A line/A lineage

A Line / A Lineageresponds to the Lineage logistics facility fire in Boyle Heights and the massive plume of smoke that spread across the surrounding community. A young girl covers her face with an N95 mask as smoke overtakes the landscape, while flies and a map of Los Angeles’ industrial zones are layered across the image.

The work considers the fire not as an isolated environmental disaster, but as part of a longer history of land-use decisions that have placed industrial activity alongside working-class communities of color. The title plays on the name of the Lineage facility while asking us to consider another kind of lineage: the environmental conditions communities inherit when decades of zoning, industry, and uneven development accumulate in the same place.

By placing the industrial map directly over the body and landscape, the work collapses the distance between planning decisions and their physical consequences. Lines drawn on a map become smoke breathed into the body.

24in X 18in

Digital Collage