Gilda Posada. ABOLISH BORDERS, 2017; installed at Galería de la Raza, San Francisco. Courtesy of the Artist.

To witness revolutionary futurity—the belief that social transformation is possible, and begins with a transcendence of the self—in a public space that fosters genuine politics, drive up San Francisco’s 24th Street from Potrero Avenue toward Bryant Street, and you will be presented with a vivid example: artist Gilda Posada’s large-scale billboard installation, ABOLISH BORDERS. Galería de la Raza’s “Liberated Billboard” has been the site of oppositional murals for forty-five years. In 1972, Galería de la Raza began a battle with the billboard advertisement company Foster and Kleiser, who owned the billboard attached to the outside wall of the venue. Over a period of three years, Galería artists painted over the billboard’s commercial advertising images with their own artistic political messages. Eventually, in 1975, the billboard owners sent over a truck and a worker to disassemble the billboard. The Galería staff inquired with the worker about acquiring the dissembled pieces and then led the effort to reconstruct the billboard.¹ Since, the billboard has been a platform for artists to protest such events and moments as the International Hotel’s eviction efforts in the 1970s, the police brutality and killing of Danny Terviño in the 1970s, and to visualize the Undocuqueer movement in 2013. Through its programming, exhibitions, and billboard mural projects, Galería de la Raza has maintained a space where subjectivity and community self-determination can be produced and upheld—now exemplified by Posada’s piece.

Posada’s billboard—predominantly pink, and covered side to side with monochromatic graphics and three rows of white text—utilizes a pattern that references both indigenous textiles and contemporary digital printmaking, two qualities that stand in opposition to each other, yet together create a striking communication. The billboard sits a foot off the ground and is attached to the exterior of Galería de la Raza, which is housed in a mixed-use commercial apartment building with Mission Revival-style architecture, and is painted a deep reddish-brown. Because of the building’s color, and the muted grays of the sidewalk’s faded asphalt, the brightly colored billboard catches the eye quickly, demanding attention and an adjustment of perception.

Read the full article here. 

Neil Rivas (Clavo). Interior view (with Supergirl), ICE DISH SF Field Office & Detention Facility, 2013-2014. Courtesy of ICE DISH. Photo by Alanna Haight.

Galería de la Raza is currently hosting its very first resident artist, Neil Rivas. The San Francisco-based artist has converted the back half of La Raza into the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Illegal Superheroes, or ICE DISH. The agency deals with the capture and deportation of undocumented superheroes. Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and the whole iconic lineup are at high risk for deportation, their immigration status unregistered with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The ICE DISH headquarters is replete with a physical training station, lockup cells, surveillance monitors, a most-wanted bulletin board, cabinets filled with presumably top-secret files, authoritative black desks, swivel chairs, and other austere institutional furniture. Populating the ICE DISH facilities are its six local agents, who carry out all departmental proceedings both on- and off-site.

High-stakes immigration debates are occurring across the country, but what actually constitutes the conversation appears to be little more than empty political banter. Through ICE DISH, Rivas has created an artistic platform for social intervention, though I hesitate to call it outright activism. The agency conveniently positions familiar, culturally beloved characters at the face of a critical discourse that the project hopes to engage, and as such functions equally well as both an educational outreach tool and as art. The reality of the immigration discussion is one increasingly devoid of empathy; it is a faceless battle driven by rhetoric rather than humanization. By aestheticizing the conversation through established iconography, Rivas makes the entry point more accessible for those who may otherwise not actively seek to participate in such a dialogue. The discussion ICE DISH generates does not forefront race, specifically, but rather highlights general ideas of difference, belonging, and the quintessential role of the other.

Read the full article here.

Fanny Aishaa. Elsipogtog, 2003; print based on original oil painting; 36 x 48 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Galería de la Raza, San Francisco. Photo: Henry Pacheco.

At Galería de la Raza in the Mission District is F.T.P: For the People, inspired by civil rights activist Audre Lorde’s essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.”[1] The exhibition showcases the work of over a dozen visual artists from the Bay Area and beyond, including painting, photography, printmaking, and installation.

Lorde states that action leading to legitimate social change can never emerge out of the normativity that reinforces a status quo where social and racial inequality are rife—to promote social change, one must empower the colored female, transgender, and queer otherness that would otherwise be cast out and rejected. F.T.P. brilliantly aligns itself with Lorde’s central idea. Especially at stake right now is imagining a future where prejudice and police brutality will cease to be tolerable.

Together, the artworks act as an indictment of contemporary manifestations of institutionalized oppression and violence against minority communities. Each artist deploys sharp, targeted criticism towards recent affairs in North America, showing the pain and public defiance of communities that refuse to give in to fear and injustice.

An example is a work by Fanny Aishaa, Elsipogtog (2013), a painting done in response to the use of force by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police during an incident with environmentalists protesting fracking that year. The work was inspired by a photograph taken by journalist Ossie Michelin during a pacific manifestation that was violently descended-upon. According to Aishaa the work “symbolizes civil disobedience but also recognizes and shows respect to the Mi’kmaq people and their lands and waters.” In the painting we see activist Amanda Polshies praying holding a feather towards a bird flying overhead in the direction of an advancing militarized police phalanx, “to show they are not just protestors but protectors—defenders of the land,” Aishaa concludes. The painting addresses state-sanctioned brutality, communicating criticism on how industrial projects are forced on indigenous lands, all too often turning to abusive methods.

In his publication “Talking Contemporary Curating,” art historian Terry Smith states, “curators are being called upon to help, to join a worldwide effort to create a commons that will outlast the shocks of globalized capitalism, the resurgence of fundamentalism, and the impacts of climate change.”[2]Through this exhibition, Galería de la Raza and its leadership prove they are at the forefront of creating and sustaining such commons in San Francisco —and are calling for all constituents of the art system to mobilize for the fight for social justice.

F.T.P: For the People is on view through June 11, 2016 at Galería de la Raza, San Francisco.

Ángel Rafael Vázquez-Concepción (b. 1981, Puerto Rico) is an independent curator based in San Francisco, California. In 2015, he obtained a Master’s in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts.

[1] Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1984), 110- 114.

[2] Terry Smith,Talking Contemporary Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2015), 16.

Oree Originol. Untitled, 2014; wood, ink, and paper; 7 x 3 ft. Courtesy of the Artist and Galería de la Raza, San Francisco.

The thirteen large-scale woodblock prints that were on display in Carving Through Borders at Galería de la Raza illustrate the varied and sometimes conflicting emotions associated with immigration, from defiance to protest to hope. Carving Through Borders is a product of a long history of political printmaking, but these works render the political especially personal, making their messages even more resonant.

The commanding size of these prints combined with the intimate, stirring texts that accompany the imagery make an emotional impression on the viewer. A piece by DJ Agana at the gallery entrance greeted visitors with a Lady Liberty–like figure in a flowing quetzal feather headdress and bearing an ear of corn in place of a torch. The words “move freely” are emblazoned at the base of the print, a more direct and defiant summation of Emma Lazarus’s poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty. This rendering reminds the viewer that Lazarus’s words have been hollowed out—it is now considered utopian for a nation to embrace the tired, poor, and homeless.

Read the full article here.

Neil Rivas (Clavo). Interior view (with Supergirl), ICE DISH SF Field Office & Detention Facility, 2013-2014. Courtesy of ICE DISH. Photo by Alanna Haight.

Galería de la Raza is currently hosting its very first resident artist, Neil Rivas. The San Francisco-based artist has converted the back half of La Raza into the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Illegal Superheroes, or ICE DISH. The agency deals with the capture and deportation of undocumented superheroes. Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and the whole iconic lineup are at high risk for deportation, their immigration status unregistered with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The ICE DISH headquarters is replete with a physical training station, lockup cells, surveillance monitors, a most-wanted bulletin board, cabinets filled with presumably top-secret files, authoritative black desks, swivel chairs, and other austere institutional furniture. Populating the ICE DISH facilities are its six local agents, who carry out all departmental proceedings both on- and off-site.[1]

High-stakes immigration debates are occurring across the country, but what actually constitutes the conversation appears to be little more than empty political banter. Through ICE DISH, Rivas has created an artistic platform for social intervention, though I hesitate to call it outright activism. The agency conveniently positions familiar, culturally beloved characters at the face of a critical discourse that the project hopes to engage, and as such functions equally well as both an educational outreach tool and as art. The reality of the immigration discussion is one increasingly devoid of empathy; it is a faceless battle driven by rhetoric rather than humanization. By aestheticizing the conversation through established iconography, Rivas makes the entry point more accessible for those who may otherwise not actively seek to participate in such a dialogue. The discussion ICE DISH generates does not forefront race, specifically, but rather highlights general ideas of difference, belonging, and the quintessential role of the other.

Though the headquarters is only semi-permanently installed at Galería de la Raza, ICE DISH can be found touring comic-book fairs, hosting workshops at local elementary schools, and—in its most activist form—rallying on the streets during immigration-rights demonstrations. Superheroes themselves sometimes make appearances at these venues, soliciting advice, sympathy, and voiced concerns from the common citizen. In this way, ICE DISH is able to facilitate a meaningful exchange of ideas and questions, and provoke nuanced layers of understanding in the community at large about what really is at stake in this ongoing immigration battle.

U.S. Department of Illegal Superheroes (ICE DISH) is on display at Galería de la Raza in San Francisco through February 22, 2014. Personal tours of the San Francisco Field Office led by ICE DISH agents are available by appointment by contacting director Tanner White at info@icedish.org. 

[1] The agents are: Tanner White, Director of ICE DISH; Alanna Haight, Chief of Staff; Will D. Port, Executive Associate Director—Homeland Security Investigations; Ray Jin, Immigration Enforcement Agent—Enforcement and Removal Operations; Eugene Hicks, Deportation Officer—Enforcement and Removal Operations; and Juana Wrights, Special Agent.

Callie Humphrey is a California-based curator and founder/director of public-arts initiative Concrete=Canvas. She holds a BA in Arts Management and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts.