Join FOR-SITE for a weekend of art, music, and remembrance this SF Art Week, celebrating new publications and projects that honor Black and Brown histories and lives.

1-800 Happy Birthday at The Guardhouse / January 19 - February 14, 2026

The Guardhouse

Main Entrance, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture

FOR-SITE and WORTHLESSSTUDIOS proudly present 1-800 Happy Birthday, an installation by filmmaker and artist Mohammad Gorjestani. The installation is free and open to the public, viewable through the windows 24 hours a day.

1-800 Happy Birthday is a multi-format project rooted in love, remembrance, and care. It honors the lives of Black and Brown people lost to police violence by returning to what is most human: the act of celebration. Through voice, image, and shared ritual, the project creates space to speak names, tell stories, and mark birthdays that continue even after loss. 

The project originated as a digital voicemail archive: a platform where loved ones and the public could leave birthday messages for individuals killed by police, and has evolved into an adaptive, interdisciplinary project. At its core, 1-800 Happy Birthday rejects the notion that memory must be anchored in tragedy. By centering birthdays instead of death, each call becomes an act of love, a defiant gesture against erasure and forgetting.

1-800 Happy Birthday at The Guardhouse expands upon the catalog of voicemails and includes an upcycled New York City decades-old phone booth, programmed to allow visitors to listen to voicemails left for celebrants. This interactive component allows visitors to bear witness to a profound love for human life and aims to inspire action towards justice. Physical interaction with the phone booth guides through a tangible experience of a complex and heartfelt portrait of a life. These objects bring public life indoors and complicate the divide between private conversation and public space.

The Guardhouse Program is made possible thanks to generous support from the ARB Fund. 

1-800 Happy Birthday is produced by creative studio EVEN/ODD and New York based not-for-profit WORTHLESSSTUDIOS in partnership with the social justice non-profit Campaign Zero with support by the Mellon Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, The California Endowment, the gtrippin fund at East Bay Community Foundation and other funders.

About the Artist 

WORTHLESSSTUDIOS is a New York based not-for-profit art organization that provides essential resources to epoch-making artists producing ambitious artwork. 

EVEN/ODD is a creative studio and production company creating films and visual projects led by underrepresented filmmakers, photographers, artists, and producers. 

The Guardhouse Program is presented by FOR-SITE (for-site.org) in partnership with Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (fortmason.org). The Guardhouse Program is made possible thanks to generous support from the ARB Fund. 

About Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) 

A decommissioned military installation converted into a nonprofit cultural center, FMCAC hosts a lively mix of arts, educational, and cultural programming. Each year FMCAC provides more than $2 million in support to local arts organizations, enabling groups to produce diverse and innovative artworks at the historic waterfront campus. With a four-decade history as an arts and culture destination, FMCAC is now focused on reinvigorating its programming and amenities to better engage the evolving Bay Area creative

community. Central to this new vision is the commissioning and presentation of adventurous and unconventional artworks best realized in nontraditional or historical settings. 

ADDITIONAL Bay Area Activations of Mohammad Gorjestani’s 1-800 Happy Birthday Project 

Happy Heavenly Birthday Oscar: An exhibition by 1-800 Happy Birthday 

The Black Panther Party Museum | On view February 1-28, 2026 

Opening Reception: February 1, 6-9 PM 

Black Joy Parade | February 22, 2026, 12:30 PM 

Launched by FOR-SITE in 2023 marking 20 years dedicated to the presentation of art about place, The Guardhouse Program invites three artists each year to activate a former military guard station at the main entrance to Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, presenting new work that responds to the natural and cultural significance of the site and its surroundings. Installations are viewable through the windows 24 hours a day.

Radius Books Pop-Up Bookstore / January 22 - 24, 2026

The Store House 

Building D, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture

Presented in collaboration with FOR-SITE, join Radius Books at their pop-up bookstore in The Store House at Fort Mason. Browse a curated selection of titles, including Black Gold (2026), published to coincide with FOR-SITE’s landmark exhibition of the same name, and meet Radius published artists and writers including Maia Ruth Lee, Mimi Plumb, Richard Misrach, and more.

Image:

1-800 Happy Birthday Installation, Courtesy of WORTHLESSSTUDIOS.