Pratiksha Shome
On May 15, in the middle of the night, a piece of public art in Richmond, California, vanished. Fencelines – A Collective Monument to Resilience was a project where community people expressed their aspirations for the future of the city and its surroundings on a series of slats. The fence around the Chevron refinery, which is situated alongside the San Francisco Bay, has slats built on it.
Chevron acknowledged removing the work of public art in a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday.
According to our security, safety, and facilities regulations, the installation on company property was dismantled, a Chevron spokesperson noted in a letter to ARTnews. We cannot tolerate tampering with or unauthorised construction of our fences or other firm facilities because they are useful pieces of equipment.
The project’s creators and organisers contend that the majority of Fencelines was situated on a section of the fence that the city owns. This section of the fence is adjacent to a running track and is set apart from Chevron land by a six-lane highway. Community organiser Princess Robinson and artist Graham LP created Fencelines over the course of a year and a half, during which time they and designer and artist Gita Khandagle contacted Chevron and the city to find out who owned the fence so they could obtain permission for the project.
The organisers claim that Chevron never replied, but the city did and approved the scheme. The majority of the project, according to Graham LP and other parties involved, was built on the fence’s city-owned section, but it also affected a section of the fence that belongs to Chevron.
“However, we don’t want this to just boil down to who owns the fence and who doesn’t. This discussion is about who controls the air and who has the authority to affect it, according to LP, who spoke to ARTnews. “They massively overreached, even though we will definitely push the property aspect of this when it comes down to it,”
Fencelines was created to draw attention to the refinery’s effects on the neighbourhood of Richmond, where asthma rates are twice as high as the state average, according to a current study from the University of California, San Francisco. Richmond’s citizens live permanently downwind from the refinery, as evidenced by the fence’s attachment of slats painted with community-wide wishes for clean air and water and the addition of ribbons with wind-activated lights. Earth Day, April 22, saw the installation of the artwork.
The corporation has not confirmed whether the item has been destroyed or is in storage as of the time of publication. The artists and organisers of Fencelines believed the artwork had been stolen until Wednesday night because Chevron never contacted them after the deinstallation or gave them advance notice of their upcoming move. However, there were rumours.
The managing director of Richmond Our Power Coalition, Katt Ramos, said, “I was like, ‘That was Chevron, they’re trying to erase us,'” according to ARTnews. Local groups advocating for housing and a fair transition away from the region’s oil-based industry are brought together by the coalition.
We were three or four days out from Anti-Chevron Day and four or five days out from their stakeholder conference, and they didn’t want any bad press, so I assumed it was Chevron.
The 2012 Chevron Richmond Refinery Fire, the ensuing chemical leak incident, and the general health problems Richmond locals associate with the refinery’s proximity—which has been in operation in the city for 120 years—led to the formation of the Coalition and Anti-Chevron Day. Ramos drew attention to the fact that earlier this year, unionised steelworkers at the Chevron refinery went on strike in demand of safer working conditions. The union said that as a result, at least five employees were laid off.
But now that there are some notices on the fence, are they concerned for their safety? Ramos stated.
The installation and an associated show at the Richmond Arts Centre were created by Robinson, LP, and Khandagle in collaboration with various organisations and the RAC and made possible by a grant from the California Arts Council.
“We invited people to come and make some of these wooden slats, to paint messages of hope, messages of vision for a future where we have clean air, a healthy environment,” Roberto Martinez, a curator at RAC, said to ARTnews. “We wanted to bring people in for dialogue about the lived experience of the Richmond community, which has a very rich and complex history with environmental justice.”
Martinez reported that although some of the signs made mention of Chevron, for the most part the messages asked for love, resilience, and clean air and water. She also remembered that the initiative wasn’t very confrontational. The undertaking, which was planned to be taken down on June 3, required the painting of more than 200 wooden slats.
Urban Tilth employee Princess Robinson never perceived the initiative as competitive. Robinson told ARTnews, “I’m a cooperative education and facilitator, and I strongly believe in the cooperative model, to cooperate with one another and for everyone to be at the table. Robinson has been attempting to see the bright side of this awful circumstance ever since learning that Chevron removed the item, but it hasn’t been easy.
Being a human, I initially felt angry and defeated. I experienced contempt. Robinson said, “I felt like, well, dammit, I don’t matter, all that effort I done doesn’t matter, and bringing my community out doesn’t matter. But now that my aims have been realised, you’re right, I wanted to talk.
Chevron is now getting in touch with the organisers as they attempt to retract what has grown into a far bigger story than anyone could have foreseen. The next stage is to determine whether the item was damaged and how to create another artwork in response to the situation.
Robinson, fortunately for Chevron, is benevolent.
For me personally, there is no animosity, Robinson declared. “I want Chevron to know that there is a better way that we could have done this. Let’s work together and be more compassionate and respectful.”
Source: ARTnews
