Alfredo Ramos Martínez, printed by María Sodi de Ramos Martínez, Vendedoras de Flores (Flower Vendors), 1947. Serigraph. Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Gift of Charles A. Storke, 1994.57.23. © The Alfredo Ramos Martínez Research Project, reproduced by permission. “My father and mother were devoted to each other… Fortunately…

Ken Gonzales-Day discusses Surface Tension: Murals, Signs, and Mark-Making in Los Angeles, a photographic journey to map out the city and make visible the larger cultural, socio-economic, and political forces that have shaped the place we have come to call Los Angeles.

"What does the avant-garde look and sound like when it blooms outside the hothouse of the bourgeoisie?" When Asco, the self-named Chicano art collective, first collapsed the space between graffiti and conceptual art, their streetwise institutional critique started delivering an abundance of unforgettable answers.

I recently visited the Mexican Cultural Institute in downtown Los Angeles to see the 40th anniversary commemorative exhibition on the Chicano Moratorium, an anti-war movement that organized protests in East Los Angeles from 1969-71. The protests had been marred by rioting and historically marked by the violent death of Los Angeles Times journalist Ruben Salazar, who was fatally struck in the head by a tear gas projectile that had been fired by a Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff. In the exhibit, I found myself drawn to an untitled photograph by Victor Aleman. I was riveted by the personal significance of the grainy black and white image depicting several police officers and protesters on a familiar street corner in East L.A.