This exhibition celebrates San Francisco’s queer skate community

On Saturday, August 17, Unity Skateboarding founders Jeffrey Cheung and Gabriel Ramirez brought their community together for the opening of Unity Through Skateboarding at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. There was much to celebrate: Cheung and Ramirez got engaged on the night, and Marie De Courcy just went pro for There Skateboards. Also, the exhibition coincidentally lined up with Unity Press’s ten-year anniversary year. What started as a small zine press has now become a queer skateboarding collective that hosts meetups and events – including the first Unity Fest last October.

Unity Through Skateboarding highlights queer, trans, BIPOC, and women skaters, as well as the diverse communities that have shaped the sport. According to Cheung, the exhibition features 140 photographs, four hours of video, a skateable object, 48 boards, ten original artworks, magazines, zines, and printed ephemera from over the last few decades. It’s also just the start of queer and trans people getting their flowers in the skate world, a male-dominated scene rife with homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny. “Before we started Unity Skateboarding, there were so many other people and crews trying to do the same thing that we are doing now, like a recurring dream,” says Cheung. “Without them, we for sure would not be here, so this show is about Villa Villa Cola, Rookie, Hoopla, Meow, Pave the Way, Glue, Check it Out mag, KZ Zapata, GUNK, Marisa Dal Santo, Hillary Thompson, and so many others.”

Talk me through the idea of the show. When did you know you wanted to curate something like this?

Jeffrey Cheung: Unity Through Skateboarding is technically part of a larger show at SFMOMA about sports, but it’s also its own exhibition. Now that skateboarding is in the Olympics, maybe it’s considered a sport? Controversial opinion. For the most part, I don’t think it is a sport, but I appreciate the idea for those who do see it that way. The curators approached Gabriel and me as consultants and then asked us to guest-curate the skateboarding show. The show is sort of a brief overview of skateboarding from our perspective, highlighting women, queer and trans people, BIPOC, and allies in skateboarding. We are showing a lot of the people who made a difference in skateboarding to us, from all the crews, DIY zines, brands, skaters, photographers, and videos. There is a lot packed into this show, but it’s not everything.

You had a lot to cover. So, how did it all come together?

Jeffrey Cheung: The show was in the works for about a year, but we didn’t really dig in until the last three months or so. There are 300+ pieces packed into a smallish gallery, and maybe 100+ artists, photographers, and skaters, so it was a big feat trying to coordinate getting work and details from everyone. I went a little overboard, maybe, but it was important to me to be as thorough as I could to showcase as many of the people who were pioneers in skateboarding and have not had their shine or are just recently starting to, after decades. This show encompasses one of the best things about skateboarding: its ability to bring all types of people together. This show could have easily been another typical skateboarding exhibition highlighting only the same people and stories that are often told, but it was important to us to use this opportunity to centre other communities and people who have also helped bring skateboarding to where it is now, and hopefully where we are headed.

If we go back to the beginning, why did you want to start Unity?

Jeffrey Cheung: Unity first started in 2012 when I met Gabriel. It was first a two-piece music project with me and Gabe; he never played an instrument before then. Then Unity Press started around 2014 or 2015, which started as an outlet to make our own zines, and then Unity Skateboarding in 2017. Brian Anderson had just come out around then, and I wanted to start something because I grew up skating and loved it, but there was hardly any mainstream queer representation or support in skateboarding that I knew of. I wanted Unity Skateboarding to be something that could be that, at least for a short period of time on a small scale, but here we are still doing it all these years later.  When we started Unity Skateboarding, I was literally hand-painting graphics on boards for our little crew. Unity started as a way for us to make our own spaces and art, and that slowly grew into a bigger and bigger community and platform.

Who did you want to highlight through this exhibition and why?

Jeffrey Cheung: It is cliche, but this show is really about the true spirit of skateboarding and how it brings people together, breaks down barriers, and how skateboarders are able to make changes in and out of the skate world. This show is about the first women to go pro, the first Black skaters to go pro, the first queer-owned brands, and the few Black trans women in pro skateboarding. This show is about skaters in Palestine and how, despite the ongoing genocide and occupation, they are still skateboarding in Gaza on top of bombed buildings. This show is about how resilient and resourceful skateboarders are and how we are all connected. This show is about making your own spaces and platforms when no one else will. Through DIY zines, skateboarding, art, photography, videos, community meet-ups, and any other way you can. Also, a huge shoutout and thank you to everyone involved in the show and behind the scenes: Natalie from Womxn Skateboard History for being such a great resource, Lori D, Faye Jaime, Mimi Knoop, Lisa Whitaker, Jessie Van, Ashley Rehfeld, and Trish Mcgowan. Y‘all really helped make this show possible.

What’s next for Unity? What would you like the next ten years to look like?

Jeffrey Cheung: Who knows!