First subdivided in 1873 as East Los Angeles, it was carved out of the 17,000-plus acres of the old Spanish pueblo by developers seeking to create a middle-class residential neighborhood. To overcome the perception of most Angelenos that the region east of the river was a rusticated wilderness, lacking the amenities to which the burghers of Bunker Hill had grown accustomed, the developers installed water pipes to serve the new subdivision.
These paintings reveal the layers of history that undergird modern Los Angeles. Yaanga Lies Under the 101 imagines the city's earliest Tongva inhabitants as they made their home on the land that, in the modern day, runs beneath the Hollywood Freeway. Campos's process mimics this archaeological layering: each canvas begins with a screenprinted underlayer that is then painted over in acrylic, and then once again layered with screenprinted details.