Scratching the Surface, Los Angeles

Los Angeles effectively prohibited new murals from 2002 until 2013, when the city again allowed non-commercial works. The following year, the Contrast Mural Series commissioned Vhils for two Chinatown walls, explicitly linking them to the district's history and multicultural roots. His unidentified faces made public portraiture part of the streets again, cutting a civic presence into a city surface that had been closed to new murals for eleven years.