Arya News - The exhibit marks what would have been the 40th birthday of Oscar Grant whose death inspired the film, Fruitvale Station
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The last time that Wanda Johnson saw her son Oscar Grant alive, they were eating gumbo to celebrate her birthday on New Year’s Eve in 2008. They laughed as they ate the thick stew integral to Black American tradition in hopes of calling in a successful new year. A few hours later on 1 January, Grant was shot by Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale station in Oakland as he was on his way back home from celebrating with friends. The 22-year-old father died later that morning.
Every year since his death, which inspired the film Fruitvale Station, Johnson has said a prayer to Grant on his birthday on 27 February. “Oscar, I wish we had that time when we had gumbo and was able to laugh and hug again,” Johnson told the Guardian. “You’re forever in my heart.”
Now the spirit of Johnson’s prayers will be realized in an exhibit honoring what would have been her son’s 40th birthday. At the Black Panther Party Museum in Oakland, California, the Happy Heavenly Birthday, Oscar exhibit commemorates Grant’s legacy with a display of photos from his life. Visitors can write messages for Grant on birthday cards, and a phone booth installation plays birthday voicemails from people around the world. Also on display is a screening of the film Happy Birthday Oscar Grant, Love Mom, about how family and friends have celebrated his birthday since his death. The exhibit serves as a reflection of the ripple effects of gun violence on a local community, and runs from 1 February to 11 April.
“This exhibit is for everyone to see, because it brings you into the reality of what has happened in our society with the loss of life unnecessarily,” Johnson said. “And it brings you to a place where you have that care and concern and a desire to want to do something about the senseless loss for those individuals.”
Originally launched in 2013, the 1-800 Happy Birthday project, founded by San Francisco-based film-maker Mohammad Gorjestani, was a way to remember those who have been killed by police violence and their families long after the news cycle ended. It has since evolved into a digital art exhibit where people can leave voice messages to 15 people, including Grant, who were killed by police violence in the US – Fred Cox, Xzavier D Hill, Sean Monterrosa, Derrick Gaines, Michael Brown, Tony Robinson, Stephon A Clark, Donovon Lynch, Dujuan Armstrong, Mario Woods, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, George Floyd and Eric Garner. The project led to a Brooklyn exhibition in 2022. Now, the exhibit will tour around the nation throughout 2026 and 2027 following $1m in funding, primarily from the Mellon Foundation and other California-based partners.
The project is a collaboration between Gorjestani’s studio Even/Odd, the art-non-profit WORTHLESSSTUDIOS , and the social justice organization Campaign Zero. Along with the Black Panther Party Museum exhibit in downtown Oakland, the tour will stop in New York for Eric Garner’s birthday on 15 September 2026, and the team plans to bring the project to the midwest in the summer of 2027.
In the wake of the killings of US citizens and immigrants in January 2026, including the high-profile fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, Gorjestani sees the project as a way to highlight systemic injustices and the pervasiveness of failed public safety measures.
“This project’s job is to ask people to meet at the most human level, which is just that somebody had a life, somebody had their own dreams for ten years from now, for tomorrow. They had their own struggles, like everybody.” Gorjestani said. “We can all relate to a birthday. And I think when you listen to these voicemails, you’re transported into the internal universe of who these people were. And you get to ask yourself, ‘did this person actually have to die the way they did?’”
After distributing the film about Grant that featured Johnson and Grant’s community in 2015, Gorjestani followed it with similar films about Mario Woods and Philando Castile. Then in July 2020, he set up a hotline for people to leave birthday messages to Woods that garnered 100 voice mails.
“It fulfilled the same objective as the films, which is to try to almost exist outside of the structure of news debate,” he said. The phone calls served as “symbols of protests.” Soon thereafter, he worked with mothers of other people killed by police violence to bring their children’s stories to life. To scale the audio recordings to public spaces, Gorjestani envisioned using phone booths as monuments to those who had died through police brutality. At the same time, New York announced that it would remove phone booths from city sidewalks, 20 of which Gorjestani acquired for the project.
When people enter the Oakland exhibition, 1-800 Happy Birthday curator and WORTHLESSSTUDIOS curatorial fellow Benjamin McBride wants them to ask what Grant’s life would have looked like today. “That question holds so much possibility,” he said, “but it’s also the reality of the situation that we won’t ever really find that out.” The project “offers an understanding that these individuals are much more than what the headline would suggest”, McBride said. “It offers us a space to speak their names, to tell their stories. And marks that birthdays continue even after they transition.”
Dr Xavier Buck, founding director of the Black Panther Party Museum, believes that the project aligns with the Black power organization’s founding mission to combat police brutality. Grant was the first person who Buck had ever heard of being killed by law enforcement. When Buck attended college at St John’s University in New York, what happened to Grant hit close to home. “I myself had incidents with police brutality and been held at gunpoint by [the New York Police Department]. It was something that was very meaningful to me, one because it was happening to my people, but also because it personally was happening to me,” Buck said. “And so Oscar Grant’s story is all of our story.”
Happy Heavenly Birthday, Oscar will be the first contemporary art exhibit featured at the museum, which opened in 2024. “It’s really timely to be doing this right now as we are talking about how we organize and how we heal,” Buck said, “and what do we do when our own government is turned against us.
As the CEO of non-profit the Oscar Grant Foundation, Johnson has worked to make the legacy of Grant’s story a positive one. Her organization provides education programs for youth – including a science, technology, engineering and mathematics class during the summer – monthly support sessions for mothers grieving children who have died from police violence, and college and trade scholarships for youth. In 2025, the organization donated $40,000 in scholarships to 16 students. They also host “know your rights” trainings for people in case they are questioned or apprehended by law enforcement.
Several weeks ago, she commemorated Grant’s death with about 200 people at the community center, the Oscar Grant Youth Power Zone in Oakland’s Fruitvale district, where Grant was shot. Performers danced and sang, and families who lost their loved ones from fatal shootings shared their stories.
From 27 February to 1 March, which Johnson referred to as the Oscar Grant legacy weekend, the organization will convene families impacted by police violence throughout the nation in California.
“It’ll be 17 years since Oscar has been killed, and we’re still pressing to ensure and to work towards these types of injustices not occurring,” Johnson said. “We are pressing to ensure that all have an opportunity to life, and that life not being taken senselessly.”
For several years, Johnson was unable to cook gumbo around New Year’s Day because it was yet another reminder that Oscar was gone. But something shifted in her this year. This January was the first time in many years that Johnson cooked gumbo to celebrate her birthday and the new year. She joyfully reflected on Grant.
“Oscar loved people, and he wanted to see the best for people,” Johnson said. “He was willing to take the shirt off of his back in order to help someone.”