{"id":105566,"date":"2025-12-23T00:03:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T00:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/105566\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T00:03:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T00:03:10","slug":"patrick-martinez-captures-the-collective-conscience-in-los-angeles-as-risks-to-immigrant-communities-mount-annenberg-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/105566\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Martinez captures the \u2018collective conscience\u2019 in Los Angeles as risks to immigrant communities mount \u2013 Annenberg Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the wave of protests over heightened immigration enforcement activity that swept across the country during this spring<\/a> and summer<\/a>, Patrick Martinez was not only in his studio \u2014 he was in the streets of Downtown Los Angeles. So was his art.<\/p>\n

As demonstrators marched throughout the city, the crowd was dotted with placards printed with the artist\u2019s signature neon sign art, bearing messages like \u201cTHEN THEY CAME FOR ME\u201d and \u201cDEPORT ICE.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking out when he sees injustice has always been instinctive for Martinez \u2014 and art, he says, has long been his most natural language.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re paying attention to the landscape, we have to pay attention to things that are happening in it,\u201d Martinez told Annenberg Media at the Hammer Museum, where his work is displayed as part of the biennial Made in L.A.<\/a> showcase. \u201cAnd if I think that something is brutal and deplorable, then I\u2019m going to say something about it and try to push back in the way that I know how.\u201d<\/p>\n

As immigration crackdowns continue to intensify nationwide under the Trump administration, Martinez continues to translate the urgency of the moment into work that elevates often silenced or overlooked communities. It\u2019s art that refuses to retreat \u2014 pieces that confront viewers head-on, slow them down and leave little room for looking away, whether through a glowing neon message in bold lettering or a reimagined school folder evoking the threats confronting immigrant Angelenos today.<\/p>\n

Martinez seeks to capture the \u201ccollective conscience\u201d of Los Angeles during periods of significant unrest, reflecting the shared emotions felt by many across the city that words alone cannot fully convey. <\/p>\n

The artist pulls imagery and language from the streets of Los Angeles, reshaping it into pieces that return to the landscape as deliberate disruptions. In doing so, his art becomes both a living record of the times and a pointed critique of the inequities that define them \u2014 \u201cwork that pushes back,\u201d as he describes it.<\/p>\n

Seeing his art in the street during recent protests, circulating through the communities that shaped it and in the hands of people speaking out, feels not only natural but necessary, Martinez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really activates when a person has it out on the street,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cI\u2019m really into taking things from the landscape, and sampling them, and then placing them back into the contexts that they were inspired by.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early influences<\/p>\n

Martinez came of age in Pasadena during the 1990s, a decade shaped by events that would have a lasting influence on his artistic outlook. The 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers and the subsequent 1992 L.A. uprising formed the backdrop of his adolescence, which unfolded alongside the rise of rap music and his brother\u2019s early experiments with graffiti art.<\/p>\n

Influenced by everything from cartoon characters to New York City subway art, Martinez had been drawing for as long as he could remember. By the time he entered middle school, he picked up a spray paint can himself \u2014 an act that, he said, allowed him to channel those early impressions into a visual language of his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was hooked,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cAnd parallel to my brother, I understood the culture through the art of graffiti.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinez continued to experiment with graffiti during his time at Pasadena High School. He went on to study at ArtCenter College of Design, where he learned traditional techniques like landscape and figure painting. <\/p>\n

His art style tackled themes like identity, police misconduct and racial justice. Martinez said he struggled to find a market for his work, as he often felt that the people around him didn\u2019t understand his vision.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe professors at the school didn\u2019t even know how to critique it,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cI thought art was supposed to be dangerous, and should be something that\u2019s not polite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinez soon lost interest in conventional art techniques and typical surfaces like canvas, feeling they constrained his ability to create work with deeper significance and \u201csay something that hasn\u2019t already been said.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to get my hands dirty,\u201d Martinez said, \u201cand get involved with, \u2018well, what am I interested in? What is already existing that feels like it\u2019s connected to our history?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"InIn “Battle of the City on Fire” (2025), Martinez draws on Native American, Mayan and Aztec\u2013inspired imagery, blending these elements with visual references to contemporary Los Angeles. (Photo by Charlotte Calm\u00e8s) <\/p>\n

He began to draw on materials from the landscape around him, like the stucco on storefronts and markets and the cinder blocks of local mom-and-pop shops and liquor stores. All of these elements came together into what he calls a \u201cwoven tapestry of the surroundings\u201d \u2014 particularly the parts of Los Angeles often overlooked in traditional art and media.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to be the artist that really shows you areas of Los Angeles, the pockets of L.A., the bridges of L.A. that really, in my opinion, make L.A.,\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n

Neon as a medium<\/p>\n

Drawing inspiration from the commercial signage that caught his eye while driving through the city, Martinez started using neon as a primary material for his work. Just as neon signs advertise local services, he co-opted the medium to convey his messages in a way that was immediately visible and familiar.<\/p>\n

Martinez began experimenting with neon in the late 2000s, creating signs with all-caps neon messages including \u201cLA MIGRACION ES NATURAL (Migration Is Natural),\u201d \u201cAMERICA ES PARA LOS DREAMERS (America Is for Dreamers),\u201d \u201cNO BODY IS ILLEGAL\u201d and \u201cWE MAY HAVE ALL COME ON DIFFERENT SHIPS, BUT WE\u2019RE IN THE SAME BOAT NOW.\u201d <\/p>\n

These are now displayed across the country in museums including the The Broad in downtown Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Rubell Museum in Miami.<\/p>\n

The artist describes himself as instinctively drawn to honoring the \u201cdiscounted and discarded,\u201d with his work reflecting both his lived experiences and the communities he grew up in and alongside. Martinez is of Filipino, Native American and Mexican descent and was raised in an immigrant family. He says the themes woven throughout his work reflect the challenges and realities affecting his community, dynamics he described as impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not something I can just not speak about,\u201d Martinez added.<\/p>\n

One of Martinez\u2019s early neon works, \u201cHold the Ice,\u201d is currently on view<\/a> at the Hammer Museum. Martinez describes the piece as a fusion of two protest signs: one part an homage to the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests, where Native American residents in North Dakota carried placards with slogans like \u201cWater Is Life\u201d<\/a> to oppose a pipeline that threatened their water supply, and the other a call to remove immigration agents from local communities today.<\/p>\n

\"CreatedCreated in 2020, “Hold the Ice” is one of more than 200 neon works by Patrick Martinez. (Photo by Charlotte Calm\u00e8s) <\/p>\n

Martinez said that this approach of combining messages is a deliberate way of pointing out the interconnectedness of these issues, with the artist seeking to present an ongoing conversation about injustice that \u201ccontinues to evolve, change and happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to find those connections and try to expose them in a real way,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

While his \u201cHold the Ice\u201d sign was created over five years ago, many viewers assume it was made recently, Martinez said, as his earlier neon works have resurfaced and circulated widely amid the recent surge in immigration enforcement under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Since creating his first neon sign in 2008, he has produced over 200 additional pieces. In 2020, he began participating in what he refers to as \u201cmutual aid,\u201d selling merchandise such as prints, t-shirts, hats, yard signs and skateboards featuring these designs, with proceeds donated to local organizations that assist immigrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully that will continue to be a tool to show solidarity throughout, and understand that we\u2019re not isolated,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cWe\u2019re more of a unit, and we\u2019re going to continue to come closer together and kind of form a strong bond, all through this trauma and this brutality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pee Chees in protest<\/p>\n

Martinez believes the increasingly aggressive tactics used by federal law enforcement, driven by the administration\u2019s push to detain and deport immigrants, have reached a level of brutality he hasn\u2019t seen in his lifetime.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re trying to make a point. They\u2019re trying to break people right now. And that\u2019s the difference. It\u2019s overt,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to brutalize people to break them so that they can continue to do more damage in other ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Martinez\u2019s signature series involves Pee Chee folders, a school supply widely used in classrooms from the 1970s through the 1990s, which he says portray \u201cidealized versions\u201d of American youth participating in sports like football, track and tennis. In the series, he transforms these folders into social commentary on police brutality against Black and brown youth, and more recently, immigration raids.<\/p>\n

Like many kids of his generation, Martinez was first introduced to PeeChee folders in middle and high school, and once used them to doodle his own observations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just imagining if I was in school, what I would be thinking about?\u201d Martinez said. \u201cOr what I\u2019m seeing on the TV and the news, how would that live on these folders? What would I say?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pee Chee series initially documented individual acts of violence, such as Eric Garner\u2019s death<\/a> after being placed in a chokehold by New York police in 2014, and Philando Castile\u2019s fatal shooting<\/a> by a Minnesota officer during a traffic stop in 2016. <\/p>\n

More recent pieces in the series have focused on communities being terrorized by immigration enforcement: kids on a track team being seized by plainclothes masked agents, a football player being stopped mid-sprint by an officer in military gear, a young protester holding a sign reading \u201cICE out of schools\u201d being beaten by an agent. <\/p>\n

Scribbled messages around the images, suggesting notes written by students, mix incident reports like \u201cBlack ICE SUV behind El Sereno Middle School \u2013 8:46 a.m.\u201d and \u201c1,200 detainees missing from Alligator Alcatraz\u201d with reminders like \u201ctest next Monday!\u201d<\/p>\n

As Martinez describes it, he intentionally transforms this familiar and nostalgic object into a tool for social critique. The artist said he not only seeks to raise awareness of these incidents unfolding across communities but also to preserve them in the historical record, and demand accountability at a time when he says many in power are \u201ctrying to literally erase history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we let that happen, and we don\u2019t say anything visually, or with our voice, or push back, then they\u2019ll continue to do more,\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n

\"RecentRecent works in Patrick Martinez\u2019s Pee Chee folder series depict Los Angeles residents being targeted by immigration enforcement. (Photos courtesy of Patrick Martinez) Connecting the present with the past<\/p>\n

Martinez\u2019s work goes beyond current events, reaching into the past to explore how today\u2019s violence is shaped by generations of complex historical forces.<\/p>\n

In \u201cBattle of the City on Fire,\u201d a stucco and cinder block piece created this year, Martinez turns to the ancient Cacaxtla murals of central Mexico to explore themes of lineage and indigeneity. He blends Native American, Mayan and Aztec-inspired imagery with visual elements rooted in modern Los Angeles: graffiti text found on signage across the city, bold block-letter advertisements for \u201cICE\u201d and \u201cAGUA\u201d commonly seen outside gas stations, and painted beverages often seen on liquor store walls. A painted bottle of water is depicted pouring into the eyes of a figure beneath, referencing protesters who have been tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed during recent demonstrations.<\/p>\n

Layered in are other images, including a warrior in feathered armor pierced by an arrow, taken directly from the Cacaxtla murals<\/a>, and vibrant floral designs inspired by the work of the East Los Streetscapers<\/a>. This composition rests on a scorched base, referencing the Southern California wildfires last January and the broader unrest the city has faced under the strain of recent immigration raids.<\/a><\/p>\n

By placing these depictions on a tattered wall, Martinez said he seeks to convey two things: attempts to sideline, separate or silence Angelenos, and the enduring presence of local communities, whose art and culture continue to peek out through the rubble.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s essentially what L.A. is sometimes,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cThings are sanctioned in the neighborhoods, but the city kind of erases or covers it up \u2026 the city painted them out, but they\u2019re resilient and trying to break through.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Martinez sees it, Angelenos of color are being \u201cdisappeared\u201d not only through the physical removal of people by immigration enforcement, but through gentrification that erases the cultural identity of neighborhoods, leaving little trace of the communities that once defined them. <\/p>\n

Martinez hopes that immigrant Angelenos and other locals who feel stifled at this moment can see his work and feel represented.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ll tell me, \u2018seeing it makes me feel warm, it makes me feel better,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The artist noted that it\u2019s not only vulnerable community members who hesitate to speak out against immigration raids, but also museums, which often remain silent out of fear of backlash during this politically polarized moment. In these times, he emphasizes that it is crucial for artists themselves to take ownership of their messages and amplify them within their communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m set up to speak and push back, because I\u2019ve been doing that type of work for a long time,\u201d said Martinez, who insists he\u2019s not an activist, but simply \u201can artist paying attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think at a certain point, artists need to come together, and push back together,\u201d he said, \u201cand this is the way we can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n