For many who insist they love Oakland, The Town’s eastern reaches remain unfamiliar terrain. Dangerous stereotypes abound, and though most agree that Oakland needs to do better, there seems to be a growing complacence with the notion that two Oaklands exist; one for the rich/ artsy/ foodie/ lakeside/ hill dwellers, and another for poor communities of color. East Oakland’s battles with poverty, violence, racism, drugs, and criminalization have indeed created a bleak narrative about the region for the past few decades, but the East also houses some beautiful communities that have raised many truly amazing people. For those of us who grew up in East Oakland, it’s home in all its complicated sin and splendor. “A beautiful struggle” has always seemed an apt phrase for this city, and it is this spirit that writer and emcee Ise Lyfe evokes with Brighter Than Blight, his art installation in East Oakland’s condemned Greenside Projects.
Greenside is a housing project that tends to be remembered as a notorious hub of drugs and violence. Built in 1971, it was finally condemned ten years ago after a law suit by the city led the Oakland Housing Authority to shut it down. For years, its prison-like facade has sat on the corner of Bancroft and 77th Avenue, but, as of very recently, the building has traded its weathered pale green paint for a coat of pitch black. This is not a step in the buildings pending demolition, it is the purposely stark backdrop upon which Ise’s vision of East Oakland living is etched.
On a strictly contextual level, Brighter Than Blight is powerful because it offers a counter balance to the city’s chic urban arts movement that tends to cluster in Oakland’s newly christened uptown district. Although there are arts communities in West Oakland and Jingletown, deep East Oakland isn’t exactly an arts destination these days. Even the Oakland Unified School District has slashed much of its arts programming district wide, meaning that the art that does blossom here is raw and hard earned. This context makes the presence of an art installation in Greenside provocative, and once you factor in the empowering subject matter and that the docents are youth and community members, it becomes even more transformative.
The exhibit incorporates original multi-medium works by Ise, enlarged excerpts from his book Pistols & Prayers, and graffiti by TDK Crew newcomer, Kufu. Among other pieces, Kufu replicated the “Oakland Is Proud” painting that was on a brick wall along East 12th st for years (You may recognize it from the intro to Hangin With Mr. Cooper), and Ise’s words tell Oakland stories that help humanize and differentiate individuals that don’t comply with the prescriptive stereotypes that preside over the community. 
Perhaps Brighter Than Blight’s most human element is Grandma’s House, an apartment that was cleaned out and staged as that of an African-American grandmother raising young children in Oakland. Asked why he chose to do this, Ise shared that he wanted to pay tribute to the women who have been the backbone of the black family through generations. They are the valiant souls who raised their nuclear families, and then, too often, their grandchildren when crack, violence, or prison took their children away. Grandmas are not just matriarchs in Oakland’s African-American community, they are the foundation, the glue, the right and wrong, and the love in spite of immense pain. It is very intentional then that the last room in Grandma’s House is empty and the walls are filled with the community’s love for those they’ve lost. 
With Brighter Than Blight, Ise Lyfe has captured the essence of an East Oakland community, but he’s also pushing people. He’s challenging young folks in The Town to reassess what “running the street” means in the midst of oppression, joblessness, and violence. He’s problemitizing the physical and social conditions that people live in and making it clear that this community genocide must not continue. He’s also making beauty out of struggle, and modeling a way to make the art world engage with marginalized communities in a more genuine way.
Check out Brighter Than Blight for it’s 2nd and final weekend, Friday June 28th – Sunday June 30th from 4pm-9pm.
PS: It’s free!
July 1st, 2013at 6:15 pm(#)
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