Still Here 2017

Photo of Still Here group

Group Photo of performers in Still Here 5June 4
Still Here San Francisco Presents
Sabor a Mí: Still Here 5
BRAVA, 7pm
wheelchair accessible
$15-$25, NOTA
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sabor-a-mi-still-here-5-tickets-33951943176

With the Orlando losses and anti-Latinx/queer/trans/immigrant hate, Latinx have gained mainstream visibility through violence. With this show we claim our visibility as queer/trans Latinx. We exist. We own our stories. We tell them with our own flavor.

Discipline: Performance, Spoken Word and Multimedia

Biographies

Photo of Cathy Arellano Cathy Arellano is just another Mexican from The Mission who grew up brown, came out Gay…Chicana…Lesbian…Butch…Queer…Next month, Kórima Press is publishing her book of poetry I Love My Women, Sometimes They Love Me. Last year, Kórima published Arellano’s Salvation on Mission Street, a memoir in poetry and prose. 2
Kaira Portillo loves exploring certain diverse art forms that tug at her soul. Born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission District after her parents immigrated from El Salvador, poetry became her first love, her outlet as she navigated poverty, peer pressure and a violent gang neighborhood environment. Since teenagehood, she has been performing for diverse audiences: Youth Speaks poetry slams, social justice protests, Ethnic Studies conferences, music/visual art shows, and literary art events. As a QWOCMAP 2015 film-making workshop participant, she co-produced/directed/edited the sarcastic dark humor short, “Fantasy Freakouts”- which has screened at a couple of film festivals- about the struggles faced by women who identify as bi. In Topsy Turvy’s 2014 show, Kaira was able to indulge in her two of her other passions, capoeira and acroyoga, as part of a performance with 2 other women. A published writer/poet with a B.A. in Liberal Arts, she most recently completed Niroga’s yoga teacher training program. Photo of Kaira Portillo
Photo of Lee Reyes Lee Reyes is a self-taught musician, songwriter, and painter. Both his visual and sound works are motivated by a belief that art can and should be a bridge for universal human connection. Lee was born in El Salvador, and raised in the Mission District. He currently resides in San Francisco, CA.
Mason J. is an Artist, Activist, and recovering A-hole. Inspired by life as a AfroLatinx SF Native, 2nd Generation Punk, Grandson of Immigrants, and Genderqueer Person of Color their work blends an unlikely pairing of tenderness and arrogant flippancy with influences that range from listening to “Wind Beneath My Wings” in the frozen food aisle to Tamuzi poetry. His musings on Gender, Pop Culture, Ableism, Race, and Fashion have been published in many a zine, all around the internet, and in print for Archer, Vice, Dude!, Veuxdo, and Bitch Magazines. As As a 13 year fixture in the Bay Area Lit Scene they have performed, lectured, and workshopped at Vona Voices!, SFSU, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Radar Productions, National Queer Arts Festival, CellSpace, 826 Valencia and YouthSpeaks. Photo of Mason J.
Photo of Natalia García (La Favi) Natalia García (La Favi) is the granddaughter of Spanish civil war exiles born and raised in San Francisco. She is a classically trained singer that grew up singing foclorico music and performing in the streets where she was shaped by her coming of age during the Hyphy movement.
Natalia M. Vigil is a queer Xicana writer, multi-media curator, and big sister born and raised in San Francisco. Her multi genre writing arises from the voices and stories of the people around her and mixes poem, memoir, song, and myth. Her work has   appeared   in   numerous publications   and   shows around the Bay Area. She is a 2016 Lambda Literary Fellow for nonfiction and the fiercely proud and co-founder and Artistic Director of Still Here San Francisco. Photo of Natalia M. Vigil
Photo of Prado Gomez Prado Gomez is a Mestizo American man (of trans experience) born and raised in the Mission District. He is a proud member of the staff of the Shanti Project where he’s the facility and pet food bank director for their Mission Campus. Prado is a product of the sex-positive, politi-teatro, queer Latin@ menudo of the 90s in San Francisco. He is sometimes a writer, and always a singer of various genres of music including Mexican rancheras, gospel, classical and R&B. He currently makes his home in “El Sob” with his multi-species family.
Vero Majano is an artist born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission district. Her work seeks to preserve memories of the Mission in San Francisco history through film, story-telling and found footage. Her short films include “Calle Chula,” “Two-Four” and “I Reminisce,” which have screened at the Guggenheim Museum, the DeYoung Museum, and numerous film festivals. She was co-director of the film “Why I Ride, Low and Slow”, and co-produced with Sandy Cuadra the exhibition “Two-Four Homegirls, Circa 1980”, a collection of personal photographs that featured the Tiny Locas, at the Mission Cultural Center. A resident at the Djerassi Resident Artist program, she has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation Media Fellowship and the Puffin Foundation. Majano is a member of the Caca Colectiva, and co-founder of Mission Media Archives, which collects and preserves audio and 16mm films shot in San Francisco’s Mission district during the 1970s and ’80s. The Mission Media Archives believes that by sharing their films with contemporary audiences, we all collectively preserve a past Mission. Photo of Vero Majano
Photo of Chloe X Gonzalez Cloylen "El Sob" Chloe X Gonzalez Cloylen “El Sob” with his multi-species family. Chloe X. is a bilingual, two-spirit and tricultural Irish Palestinian Xican@ Latinx Indigena athlete and artivist who was born and raised in Fri$co. Chloe is a rare AB+ blood type rabbit-jaguar-scorpion-snake that can be spotted on hills and trails around the Mission District who enjoys gardening and receiving or making offerings of chocolate and flowers. In her garden you can find avocado, lavender, sage, mint, amaranth, tomato, oregano, chive, tomillo, pericon y xempasuchitl.
Puma was born in the Western Addition of San Francisco, California in 1985. He is an AIDS survivor, community organizer, urban gardener, body/energy worker, astrologer and mystic bruj@. Puma was raised in a Peruvian household in South San Francisco, where he embraced his complex calling in natural healing and social justice. He is a newly rising artist in the SF Bay Area, describing a continuous and powerful resilience that Queer People of Color face amidst a gentrified urban environment. Puma synthesizes his experiences in the health care systems, herbalism studies, and pre-nursing education to better illustrate how the mortality of youth can be compromised. His art focuses also on the value systems that young queer men are subjected to via hypersexuality, exoticism and gender dynamics in the gaystream world. Photo of Puma