#2: Artists Against Artwashing

June 2025

Graphic Notation by Hayk Makhmuryan

When they come for your neighbors, will you cooperate, or will you resist? Many of us think that we have an easy answer to this question, but in truth, we are asked to confront our complicity in small acts of violence every day.

As the current uprising against ICE kidnappings in Los Angeles shows, we are continually presented with opportunities to confront violence against vulnerable communities. This current display of fascism did not just emerge in the United States after the November 2024 election. Rather, Black, undocumented, immigrant, LGBTQIA, and unhoused communities have lived in fear of state violence for far, far longer.

In Fall 2024, Los Angeles County released a Request For Proposals seeking artists to create temporary artworks at “RV homeless encampment sites . . . intended to enhance and beautify areas after an RV resolution, including any barriers erected to discourage RVs from returning once they have been removed.” This RFP asked artists to make a choice—to be complicit in covering up the displacement of unhoused people living in RVs, or to resist.

Local artists chose to resist.

What began as a few private conversations and Instagram comments became an open letter with over 100 signatories, which then became a teach-in and gathering amongst artists and advocates discussing how artists can use their creative energies to resist artwashing and stand in solidarity against the homelessness crisis.

The teach-in took place on March 1, 2025 at Los Angeles Poverty Department’s Skid Row History Museum and Archive as part of the community programming for Tents and Tenants: After Echo Park Lake. The following graphic notation by Hayk Makhmuryan (Doodles Without Borders) captures the learnings from this conversation.

We never know when we will be asked to make a choice, and we never know where our choice to stand with our neighbors will lead us. We hope the learnings from this conversation will inspire you to firmly plant your feet on the side of the dispossessed.

View the graphic notation below: