About doodles without borders (dwb)
Doodles without Borders is a locally entrenched arts project, which cosistent presence in LA’s Skid Row neighborhood and in Glendale, with an Armenian touch. Doodles leads collaborative art projects that contribute to disassembling infrastructures of oppression and strengthening infrastructures of care and caretaking en route to collective liberation, one community arts hour at a time.
More broadly, the dwb website is the online home and container for independent and autonomous projects and initiatives led, co-led, or in collaboration with Hayk Makhmuryan.
About Hayk (he/him)
I am an Armenian artist, art worker, Arm<>Eng<>Rus interpreter/translator, and community project coordinator, tenant, living in occupied Tongva/Kizh/Chumach Land (aka Los Angeles region) since 1999. I am a working class immigrant, socialized and moving through the world as a cis-hetero man. I was born and grew up in Yerevan, Armenia.
My work is largely focused on equitable access to arts, cultural, and social spaces as a fundamental human right, human need and collective responsibility.
I am interested in how artists and arts spaces can align with grassroots community activism, to look at the intersection of arts, working class led collective liberation minded organizing, and local neighborhood strengthening. I have worked in LA’s Skid Row neighborhood since 2008, and my activism is informed by having coordinated and grown Studio 526 (formerly Lamp Arts Program) 2008-2022, my involvement in the Skid Row Design Collective, the campaign to form a Skid Row Neighborhood Council, and other community and resident centering initiatives. A recent project that I co-started is Community Arts Depot. I’ve also been involved in language justice work in LA area (learning so much from Antena Los Angeles), and in organizing against social and economic displacement with Glendale Tenants Union. Regionally, I’ve also served on LA County’s Cultural Equity and Inclusion Advisory Committee (2018-2023).
Arts and culture turn our attention to the fundamentals of communication, to the way we relate to one another, and to the world around us. As such, our level of exposure and participation in arts and cultural activities is directly proportional to our quality of life.
This blog and the site are a work in progress, an ongoing creative project that will change and grow over time.
This webpage and my perspectives would not be possible without input and conversations with fellow artists, active community members, collaborators, and friends like John, Chris, Kayo, Nika, and many others.
Community Artivism 