PEST PEST

April 03, 2026 - April 19, 2026

From the Cedars Union and Easyside:

"The Cedars Union and Easyside are pleased to announce Pest Pest, a collection of installations and interventions in the Boedeker by Easyside artists Francisco Alvarado Araujo, Fernando Alvarez, Sheryl Anaya, Maria Barrientos, Jesse Morgan Barnett, Magaly Cantú, Carrie Iverson, Claire Kennedy, Corrie Thompson, and Adrianna Touch. On April 19, Easyside and Cedars Union will partner with curatorial project Mortadella to host a closing performance by Bay Area based improvisational sound artist Evicshen.

The exhibition draws on subject/object functions of the word pest; its installations act with the persistence of a pest, or appear as the site or aftermath of a pest. Many of the works activate the Boedeker’s environment as a framework to prod at the residues of systemic dysfunction—personal, national, and global. Thriving on any structure available, some installations swarm and fester while others hide and dissipate, creating a network of formal and conceptual connections. All are gathered under the plague-era warning sign of XX as a meditation on societal responses to perceived threats.

In the entropic spirit of the Boedeker’s environment and sentiments of Pest Pest, Evicshen (Victoria Shen) will have a special closing performance that eschews conventions in harmony and rhythm in favor of extreme textures and gestural tones. Shen uses what she calls “chaotic sound” to oppose signal and information, eluding traditionally embedded meaning and reinforcing the tension created by opposition.

Together, the two programs invite the audience to look and listen closely, and in doing so, to reconsider the accepted functions and relationships of everyday objects and systems that shape our shared realities.