Catch Us If We Fall

Featuring the work of artist Connie Zheng, Catch Us If We Fall is a research-driven, interdisciplinary project mapping grassroots, community-led health initiatives in the United States from the 1960s to today. At its center is a cartographic installation tracing networks of underground, activist-led public health programs built within marginalized communities in response to systemic neglect, structural racism, and state violence.

A wall-length map anchors the exhibition, spanning 60 years of healthcare activism: from the Section 504 Sit-ins, Black Panther Party’s People’s Free Medical Clinics, and LGBTQ+ health programs formed during the AIDS crisis, to Lincoln Detox (a drug detoxification clinic run by the Young Lords) and needle exchange networks. Also on view are a zine wall, a suite of drawings and prints, and haptic elements.

Catch Us If We Fall considers how the Bay Area’s singular convergence of civil rights activism and creative innovation fostered groundbreaking models of health justice—and how these practices of mutual aid continue to shape healthcare organizing nationwide. The exhibition invites audiences to consider histories of care that emerge from below, and how systems of collective survival and dignity have long been modeled by the communities most impacted by structural violence and a predatory healthcare industry.

Catch Us If We Fall is curated by Kathryn Cua.