Staff Infection
SANDOW BIRK RILES BOYLE HEIGHTS
SANDOW BIRK’S “THE LIBERATION OF BAGHDAD”
According to the LA Times, a mural by Long Beach artist Sandow Birk (who we’ve written about here, here and here) has apparently rankled more than a few residents of Boyle Heights. The LAPD-commissioned mural was created for the department’s Hollenbeck station but has yet to be installed because of community concern over stereotypes in the piece: images of overweight women, street vendors, piñatas and the like. Birk is famous for appropriating classical images and tropes and translating them over to our more modern times (take a look at his “Liberation of Baghdad” above), so it’s not exactly surprising that he says the mural pulls heavy inspiration from Diego Rivera. What is surprising, as Birk himself points out, is that he was drafted by the LAPD to craft this piece in the first place—Birk’s works have a notoriously dim view of the city’s law enforcement. Most interesting, however, is that Hector Becerra’s piece also teases out a generational gap in Boyle Heights’ outrage. The story closes with this quote from Joe Gonzalez, a 52-year-old postal worker who balked at the mural’s acceptance by some of the community’s younger members: “See, that’s the heart of the problem. At your age, you don’t see this is offensive. At my age I see this as not inspiring for you at all. I think you deserve a hell of a lot better.”
Tags: art, boyle heights, ddr projects, lapd, Long Beach, mural, politics, sandow birk, War
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