Taking Place: Untold Stories of the City

Co-curated with Jackie Im. San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries: Main Gallery. November 2021 - April 2025

Artists: Mansur Nurullah, Trina Michelle Robinson, Hannah Waiters

How do shifts in the land use of cities and neighborhoods impact populations, and in turn, how do the people who live or work in a place influence or control change? Taking Place: Untold Stories of the City unearths histories, legacies, and points of erasure in the Civic Center, Bayview-Hunters Point, and the Presidio.

For his residency, Mansur Nurullah partnered with SF Planning Senior Planner Amnon Ben-Pazi to bike through San Francisco’s Central, South, and Southeast corridors, mapping past, proposed, and future development while engaging residents in dialogue. His project centers on a triangular parcel in Bayview-Hunters Point—land rich with social significance and now facing redevelopment. Nurullah translates these layered narratives into elaborate textile works that chart historic uses, present realities, and possible futures, marking the first public reflections of a long-term inquiry into the promises—both realized and broken—of urban development.

Trina Michelle Robinson and Hannah Waiters extend the exhibition’s lens through deeply personal and speculative investigations. Robinson’s video and two-dimensional works surface the story of her great-great uncle, William J. French, a WWI officer who lived as a white man for eighteen years before his death and burial at the Presidio. By reframing his narrative through both family memory and African American media coverage, Robinson probes systemic erasure, racial passing, and access to opportunity. Waiters’s installation Phantasmagoria combines a panoramic mural with suspended costumes and participatory neighborhood walks, generating a multimedia archive of everyday fashion. Her work challenges the exclusions of institutional collections and foregrounds the role of dress and visual culture in shaping belonging across diverse communities.

This exhibition repoed the SFAC Main Gallery after an extended closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.