Josué Rojas Reuses the City’s Trash to Tell a Distinctly San Francisco Story

At the southernmost edge of San Francisco, between the Cow Palace and what was once Candlestick Park, I pull up to Recology’s compost, recycling and waste transfer station.

Here, at a 47-acre facility, is where San Francisco’s waste is divided into piles for reuse or rubbish. Hazardous household waste, like paint, goes in one area. Small electronics, like batteries, in another. A small puddle of murky water accumulates in a corner of the airplane-hanger–sized building, as big tractor-like trucks move materials around.

On the other side of a huge wall, next to Recology’s offices, it’s calm. There are no trucks trucking or trash heaps heaping.

For here is a large art studio space, where Josué Rojas, a longtime muralist and one of four current artists-in-residency at Recology, stands amid items he’s pulled from the trash.

Repurposed paints, gently used canvases and old records that he’s set aside for listening populate the studio space. Rojas is working on his upcoming exhibition, Pupusa Face: A Fever Dream Codex, which will be on view at Recology on May 16, 17 and 20.

Rojas’ work is made of brightly colored pieces and cleverly written messages inspired by his adventures in academia, his family roots in El Salvador and his upbringing in San Francisco. His art simultaneously pokes fun at 1950s Americana while subtly critiquing mass consumption and mass production in the United States.

And, here at the dump, Rojas’ work raises the broad question: If one artist can reuse all of this “trash” in a creative manner, what are we doing as a society?

“I’ve had to go through a bunch of training to be able to scavenge safely,” Rojas says, standing in his studio with a San Francisco Giants cap covering his head and paint splotch on his apron.

He learned about protective gear: steel toe boots, N-95 masks, puncture-resistant gloves, goggles. “At first,” he says, “I was like, ‘Man, why would I need all that?’” After one trip to the dump, where he encountered sharp and unsanitary objects, he understood. A naturally resourceful person and no stranger to dumpster-diving in the name of creative reuse, Rojas says doing so safely is paramount.

Also key? Having a partner to work with.

Laurel Roth Hope, Rojas’ studiomate and another Recology artist-in-residence, is working on an exhibition for the mid-May opening focused on “the choices we must make every day between our individual desires and the well-being of the world at large.”

Rojas credits Hope with finding pieces of discarded wood that he’ll use in the latest iteration of what he calls “pupusa face.”

Although he often uses the term in jokes with his nephews, Rojas explains that “pupusa face” is a derogatory expression, used to describe Central Americans. “I’m just owning it,” he says, adding that it basically means someone with a round face. But it has a deeper cultural connotation when depicted in art, by pushing his Salvadoran roots into mainstream conversation — and filling a gap in the visual art lexicon.

“I don’t really think we’ve got a lot of Central American heroes,” Rojas says. There’s no Jean-Michel Basquiat, Diego Rivera or Frida Kahlo of Central America, he surmises. “I know we do have those artists, but as far as them getting prime time, we don’t.” He believes his work is a part of a larger effort to “get some eyes on Central American stories,” which he notes is easily distinguishable from Mexican culture.

“We’ve got a presence in the Bay Area and in San Francisco that’s distinct,” says Rojas.

Known to sometimes paint with his mother, Esther, Rojas’ love for the City runs deep. He’s been an educator and a journalist, formerly serving as the executive director of Acción Latina, which publishes the long-running bilingual periodical El Tecolote. After painting his first mural in 1995, he now has art all around town, including a piece just completed last month at the new Sunset Dunes Park.

Despite being so deeply intertwined with the City, he’s never before seen it this way: by looking at its trash.

“Seeing the way San Francisco digests a lot of its stuff,” he says, “I love it in a different way now.”

Recology’s art program was founded 35 years ago. Deborah Munk, manager of the residency, has been here for 25 of those years. She tells me that the program’s founder, Jo Hanson, once rented a bus and invited politicians and socialites to a gallery viewing. Instead, she took them on a tour of illegal dumping sites around the city.

With his work, Rojas isn’t looking to be as in-your-face, but his use of postwar imagery — a Dubble-Bubble gum wrapper design, the bright colors in advertising for 1950s toys — evokes an era when one-time use materials like plastics were seen as progress instead of environmental liabilities.

That same concept of production and consumption, the way we use and disregard our natural resources, can be seen as a metaphor for how certain people are treated in a city like San Francisco, where many working-class folks have been pushed out.

“Staying in San Francisco is for sure a challenge,” says Rojas, who notes he was once evicted from his residence in the Mission. As the City changes, metaphorically disposing the people who made it what it is, Rojas finds a silver lining: he’s still around to contribute to his hometown.

“I feel like I need to renew the contract with the City every day,” he says. “If I want to be a part of the future of San Francisco, I can’t be a captive to nostalgia.”

Josué Rojas’ ‘Pupupsa Face: A Fever Dream Codex’ is on view alongside exhibitions by Laurel Roth Hope, Eleanor Scholz and Daniela Tinoco on May 16, 17 and 20 at Recology Art Studios in San Francisco. Artist talk on May 20.