“New Art Installations at LA’s Hall of Records Explore Historical and Futuristic Themes”
### Elevating History through Art: Public Installations by Teresa Baker and Felix Quintana in Los Angeles
**Los Angeles**, a city often regarded as one that eagerly paves over its past in pursuit of the future, is now home to two groundbreaking public artworks that embrace its rich, often ignored history. Created by artists Teresa Baker and Felix Quintana, these works, commissioned by the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, provide a unique lens into LA’s forgotten and marginalized communities. Installed at the iconic Los Angeles County Hall of Records, the works challenge the city’s historic tendencies to overlook its cultural depths, offering a narrative of remembrance, resilience, and imagination.
### Reimagining the Past: Teresa Baker’s *Wenot (Life Giver)*
Located in the lobby of the Hall of Records, Teresa Baker’s vibrant *Wenot (Life Giver)* (2024) is a 17-foot-long astroturf assemblage infused with texture and cultural significance. Featuring bright geometric patterns reminiscent of aerial maps, the piece reinterprets the LA landscape not through precise cartography, but through abstraction and artistic sensibilities. Central to its narrative is a blue streak symbolizing the Los Angeles River, which the Kizh people, the city’s original inhabitants, call *Wenot*, or “life giver.”
The work goes beyond aesthetics, incorporating materials such as acorns, elderberry, mule fat, and willow—native species with roots in the cultural identity of LA’s Indigenous communities. Baker collaborated with ethnobotanist Matt Teutimez of the Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians to ensure these natural elements endure the 25-year lifespan of the installation while honoring the land’s Indigenous history.
“When I started, I felt an obligation to create a concrete map of Los Angeles,” Baker said. “But I had to step away and trust my process. This piece is about the richness of this land and the overlooked potential it offers.” Her work encourages a reckoning with the city’s environmental and cultural past, balanced with forward-looking imagination.
### *La sal de la tierra*: Felix Quintana’s Vibrant Homage to LA’s Communities
On the 13th floor of the Hall of Records, visitors encounter Felix Quintana’s *La sal de la tierra (The Salt of the Earth)* (2024). Born to Salvadoran immigrant parents and raised in Lynwood, Southeast LA, Quintana offers a deeply personal reflection of the city through a layered photographic collage. Rather than crafting a demographic map, Quintana created a collage of memories, connections, and histories, presenting a composite vision of LA’s cultural mosaic.
The artwork draws on archival photographs from the Department of Regional Planning, as well as Quintana’s own collection and contributions from community members during public portrait sessions across Boyle Heights, Watts, and other locations. Such images include the Watts Towers, long-standing soccer games at MacArthur Park, his own grandmother crocheting, and iconic landmarks like the Compton Fashion Center—a revered cultural hub immortalized in hip-hop lore.
“The piece flattens the past, present, and future so they coexist in a single frame,” Quintana explained, capturing the essence of a city that is as much about memory as it is about reinvention. The final work, printed as an archival pigment piece, balances storytelling with technological precision to ensure its resilience over decades.
### Art and Conservation: Preserving History in a Functional Space
Both artworks share a commitment to sustainability and longevity, a requirement stipulated by the city’s 25-year agreement for the installations. Baker’s use of native botanical materials celebrates Indigenous knowledge while ensuring durability, and Quintana employed digital scans of his original cyanotype images to produce light-resistant final prints.
The choice of the Hall of Records, designed in 1962 by renowned architect Richard Neutra, underscores the significance of these installations. Originally envisioned as “the world’s largest filing cabinet,” the building symbolizes LA’s planning and record-keeping functions. Yet Baker and Quintana’s works reimagine this bureaucratic heritage, infusing the space with color, life, and humanity.
### Reclaiming the Narrative
“For a department that often works with grids, data, and maps, it was incredible to see how they embraced the abstractness of our pieces,” Baker reflected. The interplay between the artists’ abstract visions and the department’s literal, pragmatic approach to city planning speaks to a larger cultural shift in how LA acknowledges its history.
Both installations invite visitors to consider alternative narratives. Rather than relying on stereotypical portrayals of Los Angeles, Baker and Quintana celebrate the diverse, lived realities of its people. They make visible the beauty and pain of its past, its complex present, and its potential futures.
### A City Reimagined through Art
Los Angeles has long been criticized for looking forward while failing to honor what came before. However, through Baker and Quintana’s works, the city gains a powerful new perspective. These