Lishan AZ, assistant professor of cinema and digital media, opens her solo exhibition, Eugene’s Cove, at the Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, California, on Dec. 13. The exhibition runs until March 3, 2024. AZ’s exhibit is an imagined paradise, “an underwater world where victims of racial and colonial violence sank and became something more.”

The exhibit’s name comes from a segregated beach on the South side of Chicago where on July 27, 1919, a 17-year-old Eugene Williams was stoned to death after floating across the color line in Lake Michigan. AZ writes, “His drowned body echoes the millions of Black bodies thrown overboard during the middle passage — a reminder that our relationship with water continues to be shaped by racial violence and greed.”

In AZ’s Eugene’s Cove, these victims — which also include victims of police brutality, slavery, and more — find themselves at Black beaches and in an underwater paradise to find joy and freedom they were never given.

Lishan AZ is a multi-disciplinary artist working in immersive installation, interactive media, photography and film. Her game Tracking Ida was awarded Best Gameplay at Games for Change and the Impact Award at the International Festival of Independent Games (Indiecade). Her work has been exhibited at Antenna Gallery in New Orleans, Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC, Indiecade in Los Angeles, LA Weekly’s Artopia, Tokyo University of the Arts’ Art Museum, the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, and Games for Change in NYC. Lishan was the inaugural Game Designer in Residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art.