FOR-SITE is honored to present Tanja Geis At The Guardhouse, a new installation inside The Guardhouse at Fort Mason Center For Arts & Culture on view from September 23, 2023 to January 21, 2024. The installation is free and open to the public, viewable through the windows 24 hours/day. The Guardhouse is located at the main entrance to Fort Mason Center.

San Francisco Bay Area artist Tanja Geis proposes a speculative future in which a  submerged former military guard station is home to new marine life-forms adapted to and thriving amidst polluted, warming, acidifying, and rising oceans.

To create her installation, Mud Will Remember Us (2023), the artist foraged local San Francisco Bay mud containing by-products of human activity, including plastics, heavy metals, and chemicals, which she then formed by hand into hundreds of sculptures suggesting simple-bodied organisms from another time. Geis incorporates these objects into a debut series of mobiles set against a fluorescent red background, playfully beckoning us to imagine this site beyond human memory.

Geis’ project is the third installation from FOR-SITE’s The Guardhouse Program, which serves three artists annually, directly supporting the year-round creation, presentation, and understanding of art about place.

The free opening reception happens on Saturday, September 23, 2023, 12:00 p.m. (Noon) to 2:00 p.m. (reserve a spot).

Free Admission

ABOUT THE ARTIST. Tanja Geis makes research-based paintings, drawings, sculptures and videos that invite intimacy with human-disturbed edge ecosystems through queering, drawing close to and
staying with the impacts of humans on the liveliness of non-humans. She received an M.F.A. in Art Practice from University of California, Berkeley, an M.R.M. in Marine Management from the University of Akureyri, Iceland, and a B.A. in Fine Art from Yale University. Her work has been exhibited throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and in Iceland, Scotland, England, Hong Kong and Japan. Geis is from Hong Kong and lives in Berkeley, CA.

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, each of whom will activate 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.

Tanja Geis 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.