Welcome to La Peña! Promoting social justice & intercultural understanding through the arts since 1975.
Suhad Khatib is an artist, filmmaker & designer. The daughter of Palestinian massacre survivors.
Currently living somewhere between Ferguson, San Francisco and Amman, waiting for colonials to be gone so she can return back to Palestine.
Her work attempts to reverse the harm of propaganda through art and philosophy.
Juana Alicia works in many different media to create both discrete and public works of art including drawing, printmaking, small-format painting, monumental acrylic, fresco, tile and sculptural murals.
Her work evolved from the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District, whose mural renaissance is legendary, to installations in other parts of the U.S. and Latin America. She lives and works in Berkeley, California and Mérida, Yucatán, México. Her many public works include the Sanctuary/Santuario fresco mural at the San Francisco International Airport, the SANARTE tile murals at UCSF Medical Center and suite of murals at Stanford University, THE SPIRAL WORD.
Her current projects include the illustration of a graphic novel, La X’taabay, and a bas-relief glass window for the Mission Branch Public Library of San Francisco. She seeks to create more and more architectonic and sculptural works in a cityscape with an increasingly green and sustainable urban vision.
Regina Y. Evans is an award winning social justice playwright/actor, poet, entrepreneur, costume designer, installation artist, and filmmaker. Her creative work largely focuses upon the healing of Black girls and women, the historical commodification of the Black female womb, and the fight against child sex trafficking.
She is the Founder of Regina’s Door, 2014-2021, an Oakland, Ca, based vintage store/creative arts healing space for young survivors of sex trafficking, as well as a Co-Founder (with Amara Tabor Smith) of Conjure And Mend, Oakland, Ca, 2018-2021, a sewing salon created for young survivors of sex trafficking to learn the art of costume designing. She is also a member of House Full Of Black Women, a multi site performance ritual project that addresses the displacement, well being and sex trafficking of Black girls and women, Co-Founded by Amara Tabor Smith and Ellen Sebastian Chang.
Ms. Evans is a second generation native of Oakland. California, and has recently relocated to New York City to pursue her social justice playwriting career.
Graphic arts collaboration between San Leandro-based artists Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes, who believe that art can be an empowering reflection of community struggles, dreams and visions.
Following principles of Xicanisma and Zapatismo, they create work that amplifies people’s stories and that can be put back into the hands of the communities who inspire it. Their art is grounded in Third World and indigenous movements that build people’s power to transform the conditions of fragmentation, displacement and loss of culture that result from a history of colonialism, genocide, and exploitation.
Dignidad Rebelde’s graphic art is of the highest quality and versatility – their art is for museums, collectors’ exhibitions, community and cultural centers, individual homes, political rallies and more. They are committed to nurturing a model of art-making grounded in collaboration with community organizations and other networks of artists.
Visual artist, poet, performer, curator, activist, and cultural promoter, who brings together multidisciplinary artists to engage in community projects with messages of social justice, racial equality, climate change, peace, beauty, health, and hope in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Arias is one of the founders and creators of MAPP (Mission Arts Performance Project) and creator of festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area such as: VideoFest, Luna Negra, and ILLUSION shows in San Francisco.
He uses his dreams as creative initiatives, which he makes come true in performances and community projects, such as his multidisciplinary shows called DREAMS, or most recently “Tarot in Pandemic & Revolution,” where 24 visual artists and 43 poets from the SF Bay Area have participated.
