Form and Power: Black Murals in Los Angeles

Love is for Everyone

The Social and Public Arts Resource Center (SPARC) in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles commissioned the mural Love is for Everyone in 1992 at the height of the AIDS epidemic. SPARC has commissioned over 10,000 murals worldwide, but this is the first one to address AIDS as a part of the Minority AIDS Project (MAP). In an attempt to educate the surrounding community, which was primarily African American, MAP and the mural’s authors collaborated to create an image that would demonstrate solidarity against a life-taking virus.

The figures in Love is for Everyone appear in front of a colorful background quilt made up of geometric shapes. The quilt's free-form design imitates an African American improvisational quilt-making style that allows stitchers to make spontaneous decisions during the quilt-making process. The black-and-white signs adopt the format of protest posters and symbolize MAP clinic services: a bag of groceries stands for its food bank, a bed for its off-site shelter, a telephone for its hot line, and free condoms to encourage safe sex. The church represented on one of the panels refers to the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church founded by the Rev. Carl Bean, co-founder of MAP and owner of the church building. Love is for Everyone contains African American and Hispanic figures because of how prevalent AIDS was among these populations, but as Mary-Linn Hudges explains, “the silhouetted figures and the globe were purposely placed to indicate that we are all living with AIDS.” This reminds us that whether one is white or Black, straight or gay, rich or poor, the virus can affect any human body.

Written by Jorge Gonzalez, c/o ‘24

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