Outlandish Departures

In connection with Table Manners, an exhibition that brings together design for sharing food and drink, artist and designer April Banks has choreographed a special evening of performance, reflection, and tea, titled Departure Lounge. Related to Bank’s ongoing Outlandish and Tea Afar events, the project reimagines SFMOMA’s Gina and Stuart Peterson White Box as a site of collective imagining. Throughout the event, the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir Ensemble will sing spirituals. Spirituals were a cappella songs that expressed sorrow and hope, and shared stories and coded messages, including pathways to freedom during enslavement. In a time of increasing climatic and political chaos, you are invited to share a moment of departure and envision a more balanced, free, and connected future. This is a drop-in event and you are welcome to join and leave at your leisure.

About the Artist

April Banks is a Los Angeles–based artist and creative strategist working across visual art and social engagement. Her practice sits intentionally between image, space, and experience. April’s recent work time travels through historical archives and memories, questioning what we think we know of the past and how it informs our cultural positioning systems and future identities. She is interested in building common spaces in the public realm that bring us together.

Her recent series, Outlandish, has included a solo exhibition, public art sculpture, and almanac, and challenges us to reorient our relationship to land and law, and to each other. April is also the producer of Tea Afar, a nomadic storytelling experience launched in 2016. Tea Afar was conceived as a salve — bringing us together across political borders. She has produced over 20 events in Los Angeles, Montreal, Sri Lanka, San Francisco, and San Luis Obispo that center first-person stories and hospitality traditions from around the world.