{"id":173253,"date":"2026-02-11T10:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T10:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/173253\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T10:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T10:05:16","slug":"amid-deportations-immigrant-artist-confronts-fear-through-street-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/173253\/","title":{"rendered":"Amid deportations, immigrant artist confronts fear through street art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Johanna Toru\u00f1o stands under the hot Los Angeles sun, focused, a slight smile crossing her face as she works. She\u2019s wearing black overalls, Bad Bunny x Adidas sneakers and a baseball cap that reads \u201cHecho por inmigrantes\u201d (Made by immigrants). She presses a fresh poster onto a dark wall in downtown L.A., smoothing the paper with care. The image evokes a prayer to the Virgen de Guadalupe, an icon for many Catholic Latinos, asking for protection against the killings and disappearances related to deportations affecting Latino communities in the U.S.<\/p>\n

After finishing the wall close to midday, she heads to a nearby coffee shop adorned with queer and pro-immigration signs. With a warm, charming tone, Toru\u00f1o calls herself a quiet and kind person. Her work, however, is anything but quiet. Bold in color and direct in message, it turns city walls into public pleas and political declarations.<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t need to describe herself as compassionate; a decade of street art dedicated to dignity, immigration and queer survival already testifies to that commitment.<\/p>\n

Nearly 10 years after launching the Unapologetic Street Series<\/a>, Toru\u00f1o has become a prominent voice in contemporary political poster art. The 36-year-old Salvadoran-born queer artist treats public space as both canvas and convening ground, using city walls to spark dialogue and collective presence.<\/p>\n

Her posters have traveled far beyond L.A., appearing in New York and Bologna, Italy. While her visual style has shifted over the years, her purpose has stayed consistent: to make political art accessible and embedded in the communities it speaks to.<\/p>\n

Her work has taken on renewed urgency in recent months as L.A. has seen an intensified wave of federal immigration enforcement operations<\/a> that have left neighborhoods on edge. Raids and targeted arrests across the city have fueled fear and disrupted local life, prompting activists and community groups to scramble to adjust their strategies amid shifting and increasingly<\/a> aggressive tactics by federal agents. In that climate, Toru\u00f1o\u2019s posters function not only as art but as public declarations of solidarity, visibility and resistance.<\/p>\n

And for her, public art is infrastructure \u2014 a way to build community and offer language for feelings that often go unexpressed. \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted my work to bring something of substance in public spaces to help us reimagine a better future and a better right now,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"Johanna <\/p>\n

Johanna Toru\u00f1o presses a poster that reads: \u201cVirgencita, prot\u00e9genos por favor. Est\u00e1n matando a los vecinos y secuestr\u00e1ndolos tambi\u00e9n,\u201d meaning \u201cHoly Virgin, please protect us. They are killing our neighbors and kidnapping them too.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Kayla Bartkowski \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Existence is political<\/p>\n

Toru\u00f1o was almost 10 when she emigrated from El Salvador to the United States, carrying with her the visual language of a country emerging from civil war. The conflict that ended in 1992 resulted in the deaths<\/a> of 75,000 civilians, forced more than a million Salvadorans to flee the country and caused severe economic devastation for those who remained.<\/p>\n

Walls in her childhood were not just that; they were collective diaries \u2014 painted testimonies of grief, resistance and survival. In those public spaces, art wasn\u2019t solitary. It was communal, political and unavoidable. \u201cI just carried that with me,\u201d Toru\u00f1o said, sitting in the coffee shop Ondo. \u201cWhen I got older, I realized that my journey was going to end up in art somehow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Politics, she says, was never abstract. Growing up in a small town in Virginia \u2014 \u201cthe capital of the Confederacy,\u201d as she puts it \u2014 she felt that simply existing was political. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a person who\u2019s not only self-aware, but aware of everything,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I already knew I was a queer immigrant teenager in the South, and that gave me a very unique experience. I cherish that experience a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

But her path to art wasn\u2019t direct. Toru\u00f1o dropped out of high school amid personal instability and lack of resources, later earned her diploma and pursued a paralegal certification, motivated by her own experiences navigating the U.S. immigration system. \u201cI wanted to help people,\u201d she says. Art was not the plan, but service was.<\/p>\n

From SoundCloud to city walls<\/p>\n

After a series of relocations and random jobs, the project that would become the Unapologetic Street Series finally began in New York in 2016, first as spoken-word experiments on SoundCloud, then as small black-and-white posters plastered onto city walls.<\/p>\n

The artist smiles as she reminisces about those early experiments. 2016 feels vivid, she says, and thinking about a younger version of herself trying to make sense of that moment \u2014 while navigating formats like SoundCloud and letter-size sheets \u2014 brings her a little bit of joy. \u201cI wanted a way to connect with people,\u201d Toru\u00f1o remembers. \u201cWe were entering a time of unknown and a lot of fear. I wanted to create something that was worth a damn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not much has changed since then, she admits. The bottom line, the artist explains, is that the project began as a way to speak up about situations impacting her community \u2014 and that urgency has never disappeared. \u201cThe work has remained the same,\u201d she says with a serious tone. \u201cThere has never been a point where I created something just for s\u2014 and giggles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even when Toru\u00f1o works on what she calls \u201cpassion projects,\u201d such as incorporating childhood characters or pop culture references, the work remains political and resilient. Alongside the art, Toru\u00f1o organizes gatherings, installations and community events, turning the project into a living network.<\/p>\n

She even says she chose the streets for their radical accessibility. Her work doesn\u2019t require museum tickets, institutional support or a trip across town. \u201cI like the accessibility of it,\u201d she says. About 90% of her artwork is free to download online as well.<\/p>\n

\"Johanna <\/p>\n

Johanna Toru\u00f1o\u2019s work engages themes of immigration, queer identity and conflict, often reflecting diaspora experiences. She designed posters in support of Palestinians in 2024. <\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For De Los)<\/p>\n

An adoptive home<\/p>\n

Although the project was born on the East Coast, Toru\u00f1o says it grew up in L.A. She first visited the city as a teenager, drawn by family ties and the Central American diaspora. California is home to nearly half a million Salvadoran immigrants, making it the second-largest Latin American immigrant community in the state after Mexican immigrants, according to recent data from the Public Policy Institute of California<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2017, community spaces in Boyle Heights housed one of her exhibitions, helping her build relationships with local residents. She moved permanently around 2021. \u201cL.A. has been essential to [the project\u2018s] growth,\u201d the artist recalls.<\/p>\n

With a small gold \u201cLA\u201d necklace glinting against her black overalls, Toru\u00f1o says L.A. is the closest thing to Central America she has found in the U.S. Her work is rooted in the diaspora experience and living here has brought her closer to those roots. Creating through the distinct perspective of a Salvadoran immigrant is the only way her process feels logical. And this authenticity resonates deeply with her community. <\/p>\n

However, she firmly maintains that she is not a representative voice for the community. \u201cI think everybody has a voice. They\u2019ll just introduce it differently,\u201d Toru\u00f1o insists.<\/p>\n

Imagining a dignified city through art<\/p>\n

Her process is fast and intuitive. She designs on an aging iPad, hand-collages elements, scales the images digitally and prints large-format posters. Installation is immediate, sometimes accompanied by site-specific arrangements: the location of posters often depends on the lighting of the street or the aesthetic of the nearby shops.<\/p>\n

But public art is impermanent by design; posters may last months or disappear within hours. Some are defaced. Others are cherished. She is used to both.<\/p>\n

While pasting the new \u201cVirgencita\u201d poster, she notices an older one of hers to the left \u2014 a portrait of transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson \u2014 hanging half ripped. Toru\u00f1o smiles, unfazed. The message, she says, already did its work. She rarely references institutions or agencies when she speaks. Instead, Toru\u00f1o uses the language she learned from the women in her family, like her mother \u2014 one of care, protection and resilience \u2014 turning art into gestures of collective comfort for those who need it, rather than direct confrontation.<\/p>\n

This ethos is encapsulated in one of her favorite posters, which declares: \u201cBlessed are the queers cooking each other\u2019s meals.\u201d It honors chosen families and mutual care, capturing the core of her practice. Consequently, when she\u2019s asked about her vision for L.A., she speaks less about policy and more about dignity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish for people to live in a dignified and equitable world,\u201d she firmly says. \u201cTo live a life where we don\u2019t have to work to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toru\u00f1o resists the label of activist but embraces the political nature of her work. Instead, she situates herself within a lineage of artists who have used public space to reflect and reshape their communities. \u201cI\u2019m one of many,\u201d she adds. \u201cI\u2019m very proud to be a part of a committed group of folks who, for a very long time, have been a difference in their communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

On L.A. walls, her art continues that lineage: public prayers, political declarations and invitations to imagine something better, not in the future but right now.<\/p>\n

As Toru\u00f1o leaves the coffee shop, the glue on the nearby posters begins to dry, and pedestrians slow down to read them. The posters will weather, peel, maybe disappear by morning. But for a few hours, a day, a month or a year, they will sit there, quietly interrupting the city\u2019s noise with a message meant for anyone who needs it. For Toru\u00f1o, that fleeting moment is enough: a conversation started, a community reflected, a public prayer left in plain sight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johanna Toru\u00f1o stands under the hot Los Angeles sun, focused, a slight smile crossing her face as she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[18143,82828,179,5788,82831,82829,82825,48,52,51,47,50,49,82826,82827,1506,82830,57528,2281,8843,1968],"class_list":["post-173253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-care","tag-city-wall","tag-community","tag-downtown-l-a","tag-family-tie","tag-immigrant-artist","tag-johanna-toruno","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-political-art","tag-poster","tag-project","tag-public-space","tag-street-art","tag-u-s","tag-way","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}