Ramiro Gomez

While working as a nanny, Gomez would look at issues of Luxe, Dwell, Architectural Digest, and Elle Décor displayed in his employer's home.[8] Upon flipping through the pages, Gomez found the images devoid of the workers who maintained the advertised domestic lifestyle.[8] This realization prompted him to begin his series, Domestic Scenes (2012–present), in which he superimposes domestic workers onto advertisements in high-end magazines to reinsert an image of the Latino community into the public consciousness.[2] Gomez depicts the figures of housekeepers, nannies, and gardeners completing their daily duties in the Chicano rasquache style, as a way to both, acknowledge and document their lives and labor.[9]

Gomez gives each of his workers a Latino name such as Maria, Lupita, or Carmen but renders the figures with loose and rough strokes that blur any identifiable facial features, which writer Katharine Schwab states "reframes the David Hockney paintings and glossy magazine advertisements he takes for inspiration, putting the lives of California’s near-invisible and individually disposable workers front and center."[3] In addition to their names, most of his figures are presented with dark skin and brown hair to fully represent the archetype of a Latino domestic worker.[9] The series acts as a photo study, documenting the figures that advertisements have erased from the narrative.[8] These images earned Gomez recognition within the art world, resulting in his partnership with the California-based art dealer Charlie James Gallery.[1]

Ramiro Gomez painted this to demonstrate his personal family’s struggle after his uncle was deported in 2018. In the painting, “a man-shaped hole in a family portrait marks the spot where a graduate’s father should have been”.[11] Gomez leaves the figures in his portrait faceless, but right next to the graduate is an empty space while the rest of the family is standing next to each other[12]

Gomez has stated that he sees David Hockney as a personal hero and an influence for many of his works, as well as helping him to openly embrace his sexuality.[7] Hockney is known for creating idealistic depictions of Los Angeles, California.[9] His modernist style rendered the splendor of Los Angeles residents, homes and pop culture.[9] Gomez sought to revise Hockney's compositions by including the implied characters who work to maintain the depicted beauty as well as to portray dark-skinned workers, diverting the focus of the piece from luxury to labor.[9] Gomez reimagined Hockney's A Bigger Splash (1967), with his version, No Splash, which he completed in 2014.[9] While Gomez's reproduction does not depict Hockney's large splash in the foreground, it does include two faceless workers in the background who clean windows and rake the pool.[1] Gomez's painting is currently in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, San Diego's (MCA San Diego) permanent collection.[9]

Gomez crosses mediums to cardboard to represent Latino gardeners, custodians, and workers in his series entitled Cut-Outs. In this series, Gomez’s main objective was "to slow people down, to have them double-take, to make them take notice and see" the cardboard figures that he placed along the sidewalks, on lawns, and against buildings.[3] Gomez paints his loose renderings of people on life-size cardboard cutouts, which he collects from the dumpsters behind a Best Buy at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea Avenue.[9] While the destinations and arrangements for each figure are carefully thought out and executed, Gomez knows that the cutouts’ lives are short-lived as they are either stolen, thrown out or destroyed.[3] According to Gomez, the disposability of the cardboard figures acts as commentary on the perceived replaceability of domestic and maintenance workers. Gomez's husband, photographer David Feldman, photographs images of the cutouts for exhibitions nationwide.[9] In 2013, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA offered Gomez his first solo exhibition, entitled Luxury Interrupted, to present images of his cutouts.[7]

Gomez displays most of his cutouts throughout the lawns, street corners, and playgrounds of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, which he says is intended to force passersby to recognize who maintains the city and cares for its children.[9] In 2012, Gomez planted four cardboard Latino workers on the hedge of actor George Clooney’s home prior to a fundraiser event that President Obama was to attend.[8] One of the figures displayed a sign that read "We are all American". His intent was to demonstrate the political dimensions of his art by both representing and humanizing his subjects.[3] According to Katharine Schwab, Gomez uses the power and accessibility of street art to force society to recognize who maintains city and cares for its children. Gomez explains that "it was strange; actual humans involved in their labor had become invisible to most people, but the image of a human, there, in the middle of your day, and not at some museum or gallery, but there in the middle of your path, somehow that registered."[3]

In 2017, LACMA announced the inclusion of Gomez's works from his series, Cut-Outs (2015), in their permanent collection.[7]