New Georgia Project Action Fund

Three designs commissioned by Big Bowl of Ideas to support the The New Georgia Project Action Fund and their mission to increase civic participation of underrepresented & underserved communities of colors, and mobilizing by engaging in local and national political campaigns in support of, or opposition to ballot measures, referendums, recalls, initiatives and candidacies for local and state offices.

A cohort of artists and designers are contributing designs to support this effort which you can download and share. View them here.

 

KaleidoLA Artist Speaker Series

Friday, December 11, 2020
12:15 – 1:15PM PDT
Live on Zoom Webinar

 

Decolonizing Collections and Prioritizing Community Partnerships

Online webinar
December 7, 2020 at 4:00-5:30 p.m. Eastern Time

Calls to decolonize collections and partner with communities have gained momentum in recent years. Decolonizing would mean transforming the way we view and interact with collections and people, de-centering white colonizer perspectives, and addressing the traumatic histories that have led to our existing systems. The current racial justice movement has made the need to be inclusive and to partner with communities even more clear. What would it look like if we rejected conservation's traditional top-down approach and instead shared authority with Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color? This session will examine the need to dismantle our problematic foundations and discuss how we can enrich our work through partnerships with others.

The webinar will take place on Zoom and automated live captions will be available for those who choose to use them. The webinar will be recorded and the recording will be available to view shortly after the live event is complete.

 

Memory and Futurity in Yaangna (at Grand Park LA)

I’m honored to have developed Memory and Futurity in Yaangna, a project that resulted in a series of programs looking at the authentic and multi-layered history of Yaangna (Downtown Los Angeles), memory culture and public space/civic art.

From November 21, 2020 to January 4, 2021 you can view Mercedes Dorame’s installation at Grand Park as part of Memory and Futurity in Yaangna featuring an installation and a Virtual Reality film “Birthplace of the People” by Cindi Alvitre and the Puvungna Collective.

Memory and Futurity in Yaangna is a program in partnership between Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission and Meztli Projects

MEMORY AND FUTURITY IN YAANGNA
In July 2020, the Department of Arts and Culture put out a call for artists, in collaboration with the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, to create a temporary artwork or program in response to the November 2018 removal of the Columbus Statue at Grand Park, downtown Los Angeles. Two projects were selected: a virtual engagement program by the Puvungna Collective and a temporary art installation by Mercedes Dorame.

 

Yaangna, Beyond LA. Indigenous Frameworks

How can Indigenous frameworks and methodologies help cities and counties change policy to address the lack of visibility of Native/Indigenous Peoples?

Focusing on three Los Angeles locations, significant to Native/Indigenous peoples, this series of events I curated, brings together artists, Elders, Tribal Members, scholars, and activists into dialogue about authentic narratives, strategies for policy change, the future of public/civic art, civic memory, and memory culture: What must we not forget?

Watch the event series Yaangna, Beyond LA. Indigenous Frameworks, with the participation of Cindi Alvitre (Tongva), Guadalupe Rosales, Pamela Villaseñor (Tataviam), Julia Bogany (Tongva), Rosten Woo, Morning Star Gali (Pit River Tribe) and others.

Now online on the YouTube channel of Goethe-Institut Los Angeles

 

NALAC Catalyst for Change

Blessed and honored to support artists as a coach- thank you NALAC!

"NALAC will award $1.2 million to Latinx artists over three years

San Antonio, TX, November 23, 2020 — In partnership with the Surdna Foundation, NALAC embarks on a new grantmaking initiative to support Latinx artists working to radically imagine more racially just systems.

For its first iteration of the grant, NALAC is working with past grantees and alumni with experience in community arts practice to build out and model the new Catalyst for Change grant program. Eleven artists, representing seven different states artistic disciplines, are working with NALAC in this model year with projects addressing systems of injustice within their own communities."

 

Joel Garcia on Finding Harmony in Public Space

In this episode, GSAPP Historic Preservation PhD students Anna Gasha and Shuyi Yin interview Joel Garcia about the connection between violence experienced in communities of color and public space because of the existence of monuments and memorials to the colonial past.

 

KCET: IndigenARTS & Wellness Heals East L.A. Communities Through Indigenous Traditions

by @Afroxander (Ivan Fernandez)

A collaboration between Meztli Projects and the Indigenous Circle of Wellness with support from the California Arts Council.

“The purpose behind IndigenARTS & Wellness is “to generate dialogue around intergenerational trauma & resiliency, sexual & gendered violence, systemic violence, art as medicine & a healing tool, to process, reflect and work towards individual & collective wellness” through a combination of Indigenous artistic/creative practices, such as ceramics/clay, weaving, beading circles, with mental health and wellness support. Their work will focus on assisting Indigenous-identifying people in Los Angeles county, especially those in the communities on the eastern side of L.A., but will be open and available to all.“

 

DUBLAD Broadcast
Counter-Memories: Joel Garcia and Paul Holdengräber
Monday, October 19, 2020 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

“On June 20, 2020, the statue of Father Junipero Serra was removed by activists in Los Angeles. Artist and community organizer Joel Garcia joins curator Paul Holdengräber to discuss how and why this statue was removed. He breaks down Serra’s role in the mission system in California. The myth that Serra was a defender of indigenous peoples has been perpetuated in direct contrast to the reality of the mission system’s destructive and traumatic impact on the indigenous people of the region. Joel believes that it is essential that we sit with the truth of the historical harms of people like Serra and institutions like the California missions. Taking down this statue is one part of opening up that conversation about what it means to reckon with the past and to begin taking steps towards real change. Paul and Joel talk about the meaning of reconciliation and healing, discussing how this action figures into the ongoing movements

round policing and racial justice and what actions need to come next to keep this work going. In explaining what this action represents for the communities within Los Angeles, Joel offers a vision for what it means to imagine a different future outside of the constructs of colonialism.”

 

A statue of Christopher Columbus stood in L.A.’s Grand Park until 2018, when the city removed it. Photographer: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

A statue of Christopher Columbus stood in L.A.’s Grand Park until 2018, when the city removed it. Photographer: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images

There Must Be a Better Way to Make a Monument
As controversial statues are toppled across the U.S., artists and activists are pushing cities to rethink the memorialization process.
By Kriston Capps
October 13, 2020

“This work involves more than just swapping out bad statues with good statues. Garcia, who is a Monument Lab fellow, is one of the artists working on the ground to give communities more weight in discussions about the past and future of the built environment. While advocates hope to see greater diversity and inclusion in the monuments that do get built, they are increasingly focused on breaking up the rigid processes that produce those monuments — and normalizing the often scattershot tactics that advocates use to bring them down.”

 

Mon, 10/12/2020 - Shaping the Past Virtual Discussion
COUNTER MEMORIES: JOEL GARCIA AND PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER

In the United States, Germany, and throughout the world, citizens are questioning conventional historical narratives and reflecting on the meanings and implications of public monuments. Recent protests and interventions around statues of Confederate generals and figures such as Columbus and Bismarck reflect a yearning to correct and critically re-examine dominant histories and their ongoing legacies in the present.

The conversation series Counter-Memories will investigate a number of international monuments and places of remembrance whose symbolic significance often reveals a great deal about our relationship to history. The Thomas Mann House, the Goethe-Institutes in North America, and Onassis LA will convene artists, activists, and intellectuals for illustrated virtual conversations around historical memory.

The first episode will be released on October 12th, 2020, Indigenous Peoples' Day, and brings Los Angeles based artist and cultural organizer Joel Garcia into discussion with interviewer and curator Paul Holdengräber to investigate the significance of place, memory, and memorialization to Indigenous communities in contemporary Los Angeles. The discussion includes the debate around the statue of Junipero Serra, who was instrumental in building the California mission system during the Spanish colonization. The statue was removed by activists in June 2020.

Paul Holdengräber
is an interviewer and curator. He is the Founding Executive Director of Onassis Los Angeles (OLA). Previously, and for 14 years, he was Founder and Director of The New York Public Library’s LIVE from the NYPL cultural series where he interviewed and hosted over 600 events, holding conversations with everyone from Patti Smith to Zadie Smith, Ricky Jay to Jay-Z, Errol Morris to Jan Morris, Wes Anderson to Helen Mirren, Werner Herzog to Mike Tyson. Before his tenure at the Library, Holdengräber was the Founder and Director of “The Institute for Art & Cultures” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and a Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He is the host of the ongoing series The Quarantine Tapes: A week-day program from Onassis LA and dublab.

 

Part of a three event series, Yaangna, Beyond LA. Indigenous Frameworks, presented within the context of the project Shaping the Past.

How can Indigenous frameworks and methodologies help cities and counties change policy to address the lack of visibility of Native/Indigenous Peoples? Focusing on three Los Angeles locations significant to Native/indigenous peoples, this series of events brings together artists, Elders, Tribal Members, scholars, and activists into dialogue about authentic narratives, strategies for policy change, the future of public/civic art, civic memory, and memory culture: “What must we not forget?”

 

On Oct.13 I'll be sharing space with some brilliant folks, Paul Farber, Arielle Julia Brown, and Sue Mobley (colloqate.org) on how YOU can shape more inclusive and expansive monuments in your community. Join Monument Lab for a workshop designed for planners, artists, advocates, municipal staff and volunteers interested in developing new approaches to public art and exploring the value of public history as a tool for community-based research and engagement.

Link to dialogue series
https://www.mapc.org/resource-library/public-art-public-memory/

Link to Oct.13 event
https://www.nefa.org/events/monument-lab-workshop-grounding-public-art-cultural-justice-2-sessions

 

Fall Equinox 2020: Reclaiming Yaangna Park

While the city develops a process to address monuments commemorating acts of violence against Black and Indigenous Peoples we will obscure the false narratives to make space for truth.

 

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Monument Lab and its collaborators featured in The New Yorker

“Earlier this summer, I spoke with the indigenous artist and organizer Joel Garcia, a former Monument Lab fellow. Garcia grew up in Los Angeles, deeply immersed in the local punk scene. He found meaning in the punk ethos of D.I.Y. resourcefulness, particularly when it came to repurposing spaces, like restaurants or community centers, to perform, create, and commune. As a teen-ager, he got a job at Epitaph Records, a respected punk label. Although the office was a straight shot across the city from his home on the Eastside, he had to transfer buses at Grand Park, where a statue of Christopher Columbus stood on the courthouse steps. Looking at all the homeless people and those awaiting their court hearings, Garcia said, was a contrast of “domination and poverty.””

 

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NEW PROGRAM: INDIGENARTS & WELLNESS

One of the reasons Meztli Projects was founded was to advocate for more opportunities for Native/Indigenous artists, as well as bring resources to our communities.

With support from the California Arts Council, Meztli Projects and Indigenous Circle of Wellness will provide IndigenARTS & Wellness a project blending Indigenous practices with mental health and wellness support, using Beading Circles, Printmaking, Weaving, Ceramics/Clay, Storytelling, and other art-forms to generate dialogue around intergenerational trauma & resiliency, sexual & gendered violence, systemic violence, art as medicine & a healing tool, to process, reflect and work towards individual & collective wellness.

This project is funded through the Innovations + Intersections (I+I) program of the California Arts Council. To learn more about I+I, visit http://arts.ca.gov/news/prdetail.php?id=298

 

Monument Lab Town Hall

This year’s 2020 Monument Lab Town Hall annual conference goes virtual and transnational, facilitating pressing conversations around what, whom, and how to remember in public spaces across the globe. This year’s symposium kicks off Shaping the Past, a collaborative project in partnership with the Goethe-Institut, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb).

Monument Lab Town Hall explores new models and practices for how we might shape the past in ways that continue to confront legacies of racist, sexist, and colonial systems of knowledge and to strengthen democracy through public spaces. Such efforts include community organization and civic engagement tactics that include multiple publics in these monumental matters. The Town Hall features a series of four keynote conversations and video presentations from artists/activists working across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Germany. Across two days of conversations, curators, writers, artists, and activists will think together about memory work across borders, the relationship between art and activism. Monument Lab Town Hall will explore critical and creative practices we might need towards monumental justice, education, and care.

 

AIR, the Artist-in-Residence Program at LACI, empowers innovation by uniting the creative and cleantech communities.

Please join on us on Wednesday September 9 from 4 - 6 PM for an artist talk with AIR 2020 artists Veronique d’Entremont, Joel Garcia and iris yirei hu. Each artist will discuss their approach to work and focus for the extended residency period.

 

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Thrilled to be part of the AIR 2020 cohort alongside Veronique d'Entremont and iris yirei hu. In light of the pandemic, AIR has shifted to a six-month all-virtual research residency, taking place July - December 2020. The virtual residency will be followed by training and 12 months access at the Advanced Prototyping Center, the $10M+ prototyping facility housed at La Kretz Innovation Campus. Timing will be determined by COVID-19 best practice recommendations. Until then, the work in researching and modelling new systems in regard to the climate crisis and environmental justice continues.

 

Photo by Kenneth Lopez

Photo by Kenneth Lopez

SERRA GONE FROM OLVERA

On Saturday, June 20, 2020, the Serra statue at Olvera was removed through a community effort with respect to the San Gabriel Band of Gabrieleno/Tongva, Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, and various tribal Communities, that also included a ceremony and temporary altar was built.

NEWS COVERAGE
LA TACO: link
LA Times: by Carolina Miranda: link
LA Times: link
LA Daily News: link
LAist: link

VIDEO
By LATACO link

Photo by Erick Iñiguez

Photo by Erick Iñiguez

 

Shaping the Past is a partnership between Monument Lab, the Goethe-Institut, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb) that addresses pressing issues around what, whom, and how to remember in public spaces. 

The project facilitates a transnational exchange program bringing artists and activists together in dialogue to highlight ongoing critical memory interventions in sites and spaces in North America and Germany. Shaping the Past supports civic practitioners, artists, and activists who critically reimagine monuments and emerges from the ongoing Monument Lab Fellows program. These collaborations and conversations offer innovative models for how we might memorialize the past, create dialogue, and strengthen democracy through public spaces across the globe. 

The collaborative initiative consists of three landmark elements: a major public conference that will take place during Monument Lab’s annual Town Hall (October 8-10, 2020); a multi-site exhibition curated by Monument Lab and presented by Goethe-Institut North America and bpb with local programming organized by Goethe-Instituts throughout North America (Fall 2020); and a multilingual book that documents the transnational conversations around public memory as envisioned by the artists, activists, and their collaborators, co-edited by Monument Lab’s Paul M. Farber and Patricia Eunji Kim.

The Shaping the Past exhibition is planned for cities across North America, in partnership with local Goethe-Instituts, throughout the Fall 2020. Participating cities include: 

  • Boston, MA, USA

  • Chicago, IL, USA

  • Houston, TX, USA

  • Kansas City, MO, USA

  • Los Angeles, CA, USA

  • Mexico City, Mexico

  • Montreal, Canada

  • New York, NY, USA

  • San Francisco, CA, USA

  • Seattle, WA, USA

  • Toronto, Canada

  • Washington, DC, USA

 

Monument Lab is proud to announce our 2020 cohort of Transnational Fellows. These artists, activists, and civic practitioners critically reimagine monuments in sites and spaces across North America and Germany. We are excited to learn from and work with the Fellows as they realize their meaningful projects and continue the transnational movement to critically engage the monumental landscape. The Monument Lab Fellows program was founded through a grant from the Surdna Foundation and is facilitated through Slought.

Additionally, Monument Lab Fellows from this and last years' cohorts will be featured in Shaping the Past, a multi-site exhibition and book project that addresses pressing issues around what, whom, and how to remember in public spaces. Shaping the Past is a partnership between Monument Lab, the Goethe-Institut, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb). 

 

XICANX: NEW VISIONS

On the first floor you’ll experience, “XicanX: New Visions.” This national exhibit curated by Dos Mestizx (Suzy González and Michael Menchaca) challenges previous and existing surveys of Chicano and Latino identity-based exhibitions. This group of 34 artists expands upon how Latinx artwork can be established across ideological borders; freely expressing a new wave of images and voices in a post-internet era.

LOS MAESTROS: EARLY EXPLORERS OF CHICANO IDENTITY

Then, head up to the second floor to see “Los Maestros: Early Explorers of Chicano Identity.” This exhibition focuses on three of the founders of San Antonio’s Chicano arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s: Jesse Almazan, Jose Esquivel and Rudy Treviño and will highlight their unique contributions and histories as individual artists. “Los Maestros” is curated by San Antonio arts organization Centro Cultural Aztlan.

Both exhibits run through June 28, 2020.

 

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PARTY OF FIVE

I was commissioned to produce these illustrations to help launch the reboot of Part of Five on Freeform. The series centers on the harmful I’m-acts of the US’ immigration policies when the siblings parents are detained and threatened with deportation.
Watch Part of Five on Freeform.

 

Shaping the Past Research Trip, Monument Lab and Goethe-Institut, 2019

This year, Monument Lab is working with the Goethe-Institut and the German Federal Agency for Civic Education on Shaping the Past, an extension of the Fellows Program through a transnational cohort, a constellation of exhibitions, and a forthcoming book featuring the work of memory workers across North America and Germany.

Over the summer, we traveled with members of the 2019 Fellows cohort and the Goethe-Institut to Berlin for a research trip. We met with memory workers, cultural organizers, and public space advocates, touring both prominent and grassroots sites of memory.

The week culminated in a group think tank, observed by graphic artist Johanna Benz, exploring the layers of trauma and transformation made evident in navigating through Berlin. Benz rendered observations, anecdotes, and revelations in a way that channeled the powerful thoughts of the Fellows.

Click the link below to read a short reflection and view some of the renderings by Benz.

 

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In partnership with Tongva artists Kelly Caballero and River Garza, we installed “Yaangna Vive! an altar commemorating the original peoples of Tovaangar (Los Angeles County) featuring all California native plants used for their medicial qualities such as elderberry, sage, woolly curls, and others. In addition to honoring Tongva ancestors the altar includes our animal relatives such as the black bear, deer, red tail hawk, coyote, relatives with special relationships to the Tongva.

This beautiful altar, is sponsored by the Glendale Arts and Culture Commission through the Urban Art Fund, will be on display at Glendale Library, Arts & Culture Central Library through November 1st, then relocated to Artsakh Paseo for the Glendale Día de los Muertos Celebration on November 2nd (4pm-9pm).

 

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Last night (October 28, 2019) I curated a selection of activities for the Reimagining Justice: An Intergenerational Dialogue on Community Building and Healing which included Seed Ball Making with California Native Plant Specialist Nicholas Hummingbird, Essentials Oils by Daisy of Yerberia Mayahuel, Sprays by Olivia Perez Biera, Herbal Remedies by Mama Maiz, and two screen printing stations featuring a “Self Care is Self Love” bandana and a “fill-in-the-blank” Heals Me designs by me with lettering by Mike Bravo. Live printing by the Meztli Projects team of Gabby and Kenneth.

The dialogue was organized by The Alliance for Boys and Men of Color (ABMOC), California Conference for Equality and Justice (CCEJ), and Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) in partnership with The California Endowment.

 

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Dreaming of Food Sovereignty in LA with Metzli Projects, Toypurina Youth Arts & Action

BEADING WITH ACORNS AND SEASHELLS The #acorn 🐿 #elderberry 🌳 and #abalone 🐚 hairpin making workshop honors the ancestral relationship between the #Tongva Peoples and the land. Come learn about the reciprocal relationship between us and our non-human relatives and the important steps we need to take to get back into alignment with all the living beings around us. Free #tongvaland poster!

Capacity is limited; RSVP preferred, space given on a first-come, first-served basis. You are invited to bring your own pillows blankets and chairs for this outdoor event around a fire. Please dress in layers as we are outside the whole time.

 

courtesy of @artchangeus on IG

courtesy of @artchangeus on IG

This past weekend was spent working alongside a brilliant group of artists, arts administrators, creatives and cultural workers from across the nation who are pushing for real authentic strategies to bring cultural equity to all our communities. Learn more about the Cultural Community Benefits Principles at the link below. FYI this is still in draft form.

  • Principle 1: Build Inclusive Organizations

  • Principle 2: Honor Indigenous Peoples and Lands

  • Principle 3: Commit To Cultural Equity

  • Principle 4: Create Local Economic Benefits and Value

  • Principle 5: Contribute to Field Wide Change


 

Join Monument Lab for our first annual meeting featuring panels and workshops with our National Fellows and guest collaborators from around the country. The daylong gathering ends with a Town Hall focused on the momentum, milestones, challenges, and next steps for the critical monument movement today.

Motivated by recent debates and upheavals in cities such as Charlottesville, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Richmond, the Town Hall centers around a guiding question: Who Decides the Fate of Public Space? In conversation with our national fellows, whose groundbreaking work has sparked new possibilities for monuments in these cities and beyond, attendees will explore approaches for those seeking to tackle, topple, and reframe history in public space. Together, we will investigate power and process through stories of social justice and equity.

Monument Lab National Fellows: Arielle Brown (Philadelphia), Cheyenne Concepcion (San Francisco), Free Egunfemi (Richmond), Joel Garcia (Los Angeles), Gina Balamucki and Maya Little of Take Action Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill), Kayinsola Anifowoshe, Zhahna Bryant (Charlottesville), and Anaya Patrice Frazier, Danielle Nolen, and Aliyah Young of A Long Walk Home’s Girl/Friends (Chicago).

Monument Lab Town Hall is presented with support from the Surdna Foundation and in collaboration with the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Heim Center for Cultural and Civic Engagement at Parkway Central Library.

 

We Rise

We Rise (May 18-27, 2019) was a 10-day pop-up immersive experience that brought together LA’s diverse community to explore our collective power to live lives of purpose and engagement. Through powerful programming, performances, immersive workshops, and a world-class art exhibition, we sought to embolden individuals and families to find help, reach out to help others and demand systemic change in order to address the critical need for early intervention, treatment and care for mental wellbeing.

To view the full exhibition click here!

 

2 Degrees Exhibition

Artist Statement: Current Climate Change efforts have spiked within less progressive circles so much so that the current Presidential administration has pushed back against this narrative. The push back and subsequent policies and actions such as withdrawing from the Paris climate agreements is primarily framed by Americans centering themselves and their experience within this context. Standing Rock and the #NODAPL struggle was triggered by white people deciding they didn’t want a pipeline running through their community and effectively pushed policy to move the pipeline into the Standing Rock Reservation. In short, Climate Change is now important because it’s affecting Americans.

But this framework is flawed. We need to realize that there are places in the world that already live in a Post-Climate Change reality. A short drive south of Los Angeles is the Cucapa community near the city of Mexicali, capital of Baja California where the agriculture industry in the Coachella and Imperial Valleys have swallowed up the water from the Colorado River that used to empty into the Colorado River Delta. These humxn-made changes to the environment have caused flooding and droughts in the area going as far back as the early 1900s. This print captures a day during the moon-tides which take place between late February through early May in which the Cucapa community fish the delta and attempt to capture enough corvina fish to sustain them for a full year. After being displaced and the ecosystem of land-based animals pushed to extinction levels, the Cucapa have been relegated to only fishing for survival while also being criminalized for practicing their ancestral traditions of fishing.

Climate change efforts need to de-center both the American and humxn-experience and take leadership from Indigenous communities already living in a Post-Climate Change reality.

 

13th Annual California Centered: Printmaking Exhibition

Merced County Arts Council 13th Annual California Centered: Printmaking Exhibition will feature work by Joel Garcia. The juried group show highlights and exhibits the best in recent California printmaking. The show opens April 16th and runs through June 1st at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center.

 

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TATEWARI (Transformed Through Fire)

A serigraph portrait-based series uplifting members of Los Angeles' Xicano/Indigenous community who have survived street-violence and addictions to become agents of healing.

Joel is a 2019 National Association for Latino Arts & Culture Fund for the Arts grant recipient, for more information please visit NALAC.

 

DECOLONIAL INITIATIVE TASK FORCE

The Decolonial Initiative Task Force (DITF) plans to include engagement with the Tongva, Tataviam and Chumash people, Indigenous experts in cultural art practices, the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, and the Los Angeles County Arts Commission to create just and communal processes to address the inequities and lack of inclusion of Native Peoples of Los Angeles in civic art that upholds white supremacy.

Joel is an inaugural fellow of Monument Lab chosen through a national open call, these civic practitioners and youth fellows confront the inequity and injustice in our nation’s monuments and provide bold, creative approaches to public art, history, and memory. Some of the fellows have been working toward these ends for decades. Others began only recently, but have already made impressive, vital contributions. Together, they represent a new guard who are radically redefining what it means to engage public spaces, sites of history, and monuments today.

 

HOMIE II HOMIE

Homie II Homie is a initiative by individuals impacted by street violence and the prison industrial complex for the purpose of providing those individuals a space and network to heal, develop and maintain professional skills and build self-sustainability through entrepreneurship and incubation of dreams and ideas.