Sanctuary City Project

Public Art

Sanctuary City Project

Sergio De La Torre & Chris Treggiari |

2012–Ongoing

Sanctuary City Project is an ongoing public art and printmaking initiative that asks urgent questions about immigration, citizenship, and who gets to feel safe. Through mobile screenprinting devices, bold graphic posters, and community-led workshops, artists Sergio De La Torre and Chris Treggiari use design as a tool for dialogue. The project invites people to reflect on language, policy, and lived experience, and produce bold, typographic posters in real time.

Thirteen Sanctuary City banners are installed on advertising poles around the downtown area. Drawn from interviews and workshops, pairing scale with phrases like THIS IS A SANCTUARY, WHERE WILL PEOPLE GO?, and UNDOCUMENTED UNAFRAID. Declarative yet unresolved, the language holds space for undocumented voices and the emotional realities of displacement—asking viewers to sit with the weight of policy and the possibilities of collective authorship.

Street poles surrounding the YBCA campus; Galleries, YBCA

Sergio De La Torre
(b. 1967, National City. Based in San Francisco)

Chris Treggiari
(b. 1978, Concord, MA. Based in Oakland)

Sanctuary City Project, 2012-ongoing

Installation view of Sanctuary City Project, 2012–ongoing, in Bay Area Then, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 2025.
Courtesy of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Photo by Charlie Villyard.

Sanctuary City Project

Bay Area Then is organized by Eungie Joo with support from the YBCA Exhibitions Team: Yoni Asega, Associate Director of Exhibition Production; O Soo Vegh, Senior Exhibition Manager and Registrar; David Tim, Head Preparator and Project Designer; and David Prigge, Senior Preparator. Archival research and presentation coordinated by Asha McGee. Music programming conceived by Chris Johanson and Ethan Swan. Installation assistance by Jeff Canham, Diego Irizarry, Derek Marshall, and Mike McGee. YBCA is grateful to our Preparator Team, who made this exhibition possible: Amy Bergstein, Courtney Crother, Micha Dudgeonwood, German Hoyle, Calvin Jones, Linden Julien-Lehr, Ben Leon, Maren Mouhanna, Christian Neill, Evan Pettiglio, Savio Pisani, Mae Ross, and Kelsey Westphal. YBCA acknowledges the generous lenders to Bay Area Then: Malou Babilonia; Brian and Joanne Jennings; Estate of Margaret Kilgallen; Daniel Sakaguchi and Jennifer Kapczynski; TDK Crew; and the many artists, writers, curators, and friends who contributed to the archival installation on artist-run spaces as well as the installation by Barry McGee.

This program is supported by Yerba Buena Partnership.

YBCA Programs are made possible in part by Blue Shield of California, the City and County of San Francisco, Yerba Buena Gardens Conservancy, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Bloomberg Philanthropies, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, James R. Lilienthal Trust, California Arts Council, Yerba Buena Community Benefit District, Amy and Hannah Eliot, Tides Foundation, Farhang Foundation, Peter Rigano and Cody Hicks, Malia Simonds, Alan Seiffert, Katie Colendich, Peter Schumann and Rob Wullenjohn, Vicky Shipkowitz, John Bankston and Robert Goodman and YBCA Members.