Sing the Real

Lecture: Ramiro Gomez

The Center for Black Studies is proud to present a lecture by Los Angeles artist Ramiro Gomez. Gomez places his work in seemingly unexpected spaces and places. He challenges the demonization of undocumented immigrants and low wage laborers through works of art that demonstrate that all labor has dignity. He makes the invisible visible by re-populating the lawns and hedges, valet stations, and construction sites in affluent west side neighborhoods with three dimensional paintings on cardboard of workers without faces performing necessary but poorly compensated labor as gardeners, housekeepers, and valets. In the entertainment and glamour capital of the world Gomez takes photographs of street vendors selling maps to the stars' homes in Beverly Hills and Bel Air, but has them holding signs that proclaim that the vendors are the real stars.
Gomez's transgressive uses of public space, his artistry in rendering visible what racism renders invisible, and his willing insistence in affirming the humanity and decency of hard working people defamed as parasites and loafers in dominant discourses draws on the best traditions of the Chicano Art Movement to make a powerfully important intervention in urban spaces. Perhaps most important, Gomez's creative provocations prove once again the power of art based on work and willingness, that cannot be contained inside the walls of museums because it comes from and speaks to the collective consciousness of an aggrieved and insurgent people.