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The artist Ramiro Gomez Jr. has a new piece up on the streets of Beverly Hills just in time for this fifth day of May when Americans celebrate all things Mexican (especially tequila, mariachis and unfortunate stereotypes).
The new piece is a cardboard cutout that shows the back of a brown-skinned, T-shirt clad laborer facing a well-manicured hedge at the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Mountain Drive. (Sure, the worker depicted might be from Guatemala and not Mexico, but in a post that tipped us off Pocho noted the timing of his piece was right.)
Gomez's cardboard cutouts have been popping up around town (and noted by LA Taco). He creates cardboard cutouts of laborers cleaning homes, gardening and selling star maps or paletas on the streets—it's the immigrant reality behind the California dream.
Gomez told the Huffington Post in an interview that he's a transplant from San Bernardino and his work is inspired in part by his own working class parents: "My family is the reason I paint about these things. It's all very personal. The work, especially with housekeepers and gardeners, they're reflections of me, and many other people out here.”
