AFP, Los Angeles :
One morning, Los Angeles businesswoman Eva Chimento was about to open her art gallery in the city’s Hispanic enclave of Boyle Heights when she found the door slightly open.
While puzzled, she didn’t think much of the incident until a second occasion when she found the lock had been forced.
She was later invited by a group of women calling themselves the Ovarian Psychos to a community meeting “to talk about gentrification,” but encountered hostility and verbal abuse when she stood up to talk.
“It was horrible, I was insulted,” says Chimento, who believes the incidents are part of a larger pattern of harassment from community activists trying to halt an influx of affluent residents.
Mihai Nicodim, a neighboring gallery owner, has had his door vandalized and his store front defaced with insulting slogans such as “fuck white art,” while exhibition openings have been met with protests.
“All the while I had a Chinese artist on display. I represent a South African, local artists,” said Nicodim, who has lived in Boyle Heights for decades, since arriving in the US as a penniless Romanian refugee.
One morning, Los Angeles businesswoman Eva Chimento was about to open her art gallery in the city’s Hispanic enclave of Boyle Heights when she found the door slightly open.
While puzzled, she didn’t think much of the incident until a second occasion when she found the lock had been forced.
She was later invited by a group of women calling themselves the Ovarian Psychos to a community meeting “to talk about gentrification,” but encountered hostility and verbal abuse when she stood up to talk.
“It was horrible, I was insulted,” says Chimento, who believes the incidents are part of a larger pattern of harassment from community activists trying to halt an influx of affluent residents.
Mihai Nicodim, a neighboring gallery owner, has had his door vandalized and his store front defaced with insulting slogans such as “fuck white art,” while exhibition openings have been met with protests.
“All the while I had a Chinese artist on display. I represent a South African, local artists,” said Nicodim, who has lived in Boyle Heights for decades, since arriving in the US as a penniless Romanian refugee.
