Crear Studio featured artist Alkaid Ramirez in "Anaheim Blvd: Hood to Suburb." Working radically and strategically to create a response to the continuous redevelopment in Anaheim barrios, Alkaid Ramirez is remagining of what it means to belong to a community that has been historically and constantly uprooted and gentrified. Ramirez "hijacks" messages from commercial real estate advertisements and re-presents them to reflect the impact on his hood and vanishing neighbors.

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In this solo exhibition, he uses traditional photography of integral scenes and stories to pose a counter-narrative to local redevelopment through the framework of material analysis. Inspired by Edward Ruscha's photographs of Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard, Ramirez uses archival photography practices to document his community from past to present, while also bringing forward conversations of inequity and the macroeconomy that holds up the community.

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About the Artist:

Alkaid Ramirez is a documentary photographer based in Anaheim. He has been practicing photography for over eight years, using traditional photography to capture his community in OC. Ramirez’s work is centered on significant places and periods of his life that contribute to his identity as a child of resilient immigrant parents and a second-generation Chicano actively deconstructing colonizer ideologies regarding BIPOC identity and identity assimilation in colonized spaces