Fine Arts for Reparations
Memory Portal: 1945 — The Unveiling
Memory Portal: 1945 Unveiling Photos
Memory Portal: 1945 — The Unveiling
The inaugural monument of The Memory Portal Project
On October 26, 2026, Afatasi unveiled Memory Portal: 1945 in San Francisco.
Created through genealogy, archival research, public art and metalwork, the monument honors San Francisco’s Great Migration lineage and the families who came west during the wartime shipbuilding era, carrying Southern culture, traditions and memory into the city.
An Inheritance in Steel
Afatasi had been welding for several months when her genealogy research revealed something she had never known about her grandfather.
Across three decades of census records, his occupation told a consistent story: he was an American steelworker who spent his working life in scrap steel—the same material Afatasi had independently chosen for her own practice.
“I had taken up welding without knowing his working life. Finding him in those records made it feel like I was taking up an inheritance.”
Her nephew Nicholas later joined her in fabricating Memory Portal: 1945, carrying that material inheritance forward another generation.
From Mural to Monument
Memory Portal: 1945 continues a symbolic language Afatasi has developed across her public-art practice.
Five of the monument’s seven Memory Tile symbols originated in Modalities & Motifs (2023), Afatasi’s 500-foot public artwork created for the Southeast Treatment Plant construction fence along Evans Avenue in Bayview–Hunters Point.
The five returning symbols are Buffalo Soldier — Honor; Freedom Day Transfer — Inheritance; HELA — Regeneration; Fade in the Water — Resistance; and North Star — Guidance.
For Memory Portal: 1945, Afatasi introduced two new symbols: Woman Welder — Legacy and Shooting Star — Reverence.
Together, the seven form an evolving visual language—contemporary hieroglyphs through which Afatasi carries histories, values and cultural memory central to her lineage.
The Buffalo Soldier honors a significant military history. The North Star recalls navigation, migration and the architects of freedom who followed it. HELA invokes Henrietta Lacks and remembrance of those subjected to medical exploitation. Fade in the Water, represented by the folding chair, carries a contemporary symbol of resistance and solidarity. Freedom Day Transfer connects Juneteenth, San Francisco’s Texas migration and the role of transit in the Great Migration journey.
The two new symbols extend that language. Woman Welder honors the women who worked in Bay Area wartime industries and the labor history surrounding Hunters Point. Shooting Star introduces reverence into the monument’s symbolic vocabulary.
The Memory Tiles translate this continuing visual language into steel.
[EXPLORE MODALITIES & MOTIFS / READ THE 2023 PRESS RELEASE]
Fine Arts for Reparations
Memory Portal: 1945 also emerges from the national reckoning over monuments following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Afatasi later served on San Francisco’s Monuments and Memorials Advisory Committee as part of the city’s examination of its public monuments.
The work is grounded in Fine Arts for Reparations, Afatasi’s guiding philosophy that fine artists have a duty to advocate for reparations and to use their fine-arts practice to engage in reparative acts of service for the people of their lineage.
For Afatasi, monument making is one such reparative act.
Her responsibility is specific: San Francisco’s diminishing Great Migration community and the cultural inheritance its descendants continue to carry.
Through Memory Portal: 1945, Afatasi uses genealogy, public history and steel to establish a lasting presence for the lineage that transformed San Francisco during and after the Great Migration, while contributing to its cultural continuity.
“Erasure makes us search for our people in a city they helped build. I create monuments that give our ancestors a dignified presence here.”
The Unveiling
The October 26 unveiling invited guests to experience the journey behind the completed monument.
Following the ceremony, genealogy participants, elders, families and guests gathered around Memory Portal: 1945 before moving inside to the accompanying exhibition, Monument Making as a Reparative Act: The Road to Memory Portal: 1945.
The exhibition traced the project through genealogy, research, symbols, material studies and individual works, allowing visitors to experience the progression from ancestral research and public-art motif to Memory Tile and monumental form.
The seven symbols were also carried on commemorative church fans created for the unveiling—a familiar cultural object transformed into another vehicle for the project’s visual language.
Together, the ceremony, exhibition and monument presented the development of Memory Portal: 1945 within Afatasi’s larger lineage-based fine-arts practice.
[READ MAX BLUE’S ARTICLE ON MEMORY PORTAL: 1945]
Continue Through the Portal
Memory Portal: 1945 is the inaugural installation of The Memory Portal Project, Afatasi’s evolving monument-making practice developed through genealogy, sculpture and ancestral pilgrimage.
The monument is now open for private group and institutional experiences with Afatasi, offering a deeper exploration of its genealogy, symbolism, Great Migration history, metalwork and Fine Arts for Reparations.
Holiday experiences begin December 2026, followed by Black History Month programming in February 2027. Additional group and institutional experiences are available by inquiry.
[INQUIRE ABOUT A MEMORY PORTAL EXPERIENCE]
Memory Portal: 1945 was commissioned through Shaping Legacy, a program of the San Francisco Arts Commission, with support from the Mellon Foundation.
Afatasi
Fine Artist & creator of the Afatasi Universe
@afatasitheartist