[music] Surfing was actually invented by black and brown people all over the world, but it's been commodified.

It's been trivialized.

That's not what our ancestors intended it as, and that's not what we want for it.

The opportunity that the Coastal Conservancy had to tell coastal stories was a wonderful opportunity to think about how we can honor the erased and invisibilized history of where surfing originated from, while also reclaiming public space for our communities.

My name is Theresa Hyuna Hwang.

I am a core member of Color the Water.

My name is David Malana, and I am creator and co-founder of Color the Water.

Color the Water is an anti-racist organization that offers free decolonizing surf lessons to all Black, indigenous, and other people of color.

Water is what connects us across continents without borders, across time, really.

This project is going to be a collection of public-facing art that is community-designed and involves storytelling about the history of BIPOC surfing and coastal existence.

Coastlines of color, spaces of safety, and belonging will feature three artists at two locations.

We will be creating two community-engaged, interactive public art installations.

One will be on a public wall in Watts, in collaboration with Watts Labor Community Action Committee, and another one will be a mural and sculptural installation in Venice, in collaboration with Venice Community Housing.

What are y'all feelings of about-- the goal is to make it interactive and to pull people's interest.

Venice is a vibrant place full of so many different types of people, so many different demographics.

You can open your windows and get that ocean breeze.

You get that moody marine layer that comes through and changes throughout the course of the day.

That's what Venice is.

It's a really special pocket.

We have skaters, we have business folks, we have surfers.

Really, it's a variety of people.

It's a place where people just are who they are and in their raw forms.

The Venice community has a longstanding history of, of course, redlining and misplacement of peoples of all cultures and backgrounds.

One of the things that I love about Venice Community Housing is our efforts toward involving our residents as well as our local community members, and the communities that we've partnered with.

Part of this partnership with Color the Water allows us to support, to learn, and to grow together.

To really be building community in a way that is just so at the core of what Venice Community Housing is about.

This public art piece we've decided to choose a property that actually sits right in the heart of the Oakwood neighborhood, which is a historically Black area within the Venice community.

We will place this particular public art on the building itself as a mural, and/or we will also include some type of sculpture.

Even like just the silhouette of a surfboard, says something to a lot of people.

You're going to walk around this neighborhood, you're going to see that silhouette.

We get excited as artists, our language is visual, so we immediately start seeing opportunities and seeing possibilities.

I would like to start with a nice history, and as the building wraps around the corner, we have a garden area that's amazing and beautiful, and it's well kept now.

I think I would love to create some new potting plants and functional things for the residents.

Our hope is that as people are walking along this street, that they're able to view a public art piece that's inviting, that's welcoming, that speaks to them.

It makes it personal for them.

If you go into a space where you don't see yourself represented in three stories of a whole museum, there's not one image or one sculpture that has your hips, your lips, your tone.

You don't feel welcomed.

Representation matters.

Visually, what my art aims to do is give a voice to the history, to the past, the work that Color the Water is doing with spreading the information, the true origins of surfing.

I've quickly realized that there was a history that wasn't being told anywhere.

I know that there were big homies that were teaching the little homies how to serve outside of the gaze of ESPN and wanting to be blonde-hair, blue-eyed surfer.

Nobody possesses the breeze.

Nobody possesses the waves.

It's a space of negotiation and a certain kind of presence and poetry that belongs to all of us.

My hope is that folks strolling the sidewalk and rounding that corner say, "Yes, it's still there.

It's still flowing.

It still looks like me, it still feels like me.

It feels like the neighborhood."

[music] I was 1 of the first 10 people that David taught how to surf.

When I first started surfing, I felt like a superhero because I felt like I was flying on the waves.

Growing up, I never saw people of color in the water.

That was something that I internalized and saying, "Okay, like I shouldn't do this because I'm Black," because that's not something that we do.

We're in the inner city area, and a lot of people don't have access to the beach.

They're not usually interested in it because they haven't been inspired to go.

The beach in the Watts neighborhood is like so close, but so far at the same time.

Is about 15 minutes away from here, and it's a lot of kids that Color the Water have taken to the beach that didn't know about the beach.

I think Watts is a place that's often misunderstood.

It's a very diverse place, and it's a lot of working-class families and people who just try and make a better life for themselves.

It's very misunderstood, and I think the people in the community misunderstand what they have.

I think we ignore the things that we could build for the paranoia that we built within the community.

Protests and the uprisings.

Rather, they seem to be riots without cause.

The Watts Labor Community Action Committee, the founder, he ended up starting his organization in 1965.

That was basically created out of the destruction of Watts.

It was a way of putting everybody in a position to build back what they destroyed, but also get paid for these things.

Labor is very important in the Watts Labor Community Action Committee.

I appreciate it because it has action in it, and that's something that I'm very invested in.

I think words can mean something, but I think action is more important.

Out of all the walls we have on this side, what makes you pick this wall in particular?

I feel like it's the most public-facing to the community, and it's also a wall that the community has complained about, as they wanted to see something that represents them.

So many people walk past this wall.

It's like directly on the 109th Street, so you're going to walk past this wall, it's important to have on that wall, one big mural that explains a story.

It's important to be able to tell the stories that the community actually cares about.

This mural's going to be up for 10 year, that's a long time for the community to have to see every day.

It influences how we see ourselves.

If you see these beautiful images of yourself, then you're going to view yourself as beautiful.

I'm just really ready to see what Rahzizi going to put together, man, because everything he touch, it's like when he going to his zone, it's on, you know what I'm saying?

Once it's completed, I'm going to feel like a sense of legacy.

We're defining all these stereotypes about surfing, going out there to the beach.

Places like Watts, Inglewood, South Central LA, you don't think of them as coastal towns.

Making sure that we're addressing the gap both in history and storytelling, and this gap that exists between all of these towns that are behind the coastal wall.

That's why it's important that the artists are from those places or have experience with those places.

Glen, he's from that neighborhood for decades now.

Joshua, for a time, he was doing tattoos in Venice.

Just down by the coast is one of his favorite places to surf, where we've also taught.

Then Rahzizi, he works at Watts as well, and also he surfs.

All of this is like a very embodied opportunity for them to have their art also speak from their lived and personal experience.

We're doing it to show people that to be a Black, indigenous, or person of color, this sport, this way of life, it is for you as well.

Art is not the purview of one elite small group of people.

It's actually a community effort here.

Then the goal is to take that enthusiasm and open it to the community to remind all those who are interested, we are all artists.

With this project, I'd like to achieve an accurate representation of how the community feels about the history of Venice and the truth, and the future of Venice.

The positive aspects of Venice.

The not so positive, the truth being told, the elephants in the room being told, but saying, "Hey, we're still here.

We are here, we'll continue to be here, and it's going to get better."

It's been a dream to live out the dreams of communities that aren't able to have their voice heard.

Both of these communities are iconic neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

You think about Watts, you think about Venice, and there is so much that they contribute to the cultural landscape of our beautiful city.

We also recognize that we want more people to come and learn about the history of Black surfers, Latino surfers, Indigenous surfers that are in the community, have been here, and, hopefully, the future generations to come.

[music]