Gentrification Intervention: Citron

The "Gentrification Intervention" series was created to respond to the swift construction of overpriced apartment homes and condominiums, which continuously drives the local housing market into a chaotic spiral that eventually results in whole neighborhoods being bought out and rent increasing in egregious amounts. When I began to see leasing signs posted around my neighborhoods, I immediately felt contentious towards them, as if they told me something I couldn't yet pin down. Specifically with the piece ‘Damn, Where the Fuck Did This Come From,’ I saw a sign directly at the corner of my block. I decided to walk down the street to find the building that was mentioned in the sign, just to see that the building was not yet finished. There was a leasing office regardless, looking to book these not yet existent apartments. I decided then to see how long it would take for this building to be finished, I returned to the site about every other week for close to eleven months. I began this process in the middle of May 2021 and completed the work in March 2022. It took ten months for this building to be fully built, only ten months to justify raising rent, and only ten months before a handful of legacy residents in nearby areas would have to move out due to rising costs.

At this point, I finally realized why I felt so contentious about the leasing signs going up around my hood. They were blatantly telling me they were agents of gentrification. Now that I knew what they were saying, I responded. In the piece "Gentrification Intervention: Citron." I co-opted the same type of messaging these developers used, font, color, design, and all, hijacking their image to display what their signs told me. This mask-off process began taking my artwork into active and physical activism. In the piece, we first see the sign in front of the apartment building itself. In the next frame, I physically remove the sign, and in the final frame, we see the co-opted sign that speaks the truth, replacing the old leasing sign. I left the sign there for the public to see, and it only lasted a day before the leasing office caught on and took the sign back inside.

These pieces are part of a larger body of work, ‘"Anaheim Blvd: Hood to Suburb." This work is a testament to the ongoing fight against the gentrification of Anaheim neighborhoods, from the destruction of communities to the construction of "luxury" apartment homes. It also highlights the need to document what remains physically and in memory. At the core of "Anaheim Blvd: Hood to Suburb’" is the mission to document, respond to, and preserve what gentrification and its agents are actively erasing. Alongside the co-opted signs, the work features other responses, such as house-flipper postcards and a panoramic image of Anaheim Blvd paired with my oral histories of living on the street, memories of what used to be there, and my hopes for the street's future.

See the full series here

Alkaid Ramirez is a lens-based artist based in Anaheim. Their practice utilizes traditional photography and archiving to capture integral scenes, stories, and civil unrest within their community through material analysis and nuanced perspectives.

Their work also engages with broader conversations about social inequality and inequity, particularly the systemic challenges faced by working-class immigrants and marginalized communities. Ramirez is driven to document these struggles, challenge societal norms, and highlight their cultural significance for future generations.

Ramirez’s work has been featured in publications such as Negotiable Frontiers by The Latinx Project. They are the authors of Anaheim Blvd: Hood to Suburb, published by Seaton Street Press in July 2024. They have received several accolades, including the Community Engagement Grant (2023) and the Individual Artist Fellowship "Emerging Artist" Award from the California Arts Council (2023).

Their participation in group exhibitions includes Counter Archives (2020), Visions of Aztlan (2023), and Reencuentros: Seeing You Again (2024), while their solo shows include El Jale (2021) and Anaheim Blvd: Hood to Suburb (2024).

Ramirez's work has been featured in media outlets like Voice of OC and the Los Angeles Times, and their art is part of the AltaMed Private Collection.

Anaheim Blvd: Hood to Suburb, special edition is available to preorder here.