Letha Ch’ien October 20, 2022Updated: October 23, 2022, 1:19 pm

Photo: Provided by Pilar Agüero-Esparza

The arts center solicited contributions from eight artists based throughout the country known for work insisting on the inclusion of marginalized people and their histories. Of them, the Bay Area boasts Pilar Agüero-Esparza, who received her bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz and master of fine arts from San Jose State University; Margaret Laurena Kemp, a professor of theater and dance at UC Davis; Oliver Lee Jackson, whose studio is in Oakland; and Wanxin Zhang, who serves on the faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute.

Contributors from outside the region include Los Angeles artists Cassils, a trans artist who works in performance, photography, sculpture and sound; and sculptor Alison Saar, daughter of the renowned Black artist Betye Saar. Two others are based in Chicago:  Riva Lehrer, a disabled artist and instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas.

Two works were commissioned specifically for “Claiming Space”: Agüero-Esparza’s “Of Color” sculpture, a large multicolor woven canvas mixing skin tone variations with natural colors from the landscape, and Kemp’s soundscape “It’s All About Love: Mixtape for the Landscape,” a two-hour recording of conversation, music and sound participants can listen to while walking Montalvo.