Demetri Broxton's MoAD exhibition transforms family photographs with beads, sequins, and intentional gaps to explore what's lost in migration stories, set against South of Market's changing landscape.

At 685 Mission Street, inside the Museum of the African Diaspora, Demetri Broxton has turned the holes in his family history into something you can see. "Ancestral Echoes," which runs through August 16 as part of MoAD's Emerging Artists Program, is less a complete narrative than a series of beautifully rendered question marks about how the Second Great Migration brought his family from Louisiana to Oakland.

The Oakland-based artist works with family photographs whose subjects are often unnamed or only partially identified. In "Just Beyond the Waters" (2025), a photo of his grandfather—a U.S. Army veteran—holding his infant daughter (the artist's mother) is transformed. Japanese and Czech glass beads adorn their clothing, quartz veils cover their faces, and blue sequins obliterate the background entirely. The effect is both reverence and redaction.

The concealment continues through the gallery. In "A Family Tie Is Like a Tree; It Can Bend But It Cannot Break" (2026), a family member stands beside their car, face veiled in quartz, surrounded by beads that create a nighttime forest. The vehicle becomes less a 20th-century automobile and more a pharaoh's chariot. Boxing imagery recurs—cowrie-shell-covered gloves in "Count Me Out" (2023), a beaded boxer in "The Anger of the Rain Doesn't Beat the Peace of the Storm" (2026)—suggesting both protection and the fight for survival that defined Black life before civil rights.

Broxton, who holds a BFA from UC Berkeley and an MA in Museum Studies from San Francisco State, is Executive Director of Root Division. According to his official biography, his artwork is held in several public collections including the de Young Museum and Monterey Art Museum, and he is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles [demetribroxton.com]. His work "Bombs Over Baghdad (Don't Pull the Thang Out)" (2022) was accessioned into the permanent collection of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, confirmed by both the artist and his representing gallery [patriciasweetowgallery.com].

The exhibition traces a journey that began in Louisiana, moved through Texas and Florida, and ended in Oakland. But the pieces raise more questions than they answer. Were the photos taken in Texas? Did the unnamed boxer fight in Florida? Broxton's intentional gaps become their own kind of story—one about what migration does to family memory.

In one corner, "What is Buried Still Feeds the Tree" (2026) offers an altar with visible faces among cotton, tobacco, and rice. Visitors can write tributes to their own ancestors. It's here that the show's ethos becomes clear: absence can be space for reimagining.

The museum sits in a neighborhood in flux. According to DataSF records, 32 eviction notices have been filed in South of Market in the last 90 days, while 951 311 requests were logged in the past week. Recent building permits along Mission Street include permit 202607014439, a $1.6 million alteration at 560 Mission St, and permit 202607024486, a $125,000 project at 883 Mission St. Against this backdrop of constant change, Broxton's work asks what we carry forward when the stories themselves are incomplete.