I'm always looking for the story that has not been told. - Judy Baca

For the past 100 years, UCLA has stood on this land and served the young people of Southern California. The culmination of plans to commemorate this centennial celebration led to the artist, activist, and professor Judy Baca. Between Baca, her team at Social and Public Art Resource Center, and the Digital Mural Lab, a mural has been created that showcases a vision of the past, present, and future that collide into an ongoing conversation honoring the stories that must be told to facilitate the creation of a more equal and prosperous future for all. The home of the mural is on Ackerman Union — the central location of the Associated Students of the University of California, Los Angeles. Judy Baca, ASUCLA, and SPARC are united in presenting a piece of art that can create conversations and support a changing world in pursuit of social justice, equity, and equality.

The mural is composed of three glass panels made in an innovative process that is evolving both the art of mural creation and the ability to preserve a mural in a way that goes beyond methods of traditional paint. Minerals of all colors are cultivated to meld into glass that transform a digitally created mural into one that can be physically manufactured and displayed.
The first of the three panels focuses on the land of the Westwood, Los Angeles neighborhood that UCLA is built upon. The depiction is of a land before industrialization where the original flora, fauna, and peoples exist in a time before great change. Upon this topography is an architectural line drawing of Royce Hall to foreshadow the changes to come to this land. Both the past and present exist within this panel to display the Indigenous concepts of the land containing, simultaneously in time, all memory.

The second panel contains figures that Baca and her team have chosen to represent a new narrative of stories that center around women who have made an impact.
The third panel depicts an idea of the university of the future that goes beyond physical structures. This evolved form of the university would go out to all communities and arenas to provide education and guidance to a continuously changing world.

The Land, Memory, and Rivers

The first thing I thought: It had to be conscious of the environment and who was here first.

What was the spiritual consequence? ... Of the original animals being there and no longer there and the original people and so forth. - Judy Baca

The land and memory are central to a series of Judy Baca works, and the current UCLA mural begins with the land before construction and industrial planning. For a century, UCLA has stood on this land containing all the memory of the past, but before a river ran through the land on which buildings now stand. Rivers have been central to Baca's work and can be found in both this latest mural and in the decades of work done at The Great Wall of Los Angeles. The Great Wall of Los Angeles is not only the longest mural in the world, but the flood control channel in which the mural is located was once a river. The first panel of the mural is centered around the land that is now the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles with original flora, fauna, and people.

It’s an indigenous notion. I think it probably comes from my own background, my grandmother, who is an indigenous woman and who sort of essentially without really sitting down and schooling me, gave me the notion that everything that ever occurred on the land is recorded there, that somehow it’s present. - Judy Baca

The Past and Present

There are choices that we made at a particular historical moment and that is what I hope people see. - Judy Baca

On April 27, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. came to UCLA and spoke to thousands on the Civil Rights Movement and the fight for social justice. Decades later, the fight continues. During the creation of this mural, Judy Baca and the artists of SPARC witnessed the national protests and the Black Lives Matter movement ignite within the unknown and tumultuous realities of a global pandemic.

We are making this work in a pandemic. We were making it in the middle of a massive social justice movement in the United States where people were taking to the streets. We were making it in a time in which we were dealing with profound issues of global warming and fires and floods and all kinds of things happening worldwide, all of which were affected by loss, losses of family members, loss of friends — enormously impactful to us in terms of making it. So, we were subject to those changes as we were making the work. In other words, an artist doesn't work independently in the place they are or the time they are living in. They are totally affected by that, as we were in making this work. - Judy Baca

The Trinity and The Figures Around Them

It seemed to me that she should be here. She would become the spirit of that memory and that land. A magnificent young woman who is no longer anonymous. - Judy Baca

Within the middle panel are the dominant figures of the piece. Among them are three individuals that Baca has described as the “trinity” of the mural: Toypurina, Angela Davis, and Dolores Huerta. These three figures were sought after by Baca to be a source of inspiration and stand as “fierce, compassionate, fascinating, and powerful women.” Baca has been on a journey to identify or create a history for a young Gabrielino or Tongva woman in a 19th-century photograph with the only information written being “anonymous Gabrielina nation woman.” Baca has attached the name and story of Toypurina to this once anonymous woman. The story of Toypurina involves the mission San Gabriel and a revolt that was led against the mission in 1785 by Toypurina, a young indigenous woman at the age of 23. Baca connects that this age is that of most of the young students of UCLA and marks them historically as leaders of change

Time and perception have changed, expanded, and evolved the view of these three figures. Angela Davis stands in the mural as a fierce voice for social change even if it comes at a cost.
As time has gone by since the formation of the United Farm Workers Association, Delores Huerta has gained recognition for her central role in the formation of that association as co-founder, her fight for the rights of farmworkers across the nation, and cemented her legacy in the Chicano civil rights movement. Immediately surrounding this trinity is the figure of John Lewis. The civil rights activist, Congressman, and Selma march leader died during the creation of the mural and in the midst of protests and marches against police brutality. California State Senator Maria Elena Durazo is the next largest figure and personal inspiration to Baca as an activist for the rights of janitors, restaurant, and hotel workers.

All remaining figures are of specific and profound note and form a ring around the central trinity.

The University of the Future

We created the rhizomes that go out.
They go to a burning planet, and the edge of the world is on fire and these rhizomes are putting out the fire, so it’s a hopeful view that knowledge and education will change the way that we live and work. - Judy Baca

Horizontally growing from some plants are structures similar to roots called rhizomes. The root holds the plant into the land and the rhizomes support this effort while sprouting to the surface to create a new plant. This new life stems from a common source. This is how Baca and a team of students from the Urban Humanities Institute see the future of the university structure and education. The ideas being discussed within a university would therefore leave the physical campus and extend to the world in order to aid with valuable information and wisdom for the trials ahead such as climate change. The Earth is depicted as being on fire in this third panel to express the present need to combat climate change and prevent further devastation.

A New Medium For Generations

My students and I have done a number of works that are digital works, but this is another step forward. It is a step in which the work is permanent. - Judy Baca

Over the course of 20 years, The Digital Mural Lab of SPARC, in affiliation with UCLA, has built technology that has accumulated most recently in the creation of the Judy Baca UCLA Mural. The mural is the largest of its kind in California and stands as the current pinnacle of what is possible in creating a physical piece of art from a digitally formed medium. Regardless of medium, the mural will both stand in permanence and work as a community piece of art to be interacted with and lived beside.

The difference between an easel painting and a mural is a mural is made in a process of relatedness to the place that its placed, to the people it’s being made for, to the architecture, to the way people pass by it—we study the way people walk past the mural, we study the relationship of a person's body to the physical size. All of that is considered as we produce the work. - Judy Baca

List of all Figures and Events Depicted:

PEOPLE:

• Toypurina

• Angela Davis

• Dolores Huerta

• D’Lo

• Sefa Aina

• Paul Apodaca

• Arthur Ashe

• Judith F. Baca

• Desirae Barragan

• Rosina M. Becerra

• Julia Bogany

• Tom Bradley

• Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter

• Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver

• Patrisse Cullors

• Grace Montañez Davis

• Ann Meyers Drysdale

• Maria Elena Durazo

• Leo Estrada

• Tam Tran and Cinthya Felix

• Daniel M.T. Fessler

• Anna Fisher

• Andrea Ghez

• Carole E. Goldberg

• Dellara Gorjian

• Deb Haaland 

• Ralph Bunche And Ruth Harris

• David Hayes-Bautista

• Kelly Lytle Hernández

• Juan Felipe Herrera

• Dennis Hong

• Darnell Hunt

• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

• CK Yang and Rafer Johnson

• Richard B. Kaner

• Jackie Joyner Kersee

• Suk-Young Kim

• Martin Luther King Jr.

• Barbara Kruger

• Sheila Kuehl

• Dr. Hillel Laks

• Yasmeen Lari

• James Lawson

• John Lewis

• Dr. Linda Liau

• Mildred Mathias

• Sylvia Mendez

• Laura Miranda

• Judy Mitoma

• Royal Morales

• Hiroshi Motomura

• Rosalio Muñoz

• Don Nakanishi

• Dr. Elizabeth Neufeld

• Kiyoshi Patrick Okura

• Lauren Pilon

• Juan Gomez Quinones

• Beverly Robinson

• Jackie and Malie Robinson

• Ananya Roy

• Ernie Salas

• Gaurav Sant

• Helen and Robert Singleton

• Rae Lee Siporin

• Wadada Leo-Smith

• George Takei

• Terence Tao

• Jewel Thais-Williams

• Lula Washington

• Kent Wong

• John Wooden

• Mia Yamamoto

• Hitoshi “Moe” Yonemura

EVENTS:

• AFSCME Protests - 2018

• Asian American Student Rally - 2014

• Black Lives Matter Student Protests - 2020

• Campus Protests of Vietnam War - 1976

• Dreamers and DACA Protests - 2014

• LGBTQ Leaders, Rights and Community on Campus

• Students Protest Race and Admissions Research - 2012

• UCLA Hunger Strikes - 1993

• Wartime Edict Bans Japanese American Students - 1942