In collaboration with the Haight Street Art Center, Fort Mason Art presented Oscar Lopez: Your Food, My Work, Our Land as a mural commission in the outdoor Public Art Corridor between Buildings B and C at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture (FMCAC). Originally a screen-printed poster of laborers toiling under a dominant sun, at FMCAC Lopez reimagined the artwork as an immersive mural installation.
Lopez depicted agricultural workers in a visual grammar drawn from Mexican muralists and the Mission Muralismo movement in San Francisco. The multi-panel mural honored essential workers during the 2020 pandemic shutdowns—front line and back of house workers who rarely commanded high salaries yet without whom society could not proceed. Lopez thought of his grandfather, a farm worker under the Bracero Program (1942-1964), a World War II-era initiative providing legal, if short-term, contracts for Mexican laborers. The work asked viewers to see essential individuals whose necessary labor renders them invisible.
RELATED PROGRAMMING:
Lopez continued his partnership with Haight Street Art Center through pop-up printmaking workshops at the Fort Mason Center Farmers’ Market. Additional activations with San Francisco Children’s Art Center and an artist-designed coloring book of the mural panels launched in Fall 2024.
Exhibition Catalog
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About the Artist: Oscar Lopez (b. Mexico City) first encountered art through urban graffiti. After immigrating to the U.S. and settling in San Francisco, he sought to understand society through a Mexican immigrant’s lens. Lopez received an AA in studio art from Foothill College, a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute (with emphasis on painting), and an MFA in pictorial arts from San Jose State University/San Francisco Art Institute.
Haight Street Art Center serves San Francisco’s thriving poster art and artist communities with education and cultural development programs and exhibitions. Drawing upon music, art, social, and political counterculture history, the Haight Street Art Center provides a space that bridges communities through social activism and artistic expression.
From May 30, 2024 to October 12, 2025, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture presented Oscar Lopez: Your Food, My Work, Our Land, an outdoor painting commission on the FMCAC campus.
Oscar Lopez:
ArtByOscarLopez.com
Haight Street Art Center:
HaightStreetArt.org
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