Week 7: Yreina Cervantez

The artist I am presenting on is Yreina Cervantez, born in Kansas but raised in California. She gained a lot of artistic inspiration from her mother, her childhood, and life as a Chicana woman. Cervantez specializes in multimedia painting, murals, and printmaking. Her most well known art piece is the mural titled La Ofrenda which can be found under a bridge on 2nd and Toluca in DTLA. This mural, which was commissioned to honor Chicanas and their heritage, was unfortunately tagged multiple times. Because it wasn't protected the first time Cervantez made it, this mural continued to get graffitied on. However, a restoration process was soon underway to bring life back to this amazing mural. Using a process titled 'controlled delamination', which allows the team to delaminate the surface paint layers, one color at a time, while another set affects the binder in paint, causing it to shrivel and craze. This process removes the tagged graffiti while somewhat preserving what is underneath. Even after this process, a local pastor hired a graffiti artist to paint over the entire mural! As one article explains, “[The pastor] admitted that the whole incident was a terrible mistake on his part and offered to support the conservation efforts in any way he could. He apologized to [Yreina] numerous times and has since then been very helpful and generous in supporting the restoration of ‘La Ofrenda.’” Luckily, Cervantez came back to the site of her mural and repainted the beautiful mural, which is now protected.