Art

U.C. Berkeley Student Artist Eniola Fakile’s Work Takes on Chaos as Theme

As a Master of Fine Arts student in the Department of Art Practice, Eniola Fakile says she feels encouraged by the faculty to go further, to push herself into new depths of self-exploration. It’s something she has been compelled to do since she was a kid — to put herself and her ideas out into the world, no matter how painful it might be.

Published

4 years ago

December 18, 2022

Oakland Post

Eniola Fakile (pictured) is a second-year Master of Fine Arts student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice. This photo is from her series Mo ṣe fun e (I did it for you).

By Anne Brice | Excerpted from the Berkeley News

Eniola Fakile’s creations live in another world.

Fakile is a photographer. A performance artist. A filmmaker. A sculptor. A costume designer. She works in textiles, ready-made objects and assemblage. She’s not constrained by what has been or should be. Instead, she expands outward to see how far she can go. When an idea flashes in her mind, she imagines a new universe in which that idea, that creation, lives.

“I’m addicted to making things complicated,” she says. “I can never make something basic and easy. I like chaos of my own making because I made it.”

She builds sculptures. Some that people wear — and that she wears — and often posed meticulously. The harder the costumes are to build, the better. They might be made of fuzzy, neon-colored fabric. Or long, fluffy wigs. Or cotton balls and beads and crumpled tissue paper. Right now, she’s trying to figure out how to build a dress out of concrete — with an emphasis on the word “try,” she says.

As a Master of Fine Arts student in the Department of Art Practice, she says she feels encouraged by the faculty to go further, to push herself into new depths of self-exploration. It’s something she has been compelled to do since she was a kid — to put herself and her ideas out into the world, no matter how painful it might be.

Berkeley News spoke with Fakile about the process of creating art — “It’s 0.1% bravery and the rest is, like, I need to get it out,” she says — and how she’s learning to accept her wide-open nature, even when she doesn’t want to.

Berkeley News: Where did you grow up and what was your childhood like?

Eniola Fakile: I grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia. I have two lovely immigrant parents who would do anything for me. My parents are from Nigeria. Even though I was born in America, the vibe in my house was like, “Don’t forget that you’re Nigerian. Don’t forget culture and family.” I’m exactly the same as how I was when I was a kid. I wasn’t the kid who everyone was like, “Oh, they’re going to be an artist.” I just did weird stuff. I liked to play outside, and I liked to talk to trees, play in the dirt. I was a bubbly kid. I cried a lot. I still do.

Have you always been interested in creating art?

I feel like I’ve always been doing art. I had an active imagination as a kid. The first time I really got into it was my freshman year of high school. My parents got me my first digital camera when I was a freshman in high school. It was this basic little point-and-shoot thing. I always had my camera with me. I was always taking photos. I took photos of my friends. I took endless photos of trees. I took photos of my feet. I took photos of my hands. I took photos of food. I just really wanted to reintroduce myself to the world through a camera lens.

As a sophomore, I took a film photography class. I fell in love with how physical of a practice it is. It’s learning how to handle things with care, working with chemicals, going out and making mistakes, going out again, making it better.

(Using herself as the ‘model,’ Fakile worked on a video series. Part of one is her exploration of what it means to be a Black woman.)

Eniola Fakile: With each video, I wanted to dig deeper, but then, I also wanted the filming to get better. So, I was trying to progress as a videomaker. I made it over a year, and during that time, I started to become more and more comfortable with myself in front of the camera, talking about these things. And I’m always trying to be really careful about how I talk about being Black in my work because the way I feel about it is complicated.

Don’t get me wrong — I love being Black. But I feel like I want to make work about being Black without being exclusionary. So, I try to make work with little markers that I know other Black people can identify with, but then also everyday things that I know other people will respond to, so that it’s work that anyone can feel connected to. But especially Black people.

So, the series is about all those things. It’s about me as a Black woman dealing with my body image issues or how to deal with my hair. But it is also about me as a person dealing with the stress of everyday life, imposter syndrome, not feeling like I’m good enough. All of those things.

Berkeley News: How do you approach creating art? Once you get an idea, where do you begin?

Eniola Fakile: Every time I start a new series of work, I buy a journal, and I write down what I want to talk about. The process involves a lot of crying. It involves watching the same things over and over again to get the design juices flowing. Like, I’ll watch New Girl over and over again. I’ll watch Cruella — love that movie. The Devil Wears Prada. There’s a show called A Discovery of Witches with a season set in Elizabethan England.

When I get an idea for a sculpture or costume or whatever you want to call them — I still don’t have a name for them — it’s like a quick flash in my mind. I’ll do a really quick, messy sketch. Then, I try my best to build it. And it changes along the way.

My ideas manifest out of everyday things, like a hamburger. I’ll think: What is a hamburger? What if that hamburger had feelings? How do I turn that into a shoe? It sounds ridiculous. It involves a lot of fantasy and imagination, and I love doing it.

See more of Fakile’s work on her website and Instagram page.

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Oakland Museum Presents Landmark Retrospective Celebrating Beloved Bay Area Artist Mildred Howard

“Poetics of Memory” coincides with a year of major recognition for Howard. In 2026, she received the California Arts Council’s 50th Anniversary Award, honoring artists whose work has shaped California’s cultural and civic life, as well as the Museum of the African Diaspora’s Artist Impact Award. In 2025, she was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in recognition of her transformative contributions to American cultural life.

Published

1 week ago

June 24, 2026

Oakland Post

Mildred Howard. Photo by Christine Cueto for the Oakland Museum of California, 2025.

Special to The Post

The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opened “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory,” the first major museum survey of Bay Area artist Mildred Howard, on June 12.

The exhibition spans five decades of Howard’s influential work, bringing together immersive installations, found-object sculptures, archival materials, and new commissions that explore memory, identity, and power in American life.

Howard was born in San Francisco in 1945 and raised in the East Bay, where she went on to study Afro-Haitian dance, make and sell clothing, and experiment with collage and sculpture.

Her multimedia art practice emerged from these experiences, later becoming associated with West Coast conceptual art, San Francisco funk, and a vibrant community of artists like Oliver Jackson, Betye Saar, and Raymond Saunders. Since the 1970s, she has used found materials and family stories to explore memory—both individual and collective.

At OMCA, visitors enter “Poetics of Memory” through a series of intimate galleries featuring Howard’s early mixed-media pieces and sculptures, along with a large video projection of a number of her public artworks.

Together, they emphasize Howard’s interest in everyday objects as powerful carriers of individual and shared stories. Highlights include collages that remix images of the artist herself; found-object sculptures like The History of the United States with a few Parts Missing (2007) that address omissions in dominant narratives; and public works like “Locks and Keys for Harry Bridges” (2001) that transform urban space into a meditation on access and labor.

This culminates in a richly detailed “studio” environment, where works in progress, archival exhibition flyers, historic photographs of Howard and her community, postcards from fellow artists, and other materials offer insight into her creative process and daily life.

The exhibition then opens into a high-ceilinged, dramatically lit space that brings together Howard’s signature immersive installations. On one end, “Crossings” (1997/2026) – a field of hundreds of ceramic eggs leading to an ornate mirror – suggests cycles of birth, motherhood, and transition, while drawing on the emotional echoes of the Middle Passage. On the other end, “Blackbird in a Red Sky” (a.k.a. “Fall of the Blood House”) (2002) – a red glass shack bordered by a pond – also uses reflection and transparency to draw viewers into the work and prompt consideration of themes of identity and home.

Howard’s newest video installation, “Moving Stills” (2026), repurposes never-before-seen family footage she took as a teenager on a train trip to the American South. Projected onto cascading layers of translucent fabric that stretch across an entire gallery wall, the piece immerses viewers in a layered meditation on memory, migration, and time.

The “Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory” exhibit will be on display through Oct. 11 at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., Oakland, CA 94612. Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours on Fridays to 9 p.m.

This story is sourced from the Oakland Museum of California press office.

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Art

Oakland Director Boots Dazzles Once Again in ‘I Love Boosters’

Riley’s creative output is influenced by progressive ideals. His work, which includes six albums, the 2018 film “Sorry to Bother You,” and the 2023 comedy series “I’m a Virgo,” always shows that the alienation working-class people feel is inevitable under capitalism, he recently told The Guardian.

Published

3 weeks ago

June 10, 2026

bpusa-syndication

Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, and Keke Palmer star in “I Love Boosters” playing now in theaters. Directed by Oakland resident Boots Riley. Image courtesy of Neon.

“I feel lonely,” Keke Palmer’s character Corvette says in the first few minutes “I Love Boosters,” the new comedy adventure film from Oakland-based director Boots Riley.

“I wish I could feel lonely,” Naomi Ackie’s character Sade responds. “Try having kids.”

“I Love Boosters” teems with kaleidoscopic colors, sharp playful social critique, otherworldly plot twists, and fast-paced action, but it’s grounded in its main characters’ simple and relatable motivations: They want to be less isolated, and more free to pursue their own creative endeavors.

They’d like to design clothes and run a fashion boutique, but, unfortunately, they’re mostly busy surviving. Corvette and Sade, along with Mariah, played by Taylour Page, hustle and scheme through their brilliant scrappy organized crime group, the Velvet Gang. The gang regularly boosts clothes in the Bay Area and sells them at discounted prices.

Riley portrays the gang in a positive light in “I Love Boosters,” echoing the sentiment and title of a song he recorded 20 years ago with his hip-hop band, The Coup, where he praises boosters for providing poor communities with nice clothes they can afford: like a Robin Hood of the ’hood. But while morally righteous, materially, the gang is troubled. Corvette is haunted by unpaid bills and fears getting kicked out of the building where she squats, a shuttered fast-food chicken joint.

One thing that separates Riley’s film from most others about criminal gangs is that the Velvet Gang’s members work for a living. Theirs isn’t a greedy fantasy of becoming filthy rich, or for one last hit: Boosting is a job that still doesn’t pay nearly enough.

Visually, the film is a mix of psychedelia, afro-surrealism, noir, and perhaps a comic book.

The villain, Christie Smith, played by Demi Moore, an evil genius billionaire and fashion designer who runs the expensive clothing company the gang boosts from. She repeatedly appears on the news to put a target on the Velvet Gang members’ backs. When the gang ends up connecting with those who Christie directly exploits –workers here in the Bay Area, but also those in sweatshops overseas– the fight against Christie can commence; and uncoincidentally, Corvette starts to feel less lonely.

I don’t want to say much about that fight, but it’s delightful. Sci-Fi elements (which appear connected to Marxist theory) enter into the narrative to tie what’s become a pretty scatterbrained story together. Grounded by Palmer’s acting, “I Love Boosters” is a total joy and a refreshing break from the typical narratives we see these days. It’s totally over-the-top, but it knows it is.

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Art

After 10-Year Wait, Fillmore Heritage Center Reopens in San Francisco

After serving as the economic and cultural hub of the Fillmore’s historically Black community for more than a decade, the center’s closure ended what was called the “Rebirth of the Cool,” referring to the neighborhood’s role during the height of Black Jazz in the United States.

Published

3 weeks ago

June 10, 2026

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Rev. Amos Brown of Third Baptist Church addresses community members at the Fillmore Heritage Center ribbon cutting. Photo by Linda Parker Pennington.

By Linda Parker Pennington, Special to The Post

Last Saturday morning, the cloudy skies cleared just as the highly anticipated ribbon-cutting ceremony began, marking the reopening of the Fillmore Heritage Center at 1330 Fillmore and Eddy.

The complex – which had once included Yoshi’s Jazz Club, the Lush Life Art Gallery, the Koret Heritage Lobby, a 54-seat microcinema, and the Black-owned 1300 On Fillmore restaurant – shuttered in 2015.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announcing the reopening of the Fillmore Heritage Center. Erika Scott, owner of Honey Art Studio, looks on with pride. Photo by Linda Parker Pennington.

“The Fillmore is the most important neighborhood in San Francisco’s history for centering Black culture, music, business, and community, and has shaped this City and influenced the entire country,” said San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie to the gathering of more than 100 community leaders, business owners, and public officials. “This building reflects the deep roots of the Fillmore. Urban renewal left deep scars that are still felt today. This Center celebrates a strong Black community that continues to shape San Francisco. I am proud to join the community as we reopen the Fillmore Heritage Center.”

Although the previous stakeholders will not be returning to the center, spaces are available for nonprofit organizations and ventures, such as Fillmore native Ericka Johnson’s Honey Art Studio.

“This Center will be an economic engine and a thriving venue that shines a light on the Black-owned businesses in this neighborhood and lifts the entire district,” Lurie continued. “Our City is committed to this community for the long term.”

“We’re excited to collaborate with the City to finally reopen these doors,” said Ken Johnson, a videographer and community leader who’d been lobbying for the reopening of the center. “It’s an opportunity to showcase the entrepreneurship and creative spirit of this ‘Harlem of the West’ and the ‘Rebirth of the Cool,’ grounded in our uniquely gifted Fillmore community.”

This month, through its Office of Economic and Workforce Development, the city will begin renting the building’s noncommercial spaces for pop-up events celebrating local talent, arts, and entertainment primarily centered in the Fillmore.