Westlake Cultural Front----1996
Project Site:
Belmont High School----Los Angeles
Funded by:
The City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department
Located at an inner city high school within a predominiately Latino immigrant community, this public art program is comprised of figurative silhouettes and pedestals that could become public soapboxes. The pedestals are inscribed on alternate sides in Spanish and English, the aspirations and fears of students facing toward the school---the educational imperatives of their teachers facing outward toward the community---and likely to become lightening rods for the indigenous language of graffiti. Like chess pieces, they were periodically re-deployed on campus, to mark shifting lines of demarcaton in the ongoing cultural wars.
Constructed of aluminum profiles and underlying structure to support concrete counterweights, with text cast into the surfaces.
