools to disrupt and break down the oppressive systems in society.
