Live from the Frontline
In collaboration with community archivists A People’s History of the I.E., I co-wrote a grant for Live from the Frontline; a participatory public memory project inviting artists into the archives and the landscapes of logistics to create site-specific works that explore the roots of environmental racism. The project includes eight sites located in Riverside and San Bernardino where long histories of colonialism and extraction from the land and labor are palpable, offering opportunities to reflect on “the slow violence of the supply chain.” For this project, I led a team of artists to create works at 5 sites in San Bernardino, Bloomington, Colton, and Fontana.
Site Exhibition: Solo show at the California Museum of Photography, June-October, 2024
Fontana
The 880 acre mill site Henry Kaiser once built to manufacture steel for WWII shipyards went bankrupt in 1983, leaving a toxic ruin in its wake. Prologis, a warehouse developer, began cleaning up the land in the mid 2000s, repurposing lots to make way for warehouse sprawl. Through aerial and still photographs, I traced this imprint left by Kaiser and the deserted company town at Eagle Mountain, as if to warn us of what could happen again if the supply chain continues to expand without accountability.
Colton
Mt. Slover, or what the local Cahuilla call The Hill of Ravens, was once a tall mountain filled with limestone. After over a century of mining, it is now just a leveled mound. I returned to the mountain to photograph after local artists Sant Khalsa and Lewis De Soto, but found only a leveled platform with shipping containers stacked to the sky and warning signs of cancerous dust. Mining archives of the cement and rail industries’ use of land brought greater context to why life in Colton has been so hard for the generations who stayed behind.
Site Event: St. Mark’s Baptist Church, July 28th, 2024
San Bernardino
St. Mark’s Baptist church is closing its doors after 95 years in the Valley Truck Farms area. Once a fertile, picturesque Black farming community—it is now surrounded by warehouse development and a dwindling congregation that reflects the lack of residences in the area.
Site Event: Zimmerman Elementary School, June 15th, 2024
Bloomington
In 2022, San Bernardino County approved Bloomington Business Park, a 213-acre industrial deal that promised to bring jobs to Bloomington— a Latino community of 23,000 residents. Bloomington was once a rural, agricultural area where locals tended horses and farmed. With this business park, Howard Industrial Partners, one of the largest warehouse developers in the area, has forever changed the landscape. Included in these plans, will be a land swap that will see Zimmerman Elementary School be torn down and moved to another neighboring lot. In the wake of this development, over 100 households will be displaced, and once constructed, the nearest residence will sit only 11 feet away from a distribution center; downwind of more air pollution, like neighboring Rialto and Fontana.
Working with my student Ferny, who was born and raised in Bloomington, we installed a community intervention at the school before the historic move. Members of the community decorated cardboard boxes and filled a shipping container with their personal archives in resistance to what has forever changed their way of life. A cabalgata was organized for another struggling family in fear of eviction.
Click here to view the project website and site/exhibition launches.
Special thanks and credit to: Adrian Metoyer, who led all of my drone work and supported at all locations. Fernanda Durazo, James M Dailey and Jonathan Arthurs—my supporting artists on the project who hail from these communities . Dr. Catherine Gudis, Dr. Jennifer Tilton and Dr. Audrey Meier with whom I dug through crates, mined digital collections, scanned and secured permissions.
*This project has been generously funded by the California Arts Council.