{"id":425482,"date":"2026-08-06T14:56:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T14:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/425482\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T14:56:22","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T14:56:22","slug":"bampfa-goes-behind-the-scenes-to-recognize-the-art-handlers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/425482\/","title":{"rendered":"BAMPFA goes behind the scenes to recognize the art handlers"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Marcel Pardo Ariza was getting started on their ambitious new art commission from BAMPFA, one of the first things they did was invite the museum\u2019s team of art handlers out for manicures. The outing wasn\u2019t just a gesture of appreciation: it was a key inspiration for \u201cLas frutas del labor<\/a>,\u201c Ariza\u2019s new site-specific installation for BAMPFA\u2019s Art Wall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Starting this week, visitors to BAMPFA will be able to see the fruits of Ariza\u2019s own labor when \u201cLas frutas del labor\u201d begins its yearlong presentation on the museum\u2019s towering 63-foot wall, located near the museum entrance and visible from the street. The vividly colored mural features enlarged photographs of the hands, tools, and working materials used by BAMPFA\u2019s prep crew, adorned with painted fruits and wood and glossy vinyl details.<\/p>\n

For Ariza, a Colombia-born, Oakland-based artist who has worked as an art handler, the project offered a chance to honor workers whose contributions are essential to museums but who are rarely visible to the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really loved this idea: Who\u2019s taking care of the hands that take care of the art?\u201d Ariza said. \u201cIt felt fitting to take everyone out for manicures and see what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the outing, Ariza and the crew talked about how art handlers care for their bodies while spending long days lifting, carrying, building, and installing. Photographs from that day show brightly painted nails gripping the familiar tools of the trade, a striking set of images that also speaks to the artist\u2019s interest in queer and trans identity.<\/p>\n

\"\"A section of BAMPFA\u2019s Art Wall installation, \u201clas frutas del labor.\u201d\u00a0Credit:\u00a0Courtesy of BAMPFA<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted young people to see all these people with fabulous manicures holding tools \u2014 and not see those as two things that don\u2019t go together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The subject is personal for Ariza, who spent several years after college working as an art handler in New York and the Bay Area, gaining an intimate view of the labor structures that sustain the art world.\u00a0 Their experience in New York was \u201cbrutal,\u201d they recalled. As an immigrant, Ariza took an unpaid internship to maintain their visa status, working long days without compensation and sometimes finding themselves in physically risky situations on the job.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were days when I did a lot of very dangerous things, and then there were days when I got to meet the artists and hear about their process,\u201d Ariza said. \u201cSo it was this two-sided coin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Art handling led Ariza into set design and museum work, while exposing them to a network of artists earning their living behind the scenes. It also showed them the way in which specialized museum knowledge is passed along \u2014 and how difficult it can be to access.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy experience with crews in general is that they tend to be very cis and white, and centered around cis men,\u201d Ariza said. \u201cThere are also a lot of barriers to getting into the world of art handling. A lot of hiring happens through word of mouth, and there aren\u2019t enough open job postings where different kinds of people can apply.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ariza and Ambrose Trataris, a fellow artist and art worker, cofounded Art Handlxrs*, an organization that supports people from historically excluded communities who work in art handling and related technical fields. The group has offered free skill-sharing classes, published interviews with art handlers in several cities and received international recognition through the inaugural Art Basel Awards.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is literally a project that came out of both a love of art handling and an awareness of how inequitable the art world is in some ways,\u201d Ariza said. \u201cYou see how, if you build a pipeline of access, more people get access.\u201d<\/p>\n

That combination of advocacy, affection and humor runs throughout\u00a0\u201dLas frutas del labor.\u201d Rather than depicting generic tools, Ariza photographed objects in BAMPFA\u2019s own prep shop, some of which have remained with the museum across decades of exhibitions.<\/p>\n

\"\"Marcel Pardo Ariza is the artist behind \u201clas frutas del labor\u201d showing at BAMPFA now. Courtesy of BAMPFA Credit: Courtesy of BAMPFA<\/p>\n

A used bag of sandpaper, a level covered with handwritten markings and a brush from 1988 labeled \u201cnew\u201d become what the artist calls \u201ca little archive of small details.\u201d One especially playful image reproduces a mock window created by the prep crew for their basement workspace: a printed Google Street View image of the scene they might see if the room actually had a window.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s the humor,\u2019\u201d Ariza said. \u201cIt feels like magical realism to me \u2014 very surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mural\u2019s title, which translates as \u201cthe fruits of labor,\u201d is a phrase Ariza connects to both the satisfaction of completing a shared undertaking and to other forms of work that frequently go unrecognized. Images of fruit evoke California farmworkers, while the elaborate nails suggest the service labor of nail technicians.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The installation\u2019s scale marks another development in Ariza\u2019s practice. They have recently gravitated toward architecturally distinctive spaces, and BAMPFA\u2019s Art Wall \u2014 situated in the museum\u2019s free sunlit public amphitheater \u2014 has held their attention for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s in a university setting, [the amphitheater] is free to the public, and it is so site-specific because you\u2019re dealing with all these architectural elements,\u201d they said. \u201cI love thinking about how to materialize something so big,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

Yet for all its visual exuberance,\u00a0\u201dLas frutas del labor\u201d\u00a0ultimately turns on a simple question of recognition. Exhibition labels routinely name artists and curators, Ariza noted, while omitting the preparators, technicians, registrars and other museum workers who make an installation possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was something so disheartening about being part of the art world, working so hard on something, and never seeing your name or your labor acknowledged,\u201d they recalled of their time as an art handler.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBAMPFA\u2019s Art Wall is the first artwork you see when you enter our museum,\u201d said BAMPFA\u2019s Chief Curator Margot Norton, who worked closely with Ariza on the installation. \u201cIt\u2019s a site for public programs, performances, hands-on educational workshops, and countless informal gatherings. It is truly exciting to welcome all who enter our museum with Marcel\u2019s striking, large-scale love letter to art handlers, and the care, ingenuity and vital contributions they bring to museum work.\u201d<\/p>\n

“*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Marcel Pardo Ariza was getting started on their ambitious new art commission from BAMPFA, one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[19979,27076,143,145,144,18740],"class_list":["post-425482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-arts-and-culture","tag-arts-resource-guide","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-visual-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}