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• 1 media/15-873.jpg media/15-873.jpg 2021-04-05T20:34:17-07:00 Ceremony for Smokers 9 Elliot Pinkney
  Watts Towers Art Center, exterior, 1727 East 107th Street
  1991 plain 2021-05-18T15:54:45-07:00 1991 33.938675, -118.242118 Elliot Pinkney’s Ceremony for Smokers, originally displayed at the Watts Towers Art in 1991, depicts the consequences of tobacco usage among the African American community and indites the tobacco industry. The mural contains various scenes, but one thing remains constant: cigarettes infiltrate every aspect of the subjects’ lives. The child playing atop the cigarette box presages future addiction that takes a toll on many impressionable, Black youth. On the left side of the mural, adults are being strangled by the personification of death and are trapped in a cigarette box resembling a prison cell. These vignettes describe the ways in which cigarettes overtake one’s life by destroying their lungs, causing an inescapable addiction, and ultimately, death.
  
  The statewide Tobacco Education Campaign commissioned this mural with the hope of initiating a 25-cent per pack tax on cigarettes. Pinkney decided to approach the anti-tobacco movement through the lens of the Black community. In 1988 to 1992, African Americans constituted a majority of tobacco-related deaths and lung cancer was their second leading cause of death. The mural’s location was significant because the Watts Towers Arts Center aims to educate the public on multicultural and social change artworks in a neighborhood that is 37.1% Black. Pinkney strategically brought awareness to an overlooked, community-wide issue that affected the very population viewing it.
  
  Written by Mia Fagin, c/o ‘24