Elizabeth Sisco, Louis Hock and David Avalos

1988

Poster

20 1/2 x 71 1/2" MOUNTED

Black and white silkscreened vinyl poster mounted on Gatorboard. Produced by the National Endowment for the Arts and intended for affixing to the rear exteriors of one of 100 San Diego Transit System buses.

This public project is the first collaboration of many between the San Diego-based artists Elizabeth Sisco, Louis Hock, and David Avalos. Unveiled in San Diego on January 4, 1988, the poster on view was first presented as advertising on the back of 100 buses. Flanked by the hands of a dishwasher and hotel maid, the central image is shot by Sisco and depicts an arrest by Border Patrol agents on a San Diego bus. The poster was highly contested by politicians and news outlets and is today emblematic of the history of artistic censorship during the Culture Wars. By embracing the outrage, the artists mobilized mass media to bring attention to their action, reasserting the engagement of discourse as a genuine artistic activity. Conceived as a response to San Diego’s commitment to host the Super Bowl on January 31, 1988, Welcome… publicized how the city’s tourism economy relies on the labor of a population under police surveillance. The artists continued to address the lack of public support for the undocumented in their last collaborative work, Art Rebate (1993), wherein they infamously redistributed the project’s budget as $10 bills to 450 immigrant workers along the San Diego/Tijuana border.

1988

Elizabeth Sisco, Louis Hock and David Avalos

Museum purchase

2025.004.001