Living rooms are often filled with family mementos, shelves full of books, or maybe a TV, turned on as background noise for rowdy conversations.
Meanwhile, the walls inside the East Oakland home of Nyallah Muntaqim and Musa Bey are filled with art. On a recent visit, as Muntaqim sits on the green couch, a white painted hammer nearby looks as if it were smashed into the wall, with roots growing from it, by Antioch artist Tunmi da Silva.
Muntaqim and Bey, wife and husband, cofounded Streetlight Gallery in 2025, during San Francisco’s second annual Black Art Week. The choice to use their home came from example: as a child in the Bay Area in the early 2000s, Muntaquim would often attend art exhibits inside people’s homes, seeing Black art sold to Black people in a direct, communal way…