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Limited Edition Artwork based on artist's rug design for Sanctuary, FOR-SITE Foundation, 2017.

John Akomfrah’s rug design for Sanctuary, titled The Cave, is a kaleidoscopic pattern based on prehistoric paintings from Argentina’s Cueva de las Manos. “Inside these interlocking caves are some of our first signatures of an idea,” Akomfrah explains. “They are the ghost traces, the carbon footprints of us reaching for and attaining something very powerful, something very long lasting and very human. They are some of the first manifestations of a now near-universal human sense: the idea of an enclosure—marked by a sign of our presence—as a space of benediction, of sanctuary. What the caves tell us, too, is . . . our yearning for sanctuary, both as symbolic evocation as well as real knowledge of an actual place, [is] one of the oldest human yearnings. It’s as old as our sense of home, as enduring as our grasp of time, as defining as our sense of mortality.”

Limited Edition Artwork based on artist's rug design for Sanctuary, FOR-SITE Foundation, 2017.

Tammam Azzam’s paper collages are the basis for his untitled Sanctuary rug design. The concept of sanctuary is particularly resonant for him; he has used the word to describe his former studio in Syria, which was a refuge from the turmoil he witnessed and experienced before fleeing in 2011 to Dubai and subsequently relocating to Germany. The Syria of his memory and the places he held sacred are now gone, forcing him to find solace, comfort, and safety in new locations, new experiences. “My family left with nothing, just our suitcases. We started a new life from zero,” he has said. “But . . . I know I am one of the lucky ones.”

Limited Edition Artwork based on artist's rug design for Sanctuary, FOR-SITE Foundation, 2017.

Shiva Ahmadi’s contribution to Sanctuary features a Buddha-like character seated on a lotus throne. But unlike traditional depictions of the spiritual leader, her figure is defaced, bloodied, and perched precariously on a tangle of briars. Instead of Buddha, the enlightened teacher, the artist presents a mere mortal struggling to balance the weaponry of warfare, which could teeter out of hand at any moment. Ahmadi continually probes the confluence of Eastern and Western cultures, and the notion of unpredictable threats that often hide in plain sight. She asks viewers to look beyond the surface and consider the implications of our choices and actions, and she reminds us of the fine line that separates peace and destruction.

Limited Edition Artwork based on artist's sculptural contribution to Homeland Security, FOR-SITE Foundation, 2016.

Bullet Cross was created to commemorate Revelation I and Mosque II (after National Mosque of Nigeria, Abuja)—artworks included in FOR-SITE Foundation’s exhibition Home Land Security (September 10 – December 18, 2016).

Bay Area–based Al Farrow’s sculptures are strangely beautiful meditations on the relationship between religion and violence. Combining a draftsman’s precision with an understanding of metaphor, he makes art from spent ammunition and weapons. By fashioning these materials into religious symbols, he forces us to confront the role that religious extremism plays in instigating violence, and how war becomes its own religion, driven by the global arms trade in pursuit of profits. These harmonious assemblages of disturbing materials aim to provoke thought about the hypocrisy of violence exacted in the name of religion, and the irrational faith we place in instruments of destruction as a source of security.

Limited Edition Artwork based on artist's contribution to Homeland Security, FOR-SITE Foundation, 2016.

This work is a Commemorative Challenge Coin from Operation Onymous inspired by FOR-SITE Foundation’s exhibition Home Land Security (on view in San Francisco, September 10 – December 18, 2016).

As cyber threats increasingly push security efforts into virtual realms, Trevor Paglen’s work examines the many facets of government intelligence. Installed in a building that once served as home to the 902nd Military Intelligence Group — in a vault that housed classified documents — Operation Onymous (FBI Investigation of the Silk Road) invokes the motif of an FBI challenge coin, a cryptic medallion recognizing an agent’s affiliation with the organization; the coin featured here was given to those who aided the takedown of the notorious Silk Road darknet market in San Francisco. Trevor Paglen uses his training as a photographer and geographer to explore the worlds of government intelligence and surveillance. He describes his efforts on the periphery of government secrecy as an important exercise: “If you don’t flex those rights, they go away.” His work has been exhibited internationally, earning such honors as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s SECA Award, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.

Limited Edition Artwork based on artist's contribution to​ International Orange​, FOR-SITE Foundation, 2012.

Allison Smith is an Oakland-based art educator and practitioner who creates works on paper, sculpture, and collaborative events that invite audience participation. She was a United States Artists Fellow in 2010. Smith’s work has been exhibited at institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and MOMA PS1, New York.

Smith’s Pendleton blanket is an original design created in conjunction with the FOR-SITE exhibition International Orange​ (on view in San Francisco from September 10 – December 18, 2016). Inspired by the 75th anniversary of the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge, the design incorporates the bridge’s iconic silhouette as well as a compass rose and a gradient of sky from pale blue to black.

First created in March 2011, the Street Studios Project is a communal family photo album that began with the set-up of free outdoor photographic studios on more than 20 street corners and public spaces around the world. In each community we visited, the artist created public photo studio sets and invited any passing families and individuals to pose for a portrait. The photos were then printed on site and given to each participant to take away with them for their own family album. From street corners in informal settlements in Cape Town, to refugee camps in the DRC and South Sudan, a working rock quarry in Madagascar, neighborhoods in Mumbai, India, and parks and migrant shelters in Tijuana, Mexico, the studios are set up with the understanding that a family photograph can be a powerful and precious object.

Both a participatory art performance as well as a communal gathering space, the Studios are open and at the same time very intimate. By creating space for public displays of love and identity, they offer the community and individuals an affirmation of their heritage and belonging. With thousands of photographs taken over almost an 8-year period, Street Studios is an archive of family and love, an archive that documents not what makes things fall apart but what keeps them together.

Alexia Webster is a South African photographer and visual artist whose work explores intimacy, family and identity across the African continent and beyond. In 2013, she was awarded the Artraker Award for Art in Conflict, the CAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography, and in 2007 she received the Frank Arisman Scholarship at the International Centre of Photography, New York. Her work has been widely exhibited across South Africa, Nigeria, Mali, the United States, Europe and India and published in numerous international publications including the New York Times and National Geographic. Currently Webster is working on a project in the eastern rainforests of Madagascar as part of a National Geographic Explorers Grant.

Limited Edition Artwork based on artist's contribution to ​Homeland Security​, FOR-SITE Foundation, 2016.

This editioned work commemorates Pred’s sculptural installation titled Encirclement. Soon after the homeland security regulations following 9/11 went into effect, Swedish American conceptual artist Michele Pred began lobbying for access to the objects confiscated from travelers by the newly established Transportation Security Administration at San Francisco International Airport. For most of a decade, she used thousands of the sharp or combustible items to create a series of assemblages that express how our lives were transformed by 9/11 and our collective reactions to it. “Scissors,” she explains, “were a particularly interesting symbol of that time in that they could represent all the lives cut short, the pain of their families, and how what was once a mundane household tool was now considered a threat.” The intimate, personal nature of the objects and their exaggerated danger highlight the ways we sacrifice privacy in exchange for illusions of safety.

Limited Edition Artwork based on artist's contribution to​ International Orange​, FOR-SITE Foundation, 2012.

Assorted objects include: heath ceramic cup and saucer, book, DVD, matted painted panel, pencil and eraser keychain, handmade production of Golden Gate Bridge rivet, silkscreened tote bag, 1/4 pint of International Orange Bridge paint, flag, five postcard set, International Orange business card, car deodorizer, and fabric swatch.

Please note, individual items are packaged in an editioned box.

Limited Edition Artwork based on artists' contribution to ​International Orange​, FOR-SITE Foundation, 2012.

For the 2016 FOR-SITE exhibition ​International Orange​, Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood conducted what Dion called “fantastical archaeology,” envisioning the kinds of artifacts that one might find at Fort Point if it had been inundated by the sea long ago. Their installation presented sculptural versions of everyday items made to look as though they had spent a century underwater. These ordinary objects become hybrids of the natural and the human-made, marvelous artifacts of the historical imagination. Concretion is a print multiple produced with Paulson Bott Press in Berkeley (now Paulson Fontaine) to accompany the sculptural installation.

Mark Dion is known for incorporating elements of biology, archaeology, ethnography, and the history of science into his work. Traveling the world and collaborating with scientists, artists, and museums, Dion has excavated artifacts from the banks of the Thames River in London, established a marine life laboratory using specimens from New York City’s Chinatown, and created a contemporary cabinet of curiosities exploring natural and philosophical hierarchies. His work has been presented internationally at major museu

Dana Sherwood received her BFA from the University of Maine and a Post-baccalaureate from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has been included in exhibitions at the Kennedy Museum of Art, Athens, OH; Dia Foundation at the Hispanic Society of America, New York; and Scaramouche Gallery, New York. Sherwood has frequently collaborated on projects with Mark Dion, including ​The Tuileries Conservatory for Confectionery Curiosities​ (2008), exhibited in the Tuileries Garden in Paris.

Limited Edition Artwork based on artist's rug design for ​Sanctuary,​ FOR-SITE Foundation, 2017.

“Understanding the radical ways in which two people can perceive the same object with differing complexity is at the core of my investigation,” Sanaz Mazinani says. Her untitled ​Sanctuary​ design highlights the particular potency and significance of explosions, which have emerged as dominant visual tropes over her twelve years of examining news images for photographic montages. “For me, the symbolic likeness of an explosion stands in for an act of violence, but also for depictions of power . . . The explosion becomes a sublime entity to be feared and adored,” she explains. “Here, the explosion’s ability to obfuscate becomes a metaphor for politics, a symbol for the veils that simultaneously obscure and complicate reality.”