Painted Over Amid Gentrification, East Austin Mural Gets New Life

EAST AUSTIN, TX — An iconic mural recently painted over by the owner of a business now occupying the building long serving as its canvas has been resurrected in North Austin, according to reports.

A longtime East Austin fixture at 12th and Chicon streets, the mural — distinctive in its use of vibrant colors and vivid depiction of a woman in the glow of pregnancy — was unceremoniously painted over on the exterior wall that had long served as its makeshift campus, according to a KVUE report.

Until the defacement, the mural had yielded something of a thoughtful community focal point since being painted five years ago. Beyond art, the mural represented a hopeful message for child-bearing women.

Among the gentrification-fueled changes in East Austin has been the steady eradication of remaining cultural vestiges dating to when East Austin was comprised working-class neighborhood largely peopled by Hispanic and black residents before it began to appeal to developers. For the better part of a decade, real estate speculators in East Austin have been briskly changing the erstwhile dynamics, replacing established homes and other buildings with luxury apartment housing and trendy restaurants.

The mural originally painted by Ecuadorian artist Maria "Toofly" Castillo was just such a cultural emblem, originally painted for the nonprofit Mama Sana Vibrant Woman offering holistic prenatal and postpartum care for black and Latina women throughout Travis County. To many lamenting the gentrification-fueled landscape changes, it's the loss of community art that is seen as a particularly corrosive and unsavory side effect of new construction.

But the mural now has a new life, albeit on another part of town. Castillo, the artist, happened to be in Austin over the weekend after previously offering to recreate her decimated mural on a more welcoming North Austin canvas. With the help of volunteers, the artist recreated the artwork now displaying outside the Alli Mexican Cuisine on Payton Gin Road and Quail Creek Drive, KVUE reported.

Although no longer in East Austin, the mural has come for circle in its new iteration by doubling as a logo for Mama Sana Vibrant Woman for which it was originally created, the news station noted. Like any piece of powerful art, the mural conveys an important message, in this case a tacit assurance to pregnant women and new mothers that they are not alone but surrounded with abundant resources designed just for them to which they can avail themselves.

The mural re-mounting reinforces that message, Mama Sana Vibrant Woman Director of Education and Training Paula Rojas told the news station: "For us, it means having a chance to continue to have this issue of the health of black and Latina moms in the face of our city," she said. "It needs to be public. We need to be thinking about it, and we need to take it seriously."

>>> Read the full story at KVUE

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