[dropcap size=big]A[/dropcap] woman allegedly defaced two murals depicting the late Nipsey Hussle on Sunday afternoon in the Arts District downtown. A black-and-white mural that showed a side profile of the rapper was defaced with the following words: “Last time I checked Written and Produced and edited CINDY MARAVILLA.”
In a post on Facebook that is live at the time of publication and has been removed from Instagram, The Container Yard uploaded two photos—one of the defaced mural and another of Maravilla—with the caption: “You wanted everyone to know your name #cindymaravilla so we’ll do our part to help you with that... be on the lookout for this one who defaced 2 of our murals... we won’t press charges but hope that you don’t continue to cause more work and disrespect to our community... happy holidays 😏 #nowords @ The Container Yard.”
The Container Yard, which is located off of 4th street in downtown, calls itself a “creative compound” and serves as a venue for artists to showcase their work and host events. The Container Yard told the Taco that “a couple bystanders and the Montana shop crew actually saw the woman right after she tagged the mural and was in the process of tagging the corner ‘protect’ mural. It seems she had a bag full of paint but [we are] not sure if she knew what she was doing,” speculating about possible mental health concerns.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Estevan Oriol (@estevanoriol) on
The mural is signed by artists Downtown Daniel, the artist behind the mural, and Estevan Oriol, the photographer behind the photo that inspired the mural. In September, L.A. Taco covered a protest run by supporters of Estevan Oriol.
“I thought it was disrespectful because, you know, for one it’s somebody who passed away, and for two, it’s our artwork,” Oriol told the Taco. “If there was a reason behind it, I could kind of be like, well maybe this person has some kind of point or angle on it, they didn’t like the artwork, something like that.”
“There’s not really any reason behind it,” Oriol said. He added that Maravilla was caught with paint and also defaced another mural not far from The Container Yard, near the corner of 4th Street and Alameda. Oriol and Downtown Daniel went downtown on Monday morning to fix the mural and add anti-graffiti spray. Oriol said the graffiti came off easily but smeared a pinkish layer over the mural where she wrote.
L.A. Taco has reached out to Downtown Daniel for comment.
