"People don't acknowledge how much capital is in cultural capital. So people will hoard it. That is what creates the gatekeeping. We were there to care. Rather than being the gatekeepers, we became the caregivers."
--Rhiannon MacFadyen
We talk about artist-led mutual aid, regranting in community, reparations partnerships, calls to action for arts funders, defining who an artist is for eligibility purposes, and more…
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Chris Evans is an Oakland-based interdisciplinary artist with a foundation in music and dance. She is a Certified Pilates Instructor, Certified Massage Therapist, and a soon-to-be Certified Eden Energy Medicine Practitioner. She is also the founder of Deep Breath Pilates studio.
Her movement background includes Modern Dance, Ballet, Aikido, and years as a competitive junior tennis player. Using tools such as the cello, improvisation, dance, literature, language, research, and collaboration, Evans creates moments of community that honor, challenge, and hold space for our imaginations, stories, and bodies.
Evans is the founder of the Black Women’s Self-Care Reparations Project, co-founder of Idora Park Project Space with Ernest Jolly, and director of the Reconstruction Study Project. She was a member of the House Full of Black Women collective led by Ellen Sebastian Chang and Amara Tabor-Smith, and of A Simple Collective, founded by Rhiannon MacFadyen Evans.
She received an Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music/Sound/Text in 2013, and was nominated again in 2016 for her work on Reconstruction Study 1A.
Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen is a curator, consultant, project-based artist, and a San Francisco native with over 20 years of in-depth experience in the performing and visual arts. Inspired by productive discomfort, their curatorial focus is on projects that push formal and contextual boundaries and her cross-discipline personal work engages symbols, identity, communication, and the unseen. Founder of A Simple Collective and the experimental project space Black & White Projects, Rhiannon has curated exhibitions and presented work nationally, including USF’s Thacher Gallery, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Root Division in San Francisco, SCOPE in New York, and Pro Arts in Oakland. They have been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED Arts, SF Weekly, The New Asterisk Magazine, SFArts, and Art Practical, among other publications. Deeply involved with community-building through the arts, she is on the Curatorial Committee for Root Division and is the Curator in Residence at India Basin Waterfront Park in SF’s Bayview–Hunters Point neighborhood and is a career coach for artists and creative entrepreneurs. Rhiannon is also a founding member of Pacific Felt Factory and Co-Director of Emerging Arts Professionals San Francisco/Bay Area.
@curation.culture.community
RESOURCES
Monthly Full Moon Water Rituals at India Basin Waterfront Park
Community Ownership and Self-Determination: Lessons from Atlanta, Boston, Lisjan Territory, and New Orleans, Rebecca Marx, Brett Theodos, and Tené Traylor (Urban Institute May 29, 2025)
Norma Wong, When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse, North Atlantic Books (2024)
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