SANCTUARY CITY Project — BANNERS

SANCTUARY CITY PROJECT (SCP) is an engagement platform created by artists SERGIO DE LA TORRE and CHRIS TREGGIARI to collect and share research with the public. Their latest project investigates the state of undocumented immigrants since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time as being classified as “essential workers” for their work in high-risk jobs in meatpacking plants, agriculture, and construction, undocumented immigrants have received little to no support from the federal government — including no direct monetary payments, which most US residents received from the stimulus packages passed by Congress. Instead, the federal government has taken advantage of this time to expand construction of the border wall and engage in further deportation and immigration restrictions. The COVID-19 pandemic has been used to increase fear, mistrust, and instability in the undocumented immigrant community. 

Sanctuary City Project realizes that during COVID-19, public space has also become essential. Outdoor spaces provide the opportunity to engage more safely and responsibly, and offer a sense of normality in a very un-normal time. These banners are a way for SCP to expand the engagement strategies they have been developing for the past 12 years, and to encourage public conversations about the injustices surrounding undocumented immigrants and COVID-19.

About the Artists

SERGIO DE LA TORRE has worked with and documented the multiple ways in which citizens reinvent themselves in the city they inhabit as well as site-specific strategies they deploy to move in and out of modernity. These works have appeared at the 10th Istanbul Biennial, Bienal Barro de America; Cleveland Performance Art Festival, Atelier Frankfurt, Centro Cultural Tijuana, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, Tribeca Film Festival, and El Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia. He is an Associate Professor at the University of San Francisco Art and Architecture Department.

CHRIS TREGGIARI’s artistic practice investigates how art can enter the public realm in a way that can connect wide ranges of people and neighborhoods in a variety of communities. Chris has shown nationally and internationally at the Venice Biennale 2012 American Pavilion, SFMOMA, Torrance Art Museum, The Getty Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Jose Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. He has received grants from the Puffin Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Creative Work Fund, the Arts Commission of San Jose, the Seattle Center Foundation, the Oakland Arts Commission, US Bank, and the Zellerbach Foundation. Chris has been a teaching artist-in-residence at the Center for Art & Public Life at California College of the Arts since 2013.