We’ve Always Been Here Art Installation by Britt Westveer is Up at WeHo City Hall

A new mural is being installed at West Hollywood City Hall, located at 8300 Santa Monica Blvd, in time for pride month. We’ve Always Been Here by Britt Westveer will run from May 2023 through April 30, 2024. The 10×20 wheatpasted mural artwork is a collection of three large, printed posters featuring digital collages made from found imagery and the artist’s own archives depicting the long history of diverse LGBTQIA+ people who have “always been here.”

The new mural has replaced the Our Pride mural art installation by artist LaToya Peoples which was part of the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division 2022 WEHO Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival. The mural was a bright blue sky, symbolic of the progress LGBTQ+ people have made and have yet to make. Each hand represents diverse people.

We’ve Always Been Here will be completed by the end of this week.

Britt Westveer is a queer Milwaukee and Los Angeles -based multidisciplinary artist with a focus on textiles and photography. Her work evokes both the past and the present, with a heavy emphasis on identity. Her bio states that she’s currently exploring these themes by researching the erasure of women and non-binary people’s history during the ‘Old West’ in the early to mid-1800s. Through the use of storytelling, photographs and found imagery, she wants to demystify the fables of the west, as well as generate a discussion about people who identify as women or non-binary during a time that has been consistently populated with cis-male-centered folklore and glamorization.

Westveer is a freelance designer with a multitude of skills that she’s cultivated from her fine arts education and experiences in the creative industry. While her passion is in fine art photography and textiles, she is also skilled in graphic design, social media management, website building, photo editing, TikTok video editing, and printmaking.

I’m currently part of an exhibition in her hometown of Milwaukee at the University Club Tower Gallery Space.

The new art installation is part of the City of West Hollywood’s Art on the Outside Program, the City’s temporary art program that installs rotating artworks throughout the city. The artworks can include sculpture, murals, digital art, and other outdoor works. Most exhibitions remain on display between six months and three years. All projects are subject to the Art on the Outside Program Review and Approval Process. The program is funded through the Public Beautification & Art Fund.