Spaces

Social Practice

Storytelling

This work leverages our capabilities for social good and community building. Whether producing public artworks, supporting mission-driven organizations or bringing awareness to marginalized groups these projects are urgent, accessible, and move us closer to a better world.

2025 | Public Art Work / Community

Partner: UCSD Center for Community Health
Funding Partner: James Irvine Foundation

Blessing of the Boats is a participatory public art installation by multidisciplinary artist Muna Malik that honors the resilience and journeys of San Diego’s immigrant and refugee communities. Produced in partnership with the UCSD Center for Community Health and supported by the James Irvine Foundation, this temporary installation brings together art, storytelling, and community reflection.

The work features a life-sized sculptural boat made from perforated metal and illuminated from within, transforming it into a glowing vessel of memory and collective care. Inspired by the histories of migration that shape our world today, Blessing of the Boats invites participants to share personal reflections and stories. These messages are placed inside the boat, turning it into a living archive of belonging and hope.

About the Artist:
Muna Malik is a Yemeni-born, Los Angeles-based artist whose practice explores identity, migration, and collective care. Her work spans sculpture, painting, immersive installation, and film, and has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, the Annenberg Space for Photography, and the Parrish Art Museum. With Blessing of the Boats, Malik continues her signature approach to interactive art that empowers communities through participation and empathy.

Credits:
Artist: Muna Malik
Fabrication: Nick Rodrigues
Producer: Dana Chang
Filmmaker: Teddy Labissiere

Blessing Of The Boats
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2024

Partner: The Source LGBT+ Center
Funding Partner: James Irvine Foundation

The Gleam is a monumental laser installation created in partnership with The Source LGBT+ Center in Visalia, CA. Unveiled during PRIDE Visalia 2024, this
six-channel prismatic laser system blasts a vertical light rainbow into the sky, visible for miles across California’s Central Valley. Created as a beacon of safety and belonging, The Gleam offers a moment of visibility for LGBTQ+ individuals in often-hostile rural regions. It stands as a symbol of hope and solidarity, affirming that queer people deserve to be seen, celebrated, and supported, wherever they live.

The Gleam
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2022 - 2025 | Public Art Work / Community

Partner: Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California

VoiceBox: My Body My Voice is the inaugural iteration of VoiceBox, a traveling storytelling installation that gathers personal narratives to drive cultural and political change. Developed in collaboration with Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, this project became a cornerstone of the state’s successful 2022 Prop 1 campaign to enshrine the right to abortion access in the California Constitution.

Launched in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s repeal, VoiceBox toured statewide - appearing at rallies, clinics, campuses, and public events - to collect over 300 powerful firsthand stories about reproductive freedom, bodily autonomy, and abortion access. Participants stepped inside a private, tech-enabled booth to record their testimonies in a safe, anonymous environment. These stories have built a powerful archive and have been used in public campaigns, storytelling, and community events.
The tour culminated in a public activation at the California State Capitol in Sacramento, presented by documentary filmmaker and First Partner Jennifer Siebel-Newsom, alongside key speakers and live storytelling.

Credits:
Director of Photography: Jacqui Carriere
1st Assistant Camera: Madison Lutz
Editor: Teddy Labissiere
Director of Photography: Teddy Labissiere
Creative Producer: Symone Holliday
Director of Photography: Kalea Calloway
Editor/Colorist: Jeff Watterson
Composer/Sound Mix: Gred Bevis, Eren Cannata
Fabricator: Nick Rodrigues
Tech: Jonathan Pound
PP Partner: Xenia Vidal

VoiceBox: My Body, My Choice
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2024 | Public Art Work / Community

Partner: Reach University
Funding Partner: James Irvine Foundation
Featured Collaborator: Hector Camacho Liz (2024 James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awardees)

VoiceBox: If I Were A Teacher is a traveling storytelling installation designed to uplift the stories of educators and students across California, while inspiring a new generation to consider teaching as a powerful and transformative career path.
This edition of VoiceBox was developed in partnership with Reach University and the James Irvine Foundation as part of their 2024 Leadership Awards campaign. It launched with a special activation featuring awardee Hector Camacho, an educator and advocate for diversifying the teaching pipeline in California. The project visited schools in San Mateo County, offering students, parents, teachers, and administrators a space to reflect on the vital role educators play in their lives and communities.
Participants were invited to answer a single, important question: “If you were a teacher, what would you do differently?” Their answers were heartfelt, insightful, and deeply personal, resulting in a growing archive of stories that highlight the challenges and potential futures within our education system.

Credits:
Producer: Dana Chang
Director: Dorian Lynde
Technical Advisor: Jonathan Pound
Filming: Teddy Labissiere

VoiceBox: If I Were a Teacher
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2023

Everyone Deserves a Living Wage is a mobile, interactive art and technology campaign created in partnership with One Fair Wage to promote economic justice and worker dignity. Centered around a custom-built wage calculator app, the project hopes to expose the realities of subminimum wages and calls for legislative change.The Living Wage Calculator us a tool that allows users to input their location, household size, and dependents to understand the real cost of living in their area. The app illustrates the stark gap between the federal minimum wage and what workers actually need to survive - especially in high-cost states like California.

Everyone Deserves A Living Wage
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2024 | Public Art Work / Community

Partner: Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
Funding Partner: James Irvine Foundation

A Voice From California State Prison is a guerrilla projection art campaign created to amplify the voices of incarcerated workers and call for the end of prison slavery in California. Originally conceived as a billboard project in partnership with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC), the campaign faced swift censorship from commercial billboard operators who reneged on pre-approved contracts after reviewing the campaign's content.

In response, Tre Borden /Co and LSPC reimagined the project as a mobile projection-based intervention. Over the course of several nights in Sacramento, the team projected artwork, messages, and letters written by incarcerated Californians onto civic landmarks, including the California State Capitol, the county jail, and the headquarters of the very companies that declined the billboard placements. These projections demanded visibility for the often-invisible labor of incarcerated people and supported the growing movement to abolish involuntary servitude in state prisons.

Credits:
Director of Photography & Editor: Teddy Labissiere
Assistant Camera: Ulises Garcia
Drone Operator: Daniel Xaysonkham
Technical Advisor: Jonathan Pound
Vehicle Operator: Keaton Bowlby
Photographer: Chad Davies
Creative Direction (Campaign Art): De’jon Joy

A Voice From California State Prison
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2024 | Public Art Work / Community

Partner: AAPI Equity Alliance
Funding Partner: James Irvine Foundation
Artist: Natalie Bui

Vote For Your Community is a campaign developed in partnership with AAPI Equity Alliance to mobilize Asian American and Pacific Islander voters ahead of the 2024 election. Designed by artist and illustrator Natalie Bui, the campaign features five posters that reflect the values, concerns, and power of AAPI communities across California. Combining artwork with strategic placement, Vote For Your Community reframes civic participation as a collective act of care, encouraging communities to show up for one another at the ballot box.

Vote For Your Community
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2022 | Collaboration / Public Art Work / Community

Client: LA Fashion District
Key Collaborators:
Urban Offerings LLC
Zehra Ahmed (Creator of Womxn in Windows)
Artist: Janna Ireland
Artist: Ginger Q

In October 2021, Tre Borden /Co in partnership with the LA Fashion District and Urban Offerings launched Where Do We Go From Here? an installation that asks passerby to envision what the future holds and their role in making it a reality.

Where Do We Go From Here? is a series of installations from artists who interrogate this question personally with an eye toward the voices who have shaped the past, the present and what new voices are required to construct a compelling and inclusive future.The site of the project is downtown at the former Dearden’s Furniture flagship on 7th and Main St in the center of LA’s Fashion District. This intersection, which sees so many passerby from all walks of life pass by every day, is a perfect location to engage people on this question.

The furniture store’s legacy as a political and economic lifeline to the immigrant communities of LA is referenced in Ginger Q’s piece Estamos Aqui/We Are Here which adorns the building with a Spanish phrase acknowledging Latinx and immigrant resilience and continued visibility.

Womxn in Windows, curated and produced annually by architect and artist Zehra Ahmed, offers passerby a chance to view video artwork from womxn identified artists of color who use moving and still images to interrogate whose voices should steer our thinking about what comes next.

Janna Ireland’s personal and poignant photo series How Big Is the Earth? is a meditation on youthful curiosity and the still inspiring potential of the coming generation who must grapple with the choices we all make today.

Where Do We Go From Here?
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2020 | Public Art Work / Community

Partner: Crenshaw Dairy Mart
Funding Partner: Anonymous Donor

Lighting Up The Sky - Juneteenth Lighting Ceremony
In June 2020, in the wake of the racial uprisings following the murder of George Floyd, Tre Borden /Co. produced one if its most meaningful projects to date. The Crenshaw Dairy Mart is an art-collective and community organizing space founded by BLM co-founder and artist Patrisse Cullors along with artists noé olivas and Alexandre Dorriz. Located in the heart of Inglewood, the space sits directly in the landing path of planes coming into LAX just a few miles away.

The team had already installed a temporary mural Care Not Cages to serve as a call to action to those above as they landed in Los Angeles.

The team at CDM wanted to produce an artwork on the rooftop that would signal that LA was a place, and that the Dairy Mart specifically, was a place that honored Black lives. Where Black Lives Mattered. They wanted to signal this with a beacon on the rooftop of the building where at night people would see a mural (in Laker purple and Yellow also a nod to the recently passed Kobe Bryant), but at night it would light up so that planes coming from around the world would see the landmark. The hope is that it would be visible not only to visitors and LA residents returning home but also to the many police surveillance aircraft that are ubiquitous in Inglewood and other heavily-BLACK and POC neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Tre Borden /Co. came on board to produce the project, and alongside a very hard working team the project was built in time for a socially-distant lighting ceremony at the Dairy Mart on Juneteenth. The project would not have been possible without the generosity of Azzie Youssefi who donated the funds to complete the project or the amazing team that worked night and day for weeks to complete this project. The team consisted of noé olivas (lead artist) De’Schzunell “DJ” Catlin (lead engineer/technical consultant) Phil America (creative consultant), Jake Freilich (assistant fabricator), Pablo Mendoza (assistant engineer/fabricator), Dulce Soledad Ibarra (assistant fabricator). Documentation and Research and additional support for the project was provided by: Gio Solis (Documentarian), Jessa Ciel (film editor), Alexandre Dorriz (Lead Researcher), Patrisse Cullors (Lead Creative).

Lighting Up the Sky ➞

2016 | Collaboration / Public Art Work / Community

Artists: Studio Tutto (Sofia Lacin & Hennessy Cristophel)
Partners: CalTrans, Sunday Certified Farmers Market, City of Sacramento
Funders: The California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente, Broadway Partnership, Individual Donors

Bright Underbelly is a 70,000-square-foot mural located on the underside of the W/X Freeway in Sacramento, transforming a once-overlooked corridor near Southside Park into one of the largest and most ambitious public artworks in the region. Conceived and produced by Tre Borden /Co in partnership with Studio Tutto, the project reimagined urban infrastructure as a canvas for civic pride, environmental awareness, and creative possibility.

Studio Tutto’s immersive design spans the four seasons through a sky-blue canopy of native trees, birds, and flora, wrapping viewers in a story of ecological cycles and local identity. A lunar calendar encircles the mural, anchoring the piece in both time and place. The site sits directly above California’s largest certified farmers market, creating a unique dialogue between agriculture, environment, and community.
The project was groundbreaking public-private partnership through a pilot program initiated by CalTrans to support the project. Bright Underbelly is now the template for freeway beautification through the state of California.

Bright Underbelly
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2019 | Public Art Work / Community

Artist: Phil America & Tré Borden
Partners: World Pride, LA Pride, NY Pride, Soho House, LAAC,
Downtown Santa Monica Inc.
Research Partners: One Archives; Larry Kramer Papers at Yale University

Colors of Progress is a public art installation that reimagines the iconic rainbow flag as a platform for storytelling and social justice. Developed to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the project highlights the sacrifices and contributions of LGBTQ+ individuals, especially those at the margins of race, immigration status, class, and ability.

Each color of the rainbow is used to thematically group stories by social identity categories, including racial justice, trans rights, immigrant narratives, and other intersections often underrepresented within mainstream Pride celebrations. Through a combination of archival research and contemporary interviews, each flag features excerpted text connecting influential historical figures with present-day LGBTQ+ individuals who continue to shape our communities.
By grounding the work in both past and present, Colors of Progress offers a visual oral history that invites reflection and fosters a deeper understanding of the diverse lived experiences within the LGBTQ+ movement.

Colors of Progress
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2018 | Public Art Work / Community

Artist: Dorian Lynde
Partners:
Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California,
The CA Democratic Party Convention

Buying Power is an immersive installation by artist Dorian Lynde, produced by Tre Borden /Co in partnership with Planned Parenthood. First unveiled at the 2018 California Democratic Convention, the project critiques the ways in which advertising and consumer culture have shaped and distorted social ideas of gender, race, and class. Items in the store were available for purchase with proceeds going to Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.

Set inside a fully realized convenience store, the installation replaces typical cleaning and beauty products with subversively branded items featuring irreverent slogans and imagery. By mimicking the language and visual strategies of commercial advertising, Buying Power satirizes the commodification of women and invites viewers to question the subtle and overt messages embedded in everyday consumer experiences.
A custom t-shirt collaboration with Female Collective accompanied the project, with proceeds from sales donated to Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.

The installation later appeared at Superchief Gallery LA and was featured at the Sexy Beast for Planned Parenthood Gala at the Marciano Art Foundation. Blending art, satire, and advocacy, Buying Power challenges audiences to see the convenience store, often a site of impulse and habit, as a space of reflection on identity, agency, and cultural messaging.

Buying Power
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2017 | Public Art Work / Community

Artists: Over 50 photographers, filmmakers, visual artists and animators were featured from around the United States and internationally.
Curator: Jessa Ciel

Beacon: Sacramento was a large-scale video projection and public art experience that transformed a vacant bank building in downtown Sacramento into a luminous platform for civic reflection and creative resistance. Produced by Tre Borden /Co and curated by artist and filmmaker Jessa Ciel, the 10-week installation responded to a time of national division and international crisis with bold artistic expression and community-driven calls to action.

From April to July 2017, Beacon activated the windows of 930 K Street, a glass-fronted, street-level site just blocks from the California State Capitol and Golden 1 Center, with curated works from local, national, and international artists. Each week featured a new theme addressing urgent social and political issues, with projected image, video, and text installations creating an immersive visual environment for thousands of daily passersby, from policymakers to pedestrians.

Beacon turned Sacramento, the self-proclaimed “Capital of the Resistance”, into a creative amplifier for voices calling for justice, equity, and civic action. Each projection served not just as commentary, but as a weekly rallying point for real-world engagement and connection.

Beacon: Sacramento ➞

2017 | Public Art Work / Community

Client: Next City
Key Partners:
Kaiser Permanente
Downtown Sacramento Partnership
Fulcrum Property
SMUD
The Sacramento Kings Foundation
Kind Farms
JUMP Bike
California State University of Sacramento

In October 2019, Tre Borden /Co co-produced and chaired the host committee for the Next City Vanguard Conference, held in California for the first time in its Capitol Sacramento. The annual conference brings together 40 of the world’s leading urban innovators, from city planners and architects to artists, policy leaders, and public health professionals, to explore the challenges and opportunities facing rapidly evolving cities.

With participants representing cities across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Asia, the 2019 conference highlighted Sacramento at a critical moment of transformation. Fellows engaged with the city’s most pressing issues, from the future of the Downtown Railyards and Old Sacramento Waterfront to gentrification, equity in cannabis policy, and food justice. Through immersive panels, site visits, and cultural programming, the event showcased Sacramento as a city grappling with growth, identity, and inclusion.

The conference culminated in the Big Idea Challenge, a design sprint focused on reimagining the freeway underpass connecting downtown Sacramento to the historic waterfront. Teams pitched creative, community-centered ideas to a panel of civic leaders, with the winning concept “I AM SACRAMENTO” proposing public art and activations that connect this corridor with underserved neighborhoods across the region. With Sacramento city officials, including Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Councilmember Steve Hansen, participating directly, the conference served as both a celebration of urban creativity and a platform for meaningful civic dialogue.

Vanguard
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2022 | Spaces / Community

Client: Studio Tutto
Partner: Theodore Payne Foundation
Role: Producer, Development

Seed Spires is a public art project designed to address pollinator loss and ecological decline through site-responsive, biodegradable sculptures. Created in collaboration with Studio Tutto, the project features six-foot tall obelisks made from compressed earth, potting soil, and custom native seed blends. Once installed, the spires bloom and then erode, leaving behind living habitats for threatened pollinators.
The project highlights the role artists can play in making climate change visible and emotionally resonant, transforming abstract data into tangible, community-based interventions. Installations are prioritized in historically under-landscaped areas and developed in partnership with local organizations to encourage stewardship and education.

The inaugural activation was installed with the Theodore Payne Foundation in Spring 2022, along a trail overlooking Los Angeles. Additional Seed Spires have been placed in Sacramento and other parts of California.

Seed Spires
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2020 | Public Art Work / Community

Client: For Freedoms
Artists: Tré Borden, Phil America
Site: Minneapolis, MN

Commissioned as part of For Freedoms’ 2020 Awakening national billboard campaign, On Fire, 2020 is a multimedia artwork created by Tré Borden and Phil America. The piece was displayed in Minneapolis, the epicenter of the racial justice uprisings following the murder of George Floyd, and offered a dual commentary on the intersecting crises of climate catastrophe and systemic racism.

Using anaglyph imagery, the billboard overlays two photographs: one of protesters demanding racial justice, the other of California wildfires. The result is a searing portrait of a nation both literally and metaphorically in flames. The text serves as a blunt directive to reckon with the realities long ignored.

Part of a nationwide series by For Freedoms, the work stands as a call to reflection and action in a time of deep reckoning.

FOR FREEDOMS
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2020 | Public Art Work / Community

Client: California Office of Emergencyt Services (CalOES)
Artists: Daniel Hyo Kim, Ernesto Yerena,

In 2020 LISTOS California, a program funded by CA Governor Gavin Newsom in the Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) began an art-based campaign to reach the most vulnerable communities in Calfornia. Disaster preparedness, in a year with an unprecedented pandemic and a spate of deadly wildfires throughout the state, could not be more important and reaching communities that are disproportionately impacted and under-resourced was imperative.

Spearheaded by LISTOS co-Chair Justin Knighten, the campaign commissioned artwork from designers and artists from target communities and used it to reach underserved populations throughout California. Tre Borden /Co. was selected as an art consultant to source artists from the Latinx and Korean communities in California. The artists selected were Ernesto Yerena Montejano and Daniel Hyo Kim. The campaign artwork was used to reach millions of vulnerable Californians to help them get information regarding Covid-19 and other disasters as well as stay connected within their communities.

LISTOS California
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