South El Monte Arts Posse

Over the past few months, Ramiro Gomez Jr has been working on “Happy Hills,” which documents “the predominantly Hispanic workforce who work tirelessly behind the scenes to maintain the beautiful imagery of these affluent areas.” Instead of painting on canvasses and exhibiting in galleries, Ramiro paints on cardboard boxes and places cut outs exactly where his “subjects” labor:  in the front yards of wealthy homes, hotels, parks, and sidewalks. In producing representations of real-life laborers and installing them in these particular locations, Ramiro hopes that people will pause, contemplate, and recognize the important contributions that Hispanics laborers make to these affluent areas.

This past weekend we had the pleasure of documenting a shift in Ramiro’s work. For “Meet Me at the Metro,” Ramiro focused on the Hispanic community at work and leisure in East Los Angeles’s Belvedere Park Lake. Check out SEMAP videographer and filmmaker Henry Pacheco’s short video:

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