Remembering Zoe Reidy Watts, an Artist Who Embodied ‘Radical Love’

People close to Zoe Nika Reidy Watts remember her for her exuberant energy. At friends’ shows, she’d usually be in the front, cheering the loudest. In poetry workshops, she would volunteer to share first, making others feel comfortable with getting vulnerable, too. And in the ceramics studio, her warmth and enthusiasm left everyone in the room feeling at ease.

The young artist’s death is deeply felt in the many creative communities she was a part of in Oakland and San Francisco. On March 1, the 25-year-old was killed in an alleged domestic violence incident in her boyfriend Victor Frieson III’s Oakland apartment. Frieson is currently being held without bail on murder charges in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.

“Some people grieve alone. I can’t this time around because my friendship with Zoe was so marked and largely defined by our connection to community,” says musician and activist Jada Imani, who is organizing a memorial event for Reidy Watts at Oakland’s Alan Blueford Center for Justice on March 31. A similar gathering was held recently at Clayroom SF, where Reidy Watts was an artist in residence, and another is planned for March 21 at her alma mater, San Francisco State University.

Imani describes her connection with Reidy Watts as “cosmic.” The two became close in high school. They shared the same birthday, and bonded over their mixed Black and white heritage and similar upbringing.

“So basically we were twins,” Imani says. “We started just doing life together — making our vision boards together, making art together, visiting jams and cyphers and open mics and gatherings together. And healing, really getting into the generational trauma and challenges, and our role on planet Earth and the kind of people we wanted to be, the magic we wanted to conjure.”

Reidy Watts’ artistic talents and drive were evident early on. As a teen, she joined Youth Speaks’ SPOKES Youth Advisory Board, and began performing at poetry slams. Poet Jean JT Teodoro was the program coordinator at the time, and remembers her enthusiastic, vibrant presence.

“She persevered through a lot of struggle [at home],” Teodoro says, “and she [was] also a role model.”

Teodoro never forgot Reidy Watts’ performance at the 2017 Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam, where her verses revealed a sharp analysis of class inequality that was well beyond her years. “She was talking about how people were being exploited [and] commodified, and how there are a wealthy few who are taking too much,” they add.

In those days, Reidy Watts had a YouTube channel where she’d upload videos of herself in her bedroom, reciting poems where she reflected on her personal growth and offered encouraging words for others. Over the years, her love of poetry expanded into rapping and hosting open mics.

“She was so unafraid to put her whole self into her art with no embarrassment, no shame,” says musician Lycia Yousfi, another friend since high school. “You would look at it and be like, ‘I feel something from this.’”

Yousfi considered Reidy Watts to be an embodiment of what she calls “radical love.” She was “the first person who really pushed me to be positive and be happy despite the circumstances,” Yousfi says.

Photographer and interdisciplinary artist Gaia also had a spiritual connection with Reidy Watts. With another close friend, they formed a spiritual group called Bay Area Brujxs, where they came together to “learn about different types of Indigenous wisdom, altar building, poetry making, painting,” she says.

Her commitment to community was also evident in the way she supported her friends through challenging life circumstances, including abusive relationships and family problems. Her sisterhood, Gaia says, “healed me through one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to experience.”

Gender-based violence was the subject of a body of screen printed work Reidy Watts created in 2019 for an Oakland exhibition called EvE: Empowerment vs. Exploitation, presented by the arts nonprofit Tea Roots. She made pieces that addressed her Black foremothers’ trauma, and grappled with her mixed identity.

A piece called Ghost Ride the Wind turned the focus to healing. In her artist statement, Reidy Watts wrote: “The image is one of safety. The mother is passing down the secrets of the wind to her children as they look up to their ancestors riding the wind in the sky. It is these moments of beauty … that we feel safe enough to heal from the trauma in our blood.”

In 2020, Reidy Watts worked as a screen printing instructor at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts. Two years later, she got a job at Clayroom SF as a technician, and became an artist in residence in 2023. She spent her residency building out a world of amoeba-like ceramic organisms inspired by her love of nature. Jonah Nuñez, the studio manager at the time, says it became clear she was going through difficulties when she missed sessions, but she was determined to push through and complete her exhibition.

“I vividly remember her emotions after the show and how proud she was,” he says. “She kept saying that this is only the start. She immediately applied to other residencies. … It was really cool to see how empowered she felt.”

Reidy Watts’ untimely death has left her many communities devastated. It’s also forced conversations about how to address domestic violence within them. Reidy Watts had previously accused Frieson of abuse and sexual assault, according to police. He has a prior conviction for causing serious bodily injury during a battery, and is a registered sex offender.

Reidy Watts’ poetry mentor Teodoro and others say there needs to be a cultural shift of men holding other men accountable. “There’s so much in our culture that normalizes violence against women and violence in general,” they say.

“Men in their own circles need to tell their friends to stop doing what they’re doing,” says Yousfi. “Their friends, their brothers, their cousins. Because that’s how you get across to someone, when someone who looks and thinks like them is being like, ‘Yo, this is wrong.’”

In addition to holding the vigil at Alan Blueford Center on March 31, Jada Imani is rallying Reidy Watts’ friends and supporters to show up to Frieson’s plea hearing at 9 a.m. on April 10 at Oakland’s Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse, wearing T-shirts and buttons with her image.

Though highly critical of the criminal justice system and carceral punishment, Imani says it feels like the only choice here. “This world is unfortunately extremely unimaginative and built on violence,” she says. “And I hate to participate in that with this call for a life sentence. However, I feel I have no other choice.”

A celebration of life for Zoe Reidy Watts takes place at the Alan Blueford Center for Justice (2434 Telegraph Ave., Oakland) on March 31, 3–6 p.m. There will be an altar, story circle, dancing and more.