APeyes: Catching a Glimpse of Asian American and Pacific Islander Murals in Los Angeles

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While murals themselves vary in style and form, public art and mural-making play an integral role in documenting and telling the history, culture, and identity of a community. The creation of city murals, in particular, involves collaborative efforts of artists and community members. From discussing the concept, theme, and gathering community stories, to fundraising and recruiting volunteers for painting, this collective process is what makes community based murals significant to the people it seeks to represent.

Called “the Mural Capital of the World,” Los Angeles hosts hundreds of murals, throughout the city. As diverse and as vibrant as the city’s population, L.A.’s murals visually represent nearly every ethnic community that resides here. Among the countless murals that exist in the Los Angeles County and Southern California area, how many murals reflect the Asian American and Pacific Islander (API) community? How and when were they formed? What stories do they tell and what histories do they reveal? And what is happening to them now?

The LEAP Leadership in Action interns undertook a project seeking answers to these questions. We hoped to link art, activism, and history in documenting the existing API murals in Los Angeles. What began as research, countless phone calls, site visits, and conversations with community leaders and artists for our pamphlet, however, turned into our own education of the struggles reflecting different API ethnic communities in the greater Los Angeles area. Furthermore, as we progressed in our research, we encountered the sobering reality of cultural murals painted over years ago, the difficulty of maintenance for existing murals, and the overall lack of public awareness on community murals.

These challenges became our motivation. Our project “APeyes: Catching A Glimpse of API Murals in Los Angeles” aims to increase awareness, visibility, and knowledge on existing API murals in Southern California. We believe that understanding the significance behind the API murals will deepen our desires to understand our various communities. Moreover, we wanted to explore the possibilities of community based mural making as a site of activism in its preservation of our collective public and cultural memories that are not reflected in mainstream art.

More Information

For additional information on the Leadership In Action Group Project, please contact:
Scott Chan
Program Coordinator
(213) 485-1422 ext. 4108
schan@leap.org