A dancing woman in front of MacArthur Park is on her way to catch a bus on Wilshire Blvd, a major thoroughfare for domestic workers traveling daily to the Westside. She is filled with monarch butterflies, a symbol of migration. Behind her are caretakers of children pushing babies in strollers on an outing in the park. La Salsera is an image of transformation, from hardship into resilience and joy, and from death and loss into a celebration of life. She is a symbol integral to Latinx life and the Los Angeles experience.
La Salsera is an extraordinary large-scale artwork by renowned and celebrated visual artist Dr. Judith F. Baca. Originally commissioned as a site-specific mural installation displayed in the lobby of the Getty’s West Pavilion, La Salsera is now on view in downtown Los Angeles at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes.
View La Salsera
Dr. Judith F Baca
Dr. Judith F. Baca, American visual artist, has dedicated over four decades to creating impactful public art. Her murals bring art into the daily lives of communities. In 1974, she established Los Angeles’ first mural program, producing over 400 murals, offering employment to thousands and evolving into the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). She serves as SPARC’s artistic director, focusing on digital technology to advocate social justice and participatory public arts projects through the UCLA@SPARC Digital/Mural Lab. Baca’s public art monuments reflect the interconnectedness of history, people, and place, emphasizing diverse struggles for rights and community ties to the memory of land. Her most renowned work is the ongoing Great Wall of Los Angeles since 1974, a half-mile mural in San Fernando Valley that has engages hundreds of youth and their families, artists, oral historians, and scholars. Now Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, where Baca was a senior professor in Chicana/o Studies and World Art and Cultures Departments. In 2012, the Los Angeles Unified School District named a school after her called the Judith F. Baca Arts Academy, located in Watts, California, her birthplace. Baca’s contributions have earned her prestigious accolades, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship. She has also received numerous awards most notably, the 2021 National Medal of Arts, the highest presidential honor awarded to artists in the United States.
The installation of La Salsera at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes was made possible, in part, by a grant provided to SPARC from the Eastside Arts Initiative (EAI).
