The group behind some of Atlanta’s favorite murals celebrates its quinceañero

Living Walls, an Atlanta nonprofit that curates and produces public art to inspire social change, is celebrating its 15th anniversary with a quinceañero Saturday.

The fundraising fiesta at Goat Farm will feature live mariachi music, DJ sets, live painting, art installations, piñatas, drag performers, food and cocktails.

For 15 years, Living Walls has coordinated the creation of public art and connected artists with paid opportunities to paint public spaces. The organization, which is behind more than 500 murals across metro Atlanta, prides itself on promoting artists who are of color, female or in the LGBTQ+ community.

Activism has been part of the Living Walls ethos since the beginning. The organization’s cofounder, Monica Campana, emigrated to the United States from Peru at 15 and settled in Atlanta in 2007. While attending SCAD and the Art Institute of Atlanta, she experimented with guerrilla art, drawing on large sheets of paper and pasting them up, unauthorized, on walls around town. In 2008, she and a friend, Blacki Migliozzi, got a $4,000 grant to hold a festival with artists painting murals around town. They called themselves Living Walls. The name stuck.

In 2024, Living Walls collaborated with Atlanta-based artist Danae Antoine on a mural measuring 60 feet long and 15 feet high on Decatur Square memorializing two women who died after trying to have abortions shortly after Georgia’s 2022 restrictions went into effect. A ProPublica story made the women’s’ deaths public.

In 2021, Atlanta artist Yuzly Mathurin wanted to respond to the murder of six Asian Americans by a gunman in metro Atlanta, and to the murder trial of George Floyd. Her mural on the corner of Cherokee Avenue and Memorial Drive in Grant Park showed a determined African American figure in a flowered kimono, one sneakered foot planted firmly forward, and the words “Spread Love Not Hate.”

“When it comes to public art, it’s important to convey what’s happening around you,” Mathurin said in a 2021 interview with the AJC.

Since 2019, Living Walls has facilitated the Adult Swim Mural Project, which gives funds and resources to Black artists to produce large-scale murals. The Adult Swim program selects new artists every year.

“Living Walls has changed the conversations we have around public art, how it can speak to the issues of our day,” said Marian Liou, former program manager of community engagement and arts for the Atlanta Regional Commission in a 2021 interview with the AJC.

Campana wanted to host a quinceañero for Living Walls’ 15th anniversary in part because she didn’t get to have her own.

Guests at the quinceañero are encouraged to wear fiesta attire; the Living Walls Pinterest board suggests poofy ’80s prom dresses, and mariachi tuxedos.

The evening will be hosted by drag entertainer Taylor Alxndr, with indie Puerto Rican musician Csndra headlining with a band at 9 p.m. The evening will also include mariachi music, DJ sets and drag performances. Living Walls artists will participate in art installations and live painting, and 15 artist-crafted giant piñatas will be auctioned off. Tickets include celebratory cake, and empanadas, tamales, cocktails and other food will be available for purchase. The evening will wrap with crowds batting down a piñata.

The event, Bell noted, will also coincide with Latin American Heritage Month, which starts Sept. 15.