Beyond28: Afatasi the Artist | Golden State Warriors & Chase Bank
In 2022, Afatasi was featured in Beyond28, an initiative of the Golden State Warriors presented by Chase that celebrates the history, culture and contributions of Bay Area communities beyond the 28 days of Black History Month. Afatasi appeared in the Women Taking Center Court episode, which highlighted women working across social activism, sports and community life in the Bay Area.
For the filming, Afatasi was invited to Chase Center for the first time and arrived wearing an original Warriors Afronaut suit—a wearable artwork she designed, constructed and engineered to illuminate.
The suit grew from Afatasi’s developing Afronaut practice and was created during her Black Space residency at Minnesota Street Project. Using Golden State Warriors fabric, electric yellow vinyl, sculptural volume and integrated illumination, Afatasi transformed the visual language of a hometown sports team into an Afrofuturist garment. The accompanying illuminated headpiece surrounds the wearer in an exaggerated halo of Warriors blue and gold, extending the body into a glowing sculptural form.
The commission was an early encounter between Afatasi’s independent multidisciplinary practice and a major institutional platform. Although it was not a paid commission, the experience marked an important threshold: her work entered the world of a globally recognized San Francisco organization while remaining rooted in the artistic language she had been developing through Black Space.
The significance was particularly personal. Afatasi had never been inside Chase Center before. Her first experience of the arena came not simply as a visitor, but as an artist invited to share her practice and wearing a work she had designed and fabricated herself.
The Beyond28 feature documented an early stage in what would become a much larger body of Afatasi’s futurist work: the Afronaut as a figure through which to imagine a future for San Francisco’s Great Migration community. The Warriors Afronaut suit extends the questions first explored through Black Space—who gets to occupy space, who is imagined within the future of San Francisco, and how lineage can be carried forward through clothing, sculpture and speculative form.
The garment has continued beyond its original appearance. It has since been preserved and photographed as an artwork in its own right, including the studio portraits shown here, allowing the suit to be understood beyond the event for which it was worn: as an early piece of Afatasi’s evolving language of regalia, wearable sculpture and San Francisco futurism.
Watch Beyond28: Afatasi the Artist
Beyond28: Afatasi the Artist
2022
Chase Center | San Francisco, California
Golden State Warriors + Chase
Artist: Afatasi
Garment Design + Construction: Afatasi
Wearable Sculpture: Warriors Afronaut Suit + Illuminated Headpiece
Developed during: Black Space residency, Minnesota Street Project
The original Beyond28 program described Afatasi as an artist using her work to “spark social change,” and the Warriors’ larger Beyond28 platform was explicitly conceived to carry the celebration of Black history and culture beyond February.
