Remains
of the East Los Streetscapers’
mural Filling Up on Ancient Energies (1981), and the wall on which it was painted, clutter 4th and
Soto Streets in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, on May 24, 1988. The mural was
destroyed without notifying the artists.
In March, the J. Paul
Getty Foundation awarded a grant to the California Historical Society in
partnership with LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes of Los Angeles for an exhibition
that will be part of “Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.” This Getty initiative brings together over 40 museums and
cultural institutions across Southern California. Through a series of
exhibitions, publications, and programs, participating organizations will
realize the goals of the project: to create a dialogue between Latin American
and Latino art and Los Angeles.
In September 2017,
CHS and LA Plaza will present ¡Murales Rebeldes!: Contested Chicana/o Public
Art. The exhibition and companion publication will look at the ways
in which Chicana/o murals in the greater Los Angeles area have been contested, challenged,
censored, and even destroyed.
Why ¡Murales Rebeldes!: Contested Chicana/o Public Art?
Chicana/o murals
often have been sites of controversy. The ways in which their creators provoke
the dominant cultural norm and challenge the assumed historic narrative have
often resulted in the desecration, whitewashing, or destruction of these works
of art. Outright neglect and mistreatment of murals, as well as dismissal of
their artistic and historical value, also threaten the survival of these works.
The exhibition will
explore murals by Barbara Carrasco, Yriena Cervántez, Roberto Chávez, Ernesto
de la Loza, East Los Streetscapers, Willie Herrón, and Sergio O’Cadiz. In this
exhibition in the historic heart of Los Angeles, LA Plaza and CHS will examine
the iconography, content, and artistic strategies of these key Los Angeles area
Chicana/o murals that have made others uncomfortable to the point of provoking
a contrary response. The exhibition will delve into the murals’ complicated
creation and subsequent disturbing history of censorship. Through photography
of the murals, preparatory sketches, related art works, and ephemera, the
exhibition will tell the story of the mural from its genesis to its end.
A heavily illustrated
companion publication of the same title—also released in September 2017 and
published by Los Angeles publisher Angel City Press—will expand on the murals’ themes
and controversies. With a foreword and afterword by Gustavo Arellano, publisher
and editor of Orange County Weekly,
and photographs by noted photographic journalist Oscar Castillo—many of them
commissioned especially for this publication—the book will reach beyond a
traditional exhibition catalogue to portray these murals as what co-curator
Guiesela Latorre describes as “public
platforms to protest against the injustices of institutionalized racism,
including police brutality, educational inequality, inferior working
conditions, and persisting colonial legacies.”
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Barbara Carrasco’s
massive L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective (1981) never made it to
its designated location at 330
South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles due to its honest portrayal of Los
Angeles’s history. Today it is in storage but will be brought to light again
in the exhibition.
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An investment company
in Miami, Florida, could determine the fate of Willie Herrón’s The Wall That Cracked Open (1972). Painted
in response to the violent stabbing of Herron’s brother in an alleyway, the
mural has been conserved and cared for over the years by the artist himself.
Less than five years
after its completion, Roberto Chávez’s The Path to Knowledge and the False
University (1974–75) was completely obliterated by the college
administration that had originally commissioned it.
Yreina Cervántez and Alma
Lopez’s Huntington Beach mural Historia de Adentro/La Historia de Afuera, The
History from Within/The History from Without (1995) was destroyed after years of
graffiti and eventually painted out completely.
Sergio O’Cadiz’s mural (1975) was starved of
resources after Fountain Valley officials who had commissioned it saw a panel
showing police mistreating a Chicano youth. The mural was neglected, left to
decay, and finally bulldozed by the city.
The complete
disappearance of El Nuevo Mundo: Homage
to the Workers (1997) (above) in
Echo Park and the ongoing corrosion of his best known work, Resurrection of the Green Planet (1990–91)
(below) in Boyle Heights tell the
distinct yet interrelated stories of a disappeared and a disappearing mural,
both embodying the death and near death of Chicana/o muralism.
¡Murales Rebeldes!:
Contested Chicana/o Public Art
opens on September 4, 2017, and will be on view through January 29, 2018,
at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles.
Stay tuned for updates on this exciting project!
Jessica Hough
Director of Exhibitions
jhough@calhist.org
