Umar Rashid At The Guardhouse: California Spectacle, Cosmic Errors (2025)

Umar Rashid At The Guardhouse: California Spectacle, Cosmic Errors (2025) re-imagines California’s landscapes as stages where history, myth, and pop culture collide. Together, these two paintings fold documented history into a global meditation: the human cycle of error, fleeting peace, folly, and the perpetual failure of empathy.

This installation is linked to the themes explored in FOR-SITE’s next exhibition Black Gold: Stories Untold, on view at Fort Point National Historic Site through November 2, 2025.

The opening reception for Umar Rashid At The Guardhouse takes place on Thursday, September 11, 2025, 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., during the Fort Mason Fall 2025 Art Walk.

About The Artist
Umar Rashid is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work reimagines colonial histories through a poetic, Afrocentric lens. Using painting, drawing, and sculpture as conduits for storytelling, Rashid constructs alternative historical narratives where Black and Indigenous figures are recast as heroes, rulers, and revolutionaries. Fusing 18th-century portraiture with street art and pop culture, his work spans empires, battles, and spiritual realms, functioning as both an artistic epic and a subversive rewriting of the past. Rashid has exhibited his work widely and is represented in many institutional collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, NY; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; ICA Miami; the Minneapolis Institute of Art; the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; and the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa.

About FOR-SITE. Established in 2003, FOR-SITE is dedicated to the creation, understanding, and presentation of art about place. For more information, visit: FOR-SITE.org.

About The Guardhouse Program. The Guardhouse Program is designed to serve three artists annually, directly supporting the year-round creation, presentation, and understanding of art about place. Each artist activates the former military guard station with a temporary art installation responding to the natural and cultural significance of the site and its surrounding area. The Guardhouse Program launched through an open call for proposals in 2023.

Umar Rashid At The Guardhouse is presented by FOR-SITE in partnership with Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. The Guardhouse Program is made possible thanks to generous support from the ARB Fund.

Image Credit: Umar Rashid, “Surf or Die. Or, a silent prayer for the sun to burn our pursuer’s eyes out and lead us to safety beyond the rocky shore. A sacrifice is made. Vengeance to follow.” 2024; Acrylic and ink on canvas; Courtesy of the artist.