While the San Francisco 49ers may have blown their chance at a hometown Super Bowl win, that hasn’t stopped the Bay Area from getting into the festivities. On Thursday, the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco announced that it will stage a major new public art commission by Jeffrey Gibson.
The work—an adaptation of Gibson’s 2022 video installation THIS BURNING WORLD—will be installed on the façade of the former Bloomingdale’s building at San Francisco Centre over the next week, as the city hosts the 2026 edition of the FOG Design+Art Fair. The 433-foot-long vinyl mural spans an entire city block and wraps the building’s glass façade; it will be fully unveiled on February 2 as part of Super Bowl LX festivities.
The new work draws on footage captured in upstate New York and the Bay Area, weaving together still images from the original video installation to explore what the press release describes as the “precarity of humanity’s relationship to the natural world.”
“Indigenous kinship philosophies provided the conceptual and philosophical framework for my 2022 presentation at ICA SF, from which this installation finds its foundation,” Gibson said in a statement. “These perspectives acknowledge the elements of our natural environments as our equal ancestors, living relatives, and as extensions of our own minds and bodies. When we damage or treat the land without regard for its own sustainable well being, we are in turn hurting and damaging ourselves and disregarding our own well being, safety, and health.”
The project is supported by funding from the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation and the Yerba Buena Partnership, which has worked with artists including Sarah Sze and Hank Willis Thomas to present public art installations in the neighborhood.
“Public art changes how people experience a street,” DDC CEO Shola Olatoye said in a statement. “That’s why DDC is supporting Jeffrey Gibson’s work in the heart of the city—to create small moments that attract people and give them a reason to spend time here. DDC is investing in experiences that bring people together and help build a city that is welcoming to everyone.”
The Gibson commission is the first major project since ICA SF shifted to a fully nomadic, citywide model after leaving its home at The Cube in December. Founded in 2020 in the Dogpatch neighborhood, the institution plans to transform “vacant buildings, public spaces, and significant architectural sites into platforms for experimentation, civic dialogue, and cultural momentum,” according to an October press release. Its 2026 program already includes projects by artists such as Tara Donovan, Lily Kwong, Dominique Fung, and Heidi Lau.
