In partnership with the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, For-Site presents a new installation by Oakland-based artist Monica Canilao. In Vessels for Healing and Transmuting Grief, the artist transformed the military guard station into a contemplative space for remembrance, ritual, and ancestral connection through stitching, painting, and object assemblage.
Compiling a living history
Canilao weaves personal and living histories together using found objects, ritual, and site-specific installation. Through a powerful constellation of reliquary altars, embellished found portraits, and assemblages made with reclaimed materials, she explores grief as both a personal and a collective act of transformation. Her art honors those displaced, erased, or lost through war, colonization, and migration. Due to the work’s placement in Fort Mason — a former U.S. Army port and key hub for military operations across the Pacific — the work connects the site’s role in American power abroad, its presence, and its consequences. These global histories are brought into her own art as placeholders for memory, ritual, and ancestral ties that existed before war and colonization.
Claiming our narratives
Canilao’s work is rooted in her own family history. Her family migrated from the Philippines to escape martial law shaped in part by U.S. geopolitical influence in the region. Reliquary objects — containers, shrines, boxes, or display cases — protect the sacred, much like religious relics. They often house or display the physical remains of saints or other holy figures, along with the objects associated with them. Future Ancestors (2002) is a mixed-media object covered in shells, antique glass flowers, quilt pieces, and beading, all arranged around a found object: a sun-damaged photo of two faces, presumably a couple. The unknown mystery of found objects helps the art become a talisman of the future, honoring the means by which reclaimed pieces ground us in the present. Neighborhoods, their trash piles, forgotten objects, and stories find a new life, purpose, and sacred meaning.
Ordinary objects like wood pulp and cloth become beautiful and useful simply by passing a needle and thread through them. In Your Dreams Coat (2021) places mixed media, fabric, sequined appliqués, fringe, acrylic, markers, nail polish, puff paint, spray paint, knit flowers, and hologram vinyl onto a satin robe. The Dream Coat, in modern fashion terms, is a handmade, oversized patchwork coat typically worn at festivals and other group gatherings.
In Sword Swallower’s Daughter (2024), Canilao reimagines a discarded photo and assigns a new story with mixed media, bone, bullets, beadwork, silk, glass, coral, shell, metalwork, and various found objects. The finished work is a festive mystery, bringing to life a story about carnivals and generations over time.
Creating our own culture
“We need mementos, regalia, and altars to hold our stories and tend to the memories that shape us,” Canilao reflects. This art practice, an act of preservation and reverence, causes us to examine how we honor those who came before us while carrying their histories forward. She continues in her artist statement, reemphasizing that art is a way to communicate and engage with others and, in doing so, the resulting work transcends distance, time, and place.
Monica Canilao’s images and installations are like the communities and experiences they draw upon, creating a symbiosis. Borrowing from native traditions and contemporary subcultures reminds us all that we are the living ambassadors of our culture. We care for one another and draw strength and nourishment from our shared roots. In the process, we use and appreciate what we have.
Vessels for Healing and Transmuting Grief is on view at The Guardhouse, Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture entrance through Sept. 7. There will be a public opening reception on Saturday, June 6, from 6 to 8 p.m. with remarks at 6:30 by For-Site’s founder, Cheryl Haines. Free, RSVP here.
