Artist Carlos Agredano, who grew up near the 105 Freeway in Lynwood, California, has created a traveling sculpture titled "FUME" (2025) that uses air quality sensors mounted on his 1992 Toyota Pickup to measure pollution from vehicle exhaust and ambient air. The work was exhibited at the Los Angeles Nomadic Art Division (LAND) and is part of Agredano's broader practice examining how the LA freeway system has harmed working-class communities of color through toxic drift and destructive urban planning. His research draws on sources including Eric Avila's book "Folklore of the Freeway" and studies from UCLA's Center for Occupational & Environmental Health.
This work matters because it updates the legacy of postwar artists who used air as a utopian, borderless material—such as Yves Klein, Otto Piene, and Fujiko Nakaya—by instead revealing how air quality is unevenly distributed along lines of race and class. Agredano's practice connects environmental data to the longer history of freeway construction in Los Angeles, which involved seizing homes from Black and Brown communities through eminent domain and redlining. By quantifying invisible pollution, "FUME" makes visible the gradual violence that disproportionately impacts marginalized neighborhoods, turning the city itself into a collaborator in the artistic process.