Blue Heart
Nidal El-Khairy
Nidal El-Khairy is a Palestinian artist based in Lebanon who uses multi-media illustration to bring attention to the struggle and resilience of the Palestinian people.
His art practice is based in disciplines and techniques such as drawing, stencil, illustration, comics and muralism. Nidal's work has been featured in art spaces and websites such as Electronic Intifada, in newspapers such as Al Akhbar and Ak Safeer in Lebanon, as well as on a Noam Chomsky book cover.
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His piece is inspired by and supports the Arab Resource & Organizing Center, in SF.
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Blue Heart print by Nidal El-Khairy
Victor Cervantes
Victor Cervantes grew up in Lindsay, a small agricultural town of about 10,000 people in the Central Valley of California - the place where you, on average, get 30% or more of your fruits and vegetables.
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Victor uses art to express the richness of the Xicano/Latino culture and that of other communities of color. He has partnered with dedicated community leaders to paint murals at health facilities, youth centers, schools, and colleges across California. Currently he is working to establish a community art gallery in Lindsay that will serve to exhibit the talents of artist from throughout the neighboring rural communities.
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His piece "A New Day" is inspired by the resilience of farmworker communities and supports El Quinto Sol de America.
Blue Heart print by Victor Cervantes
Jaz Colibri
Jaz Colibri is a white bodied, trans femme, genderqueer, pansexual, neurodivergent, unhoused artist and accomplice offering art and mutual aid in solidarity with movements to liberate the people and the land. Jaz lives in a Love & Justice mobile at the Wood Street encampment in "so-called" west Oakland on stolen Ohlone land. This piece is for the organization Love & Justice in the Streets with whom Jaz volunteers mutual aid and sweeps defense support.
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Blue Heart print by Jaz Colibri
Tiffany Eng
Tiffany Eng is an Oakland native, an artist and organizer who believes in the power of consciousness-raising through humor, education, and art to address structural inequities.
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Her piece "Sagnicthe" supported the work of AYPAL. Tiffany herself spent 9 years working with AYPAL as a Asian-American youth organizer in Oakland. She says that AYPAL "continues to serve as a strong and loving 'second family' for me and everyone involved."
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Blue Heart print by Tiffany Eng
Erin Yoshi
Erin Yoshi is a muralist with roots in Oakland. Her artwork is a reflection of her journey through the contradictions of life, amplifying the beautiful, the raw, and the downright ugly.
Yoshi is a member of The Trust Your Struggle Collective (US), COI (LA), and APC (Colombia). has created murals in: Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, the Philippines, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands and across the United States.
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Her November piece supports the work of Movement Generation. She calls MG "a collective of Bay Area unicorns", and is a long-time supporter of their vision.
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Blue Heart print by Erin Yoshi
J. Heshima Denham
Heshima is an artist, illustrator, and activist who is currently incarcerated in a southern Californian prison. He is the founder and director of Amend the 13th, an organization dedicated to removing the “legal” slavery provision for all persons the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, including those found guilty and sentenced for a felony offense.
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His piece "The Fruits of Freedom's Labor" supports the work of Planting Justice.
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Blue Heart print by Heshima Denham
Tosha Stimage
Tosha is a multi-media visual artist based in Oakland. She was born in Jackson, Mississippi and holds an MFA from California College of the Arts. She uses a variety of mediums to examine and reflect on the limitations of language and challenge visual languages as an ongoing investigation of racial ideologies.
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Her piece, titled bitter/sweet, is an original commission for Blue Heart. It's a woven photo collage that dissects and reassembles the familiar image of Rodney King after being beaten by several LAPD officers and a German chocolate candy formerly named “Mohrenkopf” or “nigger head”. By weaving two different images, Tosha together disrupts the familiar and passive process of assumption and encourages a deeper form of visual inquiry. At its core, the work attempts to create new possibility in our ways of seeing and perceiving the “other.”
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Her piece is inspired by and supports the Anti Police-Terror Project, in Oakland.
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Blue Heart print by Tosha Stimage
Blue Heart print by Breena Nuñez
Breena Nuñez
Breena is a working artist and musician based in Oakland by way of San Bruno, California. She creates short comics and zines that depict her personal experiences of understanding the Central American diaspora while honoring her Guatemalan/Salvadoran roots. She hopes that the power and love of comics will help those find a sense of solidarity with her creations and will be inspired to illustrate their own stories.
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Her piece "Seeds of Change" is inspired by the energy and necessary of youth-led organizing, and supports Youth United for Community Action (East Palo Alto) and the Youth Organizing Institute (North Carolina).
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In Breena's words: "YUCA and YOI reminds me why cultivating a safe and sacred environment for youth is vital to the cultural work that I do as an artist, because they are going to carry the torch of creating cultural shifts in how, what, and who we value."
Blue Heart print by Francis Mead
Francis Mead
Francis Mead is an educator, a romantic, an artist, a dreamer, and the love child of Harriet Tubman, Frida Kahlo, and Chaka Khan.
Growing up poor, mixed race, and a woman, she was struck by the inequalities that the racist, sexist, capitalist system we live under created. For her there is no such thing as 'art for arts sake'. Her art, whether it be film making, paintings, poetry, or drawings, always has a purpose. Francis is propelled to make art in order to survive, to heal, and to speak the truth to the people. For her, art isn't a luxury; art can and must be a tool for liberation. But it must also be celebratory and full of life; a way to build community with people and spread love and inspiration.
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Her piece "Sacred Life" is inspired by the peaceful resistance at Standing Rock and supports the Indigenous Environmental Network.
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Edxie Betts
Blue Heart print by Edxie Betts
Edxie Betts is a Black Filipina Indigena/Trans/Queer liberation artist, writer and autonomous organizer based in Los Angeles. Their work is centered around advocating for queer and trans communities, bringing support and attention to political prisoners, restorative-mediation work. They emphasize art as cultural production for the sake of inspiring healing, bringing awareness, counter narrative, oppositional alternatives, collective liberation through self-organizing, and direct action.
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Edxie's piece, titled Marsha P. Johnson is an original commission for Blue Heart. The piece is inspired by and supports Peacock Rebellion (Oakland) and the Marsha P. Johnson Institute (national).
Edxie says: "I made this piece keeping in mind what the peacock and peacock feathers represent: sacred symbols of all- knowingness and resurrection. To honor Marsha ‘Pay It No Mind’ Johnson, I combined her image from a performance she did into a surrealist compounding of the peacock feather as an ‘all seeing’ eye into the future and back into the past."
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