Public Opening Reception:
Saturday, November 7, 5-7pm
RSVP

Public hours:
Thursday – Saturday, 11am - 6pm

di Rosa and Minnesota Street Project Foundation are pleased to present Invaders: Vallejo, Food and the Making of California, an exhibition by Julio César Morales which uses food to address histories of conquest, migration, and cultural exchange. The exhibition pairs Interrupted Passage, an ongoing food-based project by Julio César Morales and Max Rivière-Hedrick, with significant works from the di Rosa permanent collection.

Interrupted Passage considers the meal as a site of political negotiation and exchange. The project takes inspiration from a feast hosted in 1846 by Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the Mexican military commander of Northern California, as California was passing from Mexican to U.S. control. When an armed militia arrived to take him prisoner, Vallejo chose to negotiate through radical hospitality rather than armed resistance, inviting his captors into his home. The resulting meal placed Vallejo in an extraordinary position: both host and hostage, negotiating the future of California from his own dining room.

The exhibition presents the most expansive view to-date of this two-decade project, bringing together video, sculpture, photography, ephemera, and live food activations, alongside a new series of photographs and a new video and sound installation. In preparation for the exhibition, Morales also undertook sustained engagement with di Rosa’s permanent collection, selecting works to enter into a visual and conceptual call- and-response with his own practice. In conversation with Interrupted Passage, works by Joan Brown, Carlos Villa, and Enrique Chagoya, among others, open a broader conversation around Vallejo’s story and the enduring questions it raises about migration, belonging, hospitality, power, and cultural exchange.

Invaders considers California not as a fixed place or singular history, but as a place continually remade through movement, encounter, negotiation, and exchange. Through food and the rituals surrounding it, the exhibition asks how histories of invasion and migration settle into the body—how they linger—in taste and memory, in the hands that prepare a meal, in the stories passed from one generation to another, and in the strangers who become guests at our table. Here, the table becomes both archive and stage: a place where the past is served, contested, remembered, and imagined anew.

Julio César Morales and Max La Rivière-Hedrick’s collaborative projects have been exhibited and commissioned by institutions including the California Biennale at the Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, California), LAXART (Los Angeles, California), Gallery Wendi Norris (San Francisco, California), Blaffer Art Museum (Houston, Texas), the Smart Museum of Art (Chicago, Illinois), Museo Rufino Tamayo (Mexico City, Mexico), the Andy Warhol Foundation (New York, New York), Headlands Center for the Arts (San Francisco, California), and Current LA Triennial, among others.

Morales’ own artwork has been shown at Lyon Biennale; (Lyon, France), Istanbul Biennale; (Istanbul, Turkey), Los Angeles County Art Museum (Los Angeles, California); Singapore Biennale; (Singapore), Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt, Germany); Prospect 3 (New Orleans, Louisiana) SFMOMA (San Francisco, California); MEWO Kunsthalle (Memmingen, Germany); Perez Art Museum (Miami, Florida), and Manetti Shrem Museum (Davis, California).

Founded by Rene and Veronica di Rosa, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art is a nonprofit art center and home to the world's foremost collection of Northern California art, with more than 1,600 works. Set in the Carneros region of Napa Valley, di Rosa's Napa campus features galleries, a sculpture meadow with nearly 80 outdoor works and a serene lake, all dedicated to its founding mission of art and nature. di Rosa San Francisco, at Minnesota Street Project, brings the collection into the heart of the city.

Public Programs

Interactive Artist Talk
Saturday, December 5, 5-7pm
di Rosa SF, 1150 25th St
Free and open to the public

Join artist Julio César Morales for a discussion focused on his food-based projects and collaborations around radical hospitality, and the broader intersections of food, art, migration and cultural exchange that inform his practice. Following the conversation, visitors are invited to stay for homemade food and continue the exchange around the table.

Caesar’s Salad Workshop with Julio César Morales
Tuesday, January 12, 1-3pm
di Rosa SF, 1150 25th St
Free and open to the public

Artist Julio César Morales leads a participatory workshop exploring the surprising cultural history of the Caesar’s Salad. As participants prepare and share the iconic dish, Morales traces its origins in 1920s Tijuana and the cross-border exchange that shaped its creation and enduring popularity. The workshop also considers the history of border art and activism in Tijuana and San Diego, using a familiar meal to explore migration, cultural hybridity, and the movement of people and ideas between Mexico and California. Participants will make and eat Ceasar’s Salad while considering how food carries histories of place, identity, and encounter.