Re-Imagining Stories of Shipping Containers

Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) Visual Arts students re-imagined stories of recycled shipping containers with artists Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas as part of our summer Public Art Residency program, supported by a grant from the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation. Community partners joined HOLA students and families to mark the first voyage of The Ideal X, a public art celebration, at the end of HOLA’s summer term.

Named after the SS Ideal X, the first successful container ship from 1956, The Ideal X aimed to re-animate and imagine the traces, memories and stories of the 46 modified shipping containers that make up HOLA’s new Arts & Recreation Center, set to open in Lafayette Park to the Rampart and Westlake communities in late 2019. This summer a new Ideal X docked in Los Angeles, transforming shipping containers and maritime flags into fine art.

Over the course of five weeks, local artists Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas worked with HOLA Visual Arts students to explore the journey of shipping containers through maritime traffic and the global economy. With help from guest appearances by Vincent Ramos, Suné Woods, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, and Los Angeles Waterkeeper, Carolina and David worked with students to imagine the narratives and journeys of the 46 shipping containers before they came to reside in Lafayette Park.

Shipping containers provide connections to political, economic, and environmental issues that resonate within our neighborhood to the Port of Los Angeles in Long Beach and beyond. Stories of conservation, migration, sea mythologies, and more were shared in the students’ artwork. The final piece was a sculpture of interconnected miniature shipping containers and a banner with a special message for the community written in coded flags.

Carolina Caycedo is a multidisciplinary creative focused on collective action and amplifying movements of territorial resistance, solidarity economies, and housing as a human right. David de Rozas is a filmmaker and lecturer at San Francisco State University, exploring encounters between history and memory. Their participation in the Public Art Residency demonstrates the strong visual arts programs HOLA offers.

The LADF allocated $2,750,000 in New Markets Tax Credits to help fund building of HOLA's cutting edge Arts and Recreation Center in the Westlake neighborhood. HOLA provides underserved youth in Los Angeles with free, exceptional programs in academics, arts and athletics within a nurturing environment, empowering them to develop their potential, pursue their education and strengthen their communities.