Angelina ‘179’ Villalobos Soto
Art Mediums: Acrylic, Spraypaint
I’m a muralist and teaching artist working on public art projects and workshops with the community. My goal is to create safe and beautiful spaces for community members by engaging them in mindful installations. I love working with youth and challenging their brilliant minds to think about their roles within the rapid growth of our city. My work engages the viewer to be a part of their environment through observation, critique, & participation. Community engagement is vital to successful art planning, and art should be accessible to all. My focus is educating & leading by example.
“People ask, ‘Why 179?” When I first started doing art—and graffiti specifically—I learned there’s an element of anonymity. I liked this. I was sick of being hurtfully stereotyped based on my ‘Latinness’. So my friends and I all came up with alter egos, superhero names, if I may. I knew I wanted to keep the Angel part (a childhood nickname short for Angelina), but I needed something to spice it up. A friend suggested adding 179 (where he got the numbers, I don’t know), but it was supposed to sound cool, edgy, and Hip Hop, like the old school writers of NYC. It totally worked! I started using the handle for stickers and art pieces…till word got out that I was a female. Then the response became, “That’s pretty good, for a girl.” That shattered my heart.”
“I was found out.”
“So I dropped the ‘Angel’ part, the part that I’ve always been, and just used 179. This is counter to what artists intuitively want, even in a practice that requires anonymity. I had to be anonymous for people to see me; I had to be just a number. For years this was enough. People interacted with my art and then with me, rather than the other way around. All the while, I grew and matured as an artist and person. Now that everyone knows, I don’t feel insecure or anxious about people’s assumptions based on my background. Matter of fact, I go by my first and last name now, something that I was always insecure about, what led me to a superhero alter ego in the first place. If you don’t know the magic that 2 L’s do in the Spanish language, VILLALOBOS can sound either very beautiful or very, very awful. I didn’t want to have to embarrassingly correct people or call attention to myself by saying it and then having to spell it. Now I do. It means ‘House of the Wolves,’ and the 2 L’s make the ‘yee’ sound, like in ‘yeet.’”
“My transformation came in the form of a name.”