Photo credit: Mia Nakano
Related Tactics Bio: (~150 words). Please see our more in-depth bio—linked here—for the most current information.
Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nate Watson) is a multidisciplinary collective of artists of color creating work together at the intersection of race and culture. Formed in 2015, Related Tactics projects utilize a variety of modes— sculpture, writing, print, and social engagement, and curatorial tactics—to explore the connections between art, movements for equity & justice, and the public. We create opportunities to gather, amplify, and connect a multiplicity of voices in our work that draws upon community-facing, site-specific research to invite reflection, social action, and envision a more just society.
Our projects have been exhibited and supported by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, and Southern Exposure Gallery. Related Tactics was announced as Kala Art Institute’s 2021-2022 Print Public artists, were awarded the Craft Research Center Artist Fellowship by the Center for Craft, Asheville, NC, and a San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Initiative grant.
Photo Credit: Nicole Ravicchio
Photo credit: German Vazquez
Photo credit: Mia Nakano
Artist Statement: (~224 words)
Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nathan Watson) is a transdisciplinary collective of artists and cultural workers of color producing creative projects, opportunities, and interventions at the intersection of race and culture. We utilize a variety of modes—writing, print, curation, sculpture, data visualization, and social engagement—to explore the connections between art, movements for equity & justice, and the public.
Related Tactics is a conceptual space where we confront systemic and institutional racism or injustice that influence our immediate socio-cultural lived experience. Our collaborative practice often carries the spirit of a print collective: our work tends to manifest in text, posters, and publications that utilize direct address to interrogate critical issues. We also favor working iteratively, in multiples that can be disseminated freely and widely, maximizing audience access and opportunities to highlight and create opportunities for other artists. The material objects we create and the processes behind them are a mechanism for facilitating dialogue and exchange. We gather people and their work in order to create space for knowledge building, sharing, and empathy, especially between communities of color who have been placed at odds against one another in a white supremacist culture. At the heart of this work is the value we place in working collectively, a strategic position in the face of the neoliberal ethos of radical individualism stamped into our education and lives.
The future now, 2020. Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nathan Watson). curated by Astria Supurak, commissioned by University of San Francisco, Thacher Gallery. 📸photos courtesy University of San Francisco
Supply Chain, 2019. Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nathan Watson). curated by Fictilis as part of the Museum of Capitalism at the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Center, The New School’s Parsons School of Art & Design, NY, NY. 📸 photos courtesy Marc Tutti
Never Again Is Now, 2020. Installation view. Related Tactics (Michele Carlson, Weston Teruya, and Nathan Watson). Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco, CA. 📸 photos courtesy Minoosh Zomorodinia