YBCA to Present Exhibition and Dance Performance Which Feature Women Exposing Truths About Prison Through Art

“The Only Door I Can Open” and “If I Give You My Sorrows” feature current and formerly incarcerated artists revealing their experience in the prison system through a multimedia exhibition and aerial dance performance

Left: Anna Ruiz, Institution #2, 2024. Right: “If I Give You My Sorrows” Dancer: Megan Lowe. Photo by Brooke Anderson. 

San Francisco, CA—(Monday, January 6, 2025) – YBCA is pleased to present a multimedia exhibition and aerial dance performance that together explore the experience of incarcerated women, and reveal truths about the realities they face while in prison. Both the exhibition and dance performance share the same inspiration: a poem by co-curator Tomiekia Johnson, in which she describes her bed as ‘the only door I can open,’ while she reflects on her experience of being incarcerated. The exhibition will be on view February 1 through June 22, and the dance piece will be performed daily January 31, February 1, and February 2 (after which, video documentation will be screened for the remainder of the exhibition). 

The Only Door I Can Open: Women Exposing Prison through Art, is an immersive multimedia exhibition co-curated from within prison by Tomiekia Johnson and Chantell-Jeannette Black, in collaboration with Empowerment Avenue. For the exhibition, Johnson and Black asked eight currently and formerly incarcerated artists to create an artwork that reflects on their relationship to their bed. Within the prison system, a person’s bed is one of the only spaces where they can be alone: for some, the bed is a place of safety and privacy, for others it is a space of isolation and angst. 

The exhibition will feature an array of artworks in diverse media—including murals, paintings, and audio narratives—as well as an immersive installation, which mirrors a prison cell at Central California Women’s Facility at Chowchilla (where the curators reside). For both Johnson and Black, the exhibition offers a powerful opportunity to encourage visitors to think more deeply about the problematic nature of the prison system itself and take action to enact change. 

“Prison may be a sentence because of crimes committed, but in reality prison is just a state of being,” said Chantell-Jeannette Black. “Art is our platform for human rights, and the outlet through which our voices may be heard. We want viewers to feel inspired to change and grow, to become more than what they were before viewing this artwork.”

“I hope that this exhibition allows visitors to picture themselves in my shoes, my bed, on my bunk, feeling the feelings I feel,” said Tomiekia Johnson. “I have been plucked from society, my family, my career, and the Black community where I’m needed most, by corrupt abusers of power. I would like the solution side of people to awaken. I want people to walk away from the exhibit feeling flooded with different emotions.”

During the opening weekend of The Only Door I Can Open, YBCA will also present “If I Give You My Sorrows,” an apparatus-based aerial dance performance by Flyaway Productions. On view Friday, January 31 through Sunday, February 2, the dance performance provides another path for reflection on incarcerated women’s relationship to their bed. Situated in YBCA’s Forum, the performances will feature dancers floating, flying, and spinning on two steel beds suspended from the ceiling.

If I Give You My Sorrows will offer viewers a chance to more deeply understand what creativity looks like in confinement, and to experience an unexpected approach to reflecting on the impact of incarceration on women,” said Jo Kreiter, Founder of Flyaway Productions. “It is important for us to bring our work to where people live, to the neighborhoods and communities that are impacted by the topics we are addressing, and to center the voices of those who are living this experience. I hope audiences come away with a more nuanced and complex understanding of the prison system and those who are often unjustly incarcerated.”

The aerial dance performance will reflect on the range of emotions – from isolation to dreaming – that women in prison live through. The performance is set against a moving soundscape featuring poems written and spoken aloud by Johnson, as well as Betty McKay, and Lisa Strawn, both of whom are formerly incarcerated activists. Lisa Strawn is a trans woman who served a long sentence in men’s prisons.

Taken together, the exhibition and dance performance offer visitors a chance to reflect on and engage more deeply with the prison system, and to build a clearer understanding of the challenges incarcerated women face. 

For more information and to purchase tickets when they are on sale, visit www.ybca.org.

About Empowerment Avenue:

Empowerment Avenue’s (EA) mission is to normalize the inclusion of incarcerated artists and writers in mainstream venues, by bridging the gap between them and harnessing this creative proximity as a path to decarceration and public safety. Founded by Rahsaan “New York” Thomas, who was incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, and freelance writer Emily Nonko, Empowerment Avenue advocates for the most talented artists and writers in prisons across the country by providing them the resources they need to get their creative work outside prison walls, be fairly compensated, and contribute their creativity to the movements of abolition, de-carceration, and liberation of incarcerated people. 

Nonko oversees EA’s program for writers and Christine Lashaw, a senior museum professional, oversees EA’s program for visual artists with De’jon Joy, EA’s Assistant Director. 

About Flyaway Productions:

Founded in 1996, Flyaway Productions democratizes public space. The company makes dances that are site specific, off the ground, and politically driven. Flyaway performs in unlikely places, activating the sides of buildings above bleak city streets. Flyaway’s tools include coalition building, an intersectional feminist lens, and a body-based push against the constraints of gravity. 

Recent coalition partners include the Museum of African Diaspora, Empowerment Avenue, Essie Justice Group, Local 2, Bend the Arc Jewish Action, the Tenderloin Museum, and UC Law. Flyaway Productions has been supported by Guggenheim and Rauschenberg Foundation fellowships, NEFA’s National Dance Project, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the SF Arts Commission, and have received seven IZZY awards from the SF dance community.  

About YBCA: 

Opened to the public in 1993, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) was founded as the cultural anchor of San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens neighborhood. Our work spans the realms of contemporary art, performance, film, civic engagement, and public life. By centering artists as essential to social and cultural movement, YBCA is reimagining the role an arts institution can play in the communities it serves. For more information, visit ybca.org.

YBCA is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11:00am to 5:00pm. General admission is $10, and $5 for students and seniors. Tickets can be purchased in person or reserved in advance at ybca.org. 

As part of San Francisco’s Downtown First Thursdays, YBCA is open until 8pm each first Thursday of the month, offering additional programming and special events. Admission is free every Wednesday and on the second Sunday of each month. 

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