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"Kids Playing" by Sergio De La Torre and Moriah Ulinskas. Home Slice West Oakland Today at Pro Arts Gallery through March 30 By Aimee Le Duc Being at home is a constant act. A home is never static; it's always changing. Memories fade and swell as surroundings erode and evolve, but the house -- its interior and exterior -- remains stable as history moves around it in time. So what makes a house a home? What gives a place feelings of community, belonging, value? What drives the desire to be home? Pro Arts Curator Betty Kano has organized West Oakland Today, a remarkable exhibition focussed on space in and around our houses. Two collaborative installations are clear and accessible expressions of the deconstruction and reconstruction of living areas specific to West Oakland, a neighborhood textured with living histories and scars from urban expanse and hard living. Sergio De La Torre and Moriah Ulinskas confront the questions of home with their collaborative installation thehousingproject. thehousingproject is not a house. In fact, it seems to display everything a house is not. It is a frame constructed from the combined floor plans of several houses simultaneously fused and divided by railroad tracks, freeways, and other defining elements of West Oakland. Potrero Nuevo award-winner De La Torre built the zig-zagging frame. Video and audio projections of dialogues, music, and the people of West Oakland are the views from the house windows. It's these "views" that bring thehousingproject together. Inside the structure sit even smaller models of homes, buildings, and views of the city. thehousingproject's minimal lighting and documentary-style presentation allow the social narratives of West Oakland and the viewer's personal reflections to exist together. marcel diallo's Scrapyard Ghosts hangs on the exterior walls of thehousingproject. Discarded junkyard objects expose fragments of West Oakland. Everything from torn scraps of buildings to photographs to old car lights are richly colored and decorated with sentimental histories bound to daily practices, like rust on old metal. The title suggests a haunting past; garbage tells the stories of what is valued and what is thrown away. Text drips from the walls angry, fierce, and true. Memories may peel away, but the traces left behind expose what continues to enrage and touch a neighborhood. Scrapyard Ghosts is highly collaborative, a layered commentary on West Oakland. West Oakland Today is a visually intriguing and intellectually challenging exhibit. With brilliant subtlety, thehousingproject invites viewers into a home where issues of gentrification and urbanization are lived. And with sophisticated arrangement, Scrapyard Ghosts allows viewers to stand in their trash and reevaluate what they remember and what they work so hard to forget. Pro Arts presents a symbiotic space throwing askew the most basic conceptions of home. Artists talk Sat/2, 1pm. Pro Arts Gallery, 461 Ninth St., Oakl. 763.9425. When the mood strikes her, Aimee Le Duc is a writing and visual criticism student at CCAC. [ East Bay | Metroactive | Archives ]