Adrian Arias: Indigenous Forever
Opening Reception for SF First Thursdays Art Walk in the Tenderloin
Thursday July 2, 2026 | 5-8pm
at the Tenderloin Museum | 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
TLM presents Indigenous Forever, a new gallery show featuring paintings by Adrian Arias that honor the strength, wisdom, and continuity of Indigenous cultures.
Opening during the 4th of July holiday and the United States’ milestone 250th year as a nation, Indigenous Forever reframes notions of place, belonging, and permanence in a poignant and timely conceptual gesture. The humble postage stamp, one of the most fundamental trappings of modern statehood and a basic currency for communication, is enlarged and remixed, memorializing the land, its Indigenous people and their culture. Medicinal plants, native flora and fauna, and sacred designs from several Indigenous cultures past and present comprise the visual vocabulary of Indigenous Forever, symbolizing solidarity amongst the land and its original inhabitants, and celebrating place and people without the overlay of divisive, extractive colonial states.
Originally from Peru but long a fixture in the San Francisco Bay Area arts scene, Adrian Arias is a multivalent artist, organizer, and activist whose practice spans visual art, poetry, performance, and regularly involves a community project or public artwork that highlights social justice, racial equality, climate change, health, hope, and most of all beauty. He’s also a generational artist: Arias’ father was a painter who explored a “pop art” style during the 1960s, and one of his
Tenderloin regulars will recognize the imagery from this Indigenous Forever gallery show from an evocative mural of the same name on Larkin St. unveiled in the spring of 2025–many of the paintings in this show served as studies for the mural. Arias is also behind another large scale mural, “River to the Sky,” on Turk and Hyde at one of the Tenderloin’s most hallowed cultural sites: the former home of the Blackhawk Jazz Club. As in Indigenous Forever, Arias threads sacred Indigenous iconography into portraits of the luminaries who performed/recorded at the club: Mile Davis & Billie Holiday.
Indigenous Forever will be on view from July 1 - October 3 2026. Join the artist for a preview reception on Tuesday June 30, with a proper opening to follow in conjunction with the Tenderloin’s SF First Thursdays art walk. The following first Thursday, Arias will return to TLM for a walk and talk, during which he’ll discuss his practice and take attendees on a mini mural tour of the TL to visit his major public works in the neighborhood.