Opening night of “Our Name is Rebel”: Images of Berkeley’s Radical South Asian Legacy

Berkeley is home to over 100 years of radical organizing by South Asian Americans, from Ghadar Party freedom fighters to new generations of feminist and LGBTQ organizers. A new art show, “Our Name is Rebel”: Images of Berkeley’s Radical South Asian Legacy, opens November 3, in celebration of this legacy.

Bay Area artists Nisha Sembi and Amman Desai bring radical histories to life through fine art pieces that include paintings, linocuts, prints, and an indoor mural installation. Their subjects cover a century of local South Asian American movements for justice, but with a special focus on the Ghadar Party, which celebrated its 100-year anniversary in 2013.

Many of the stories are from the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour, a monthly radical history event which just celebrated its first anniversary.

The show runs all through November at Guerilla Cafe.