Rise Above – Life is Beautiful Festival

During the 2013 Rise Above Art Festival in downtown Las Vegas, this intervention extended Vhils' Scratching the Surface practice into a city more commonly associated with spectacle and image production. Developed across two separate walls at 209 and 200–222 North 7th Street—the second of which has since disappeared—the portraits emerged through the removal of the buildings' surfaces, revealing the material beneath. Set within an environment defined by constant reinvention, the work introduces a quieter, more permanent human presence, contrasting the transient visual culture of the Strip with the physical memory embedded in the city's older architecture. Photography by Bryan Schnitzer documents the intervention.