Form and Power: Black Murals in Los Angeles

Choose Your Own Future

Hector Rios’s Choose You Own Future showcases the faces of four different children, each of different races, placed in front of a background that imagines the different futures they could have. On the left in green, a man is illustrated climbing up a mountain of books towards a sunny and bright peak, expressing the notion that one must work hard to have a positive life. In contrast, the right of the murals shows the man falling down a waterfall riddled with the dangers of life that may prevent a successful future such as drugs, alcohol, guilt, unemployment and a loss of hope.

Hector Rios, also known as Hex TGO, is a very well-known and well-respected hip-hop graffiti artist of the west coast. He began mentoring youth in 1994, a year before the creation of this mural, as a way to help at-risk and ward-of-the-court minors in his community, who are often Mexican and African American children subject to the school to prison pipeline. This piece was created through a youth summer-city jobs program in Los Angeles made to connect these children back to their community and give them a paying job. In conjunction, the content of Choose Your Own Future sends a message to other teenagers to be mindful of the temptations in life that may stray them away from the happy future they deserve.

Written by Thea Wallace c/o ‘24

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