The Los Angeles River and train tracks border Boyle Heights

Jane Hahn, American

The Los Angeles River and train tracks border Boyle Heights, 2022

Photographer Jane Hahn captures the reality of Boyle Heights residents in Los Angeles: a view of polluted waters and industry. These are the defining features of daily life for the population living there, a population that mainly consists of Latino community members. This marginalized community is disproportionately impacted by the pollution. Normally a waterside image is scenic– a vision of what the natural world has to offer. But Hahn captures quite the opposite. This natural world is littered with pipes, concrete and buildings. Just as the bridge weaves through the sky and reaches into the waters, it is as if pollution is integral to the Boyle Heights way of life. Label by Grace Cohen

Land of Opportunity

Connie Zheng, Chinese

Land of Opportunity, 2022

Land of Opportunity is a mixed media piece emphasizing the environmental hypocrisy of California’s Bay Area and the work of grassroots organizations to combat local issues of environmental injustice. Covered in white text commentary, the largest words riff on America’s moniker as the “Land of Opportunity,” which Zheng renames as “Land of Nuclear Dominance,” or “High Tech.” Though California is known as one of the most environmentally progressive states, the Bay Area has one of the highest concentrations of Superfund sites nationally; 43 of them are represented on the map alongside tar splotches. Zheng’s smaller texts also pays homage to local groups working to fight the effects of settler colonialism and environmental mismanagement. Label by Lia Deasy

The Maps That Failed Us

Luciana Abait, Argentinian

The Maps That Failed Us, 2018-22

This sculpture is a part of Abait’s exhibition On The Verge, which depicts the global climate crisis and its impacts on humans and nature. A map containing climate change impacted migratory patterns overlays a sculpture that mimics the irregular shape of an iceberg. Abait incorporates her own experience immigrating from Argentina and explores the associated feeling of displacement in her art. Maps are an incredibly powerful art form that Abait executes profoundly through the traditional map color palette while visualizing climate migration routes. The iceberg shape also conveys how climate change is impacting the melting of ice, which directly impacts the migratory patterns depicted on the sculpture. The more time spent observing this complex, poignant sculpture, a new story will reveal itself. Label by Bayleigh Albert

Toxic Ghostscapes near Venice, Louisiana

Anne McClintock, South African/American

Toxic Ghostscapes near Venice, Louisiana, 2010

McClintock’s photo embodies the overlapping realities of capitalism and climate catastrophe. In the foreground, a “ghost forest”—trees that once flourished on land are now drowned by sea-level rise and flooding— remains in the wake of rising seas in Louisiana. They are joined by a submerged vehicle, representing the joint destruction to both human and non-human life. In the background, man-made structures remain safe from the flooding, standing parallel behind the ravaged trees. This can only stand to represent the oppressive regime that capitalistic intentions has formed and dominated the land and all those living on it. Label by Courtney Hand