coastlines of color - a public art project

Coastlines of Color is a project designed to use public art to share a piece of the rich, ancient, and living history of surfing of melanated peoples. Funding by the California Coastal Commission, it was incepted, created, designed, and implemented by Color the Water and Department of Places in partnership with Watts Labor Community Action Committee and Venice Community Housing. Through the installation of two murals and one sculpture, Black and Indigenous artists shared their interpretations of what is our driving philosophy and mission - surfing at its core was a melanated, Indigenous practice that lives on despite the colonization and sterilization of the practice through ages of white supremacy from then to now. Our hope is that those who seek to practice surfing through a decolonial lens, will be beckoned by these works of art to not only try surfing, but to examine and reinvent it with a critical lens so that it can be more than distraction, more than diversity, but a tool of our collective liberation from all systems of oppression.