DIVERSEartLA temp 2022

DIVERSEartLA is back with a new ecological lens. Curated by Marisa Caichiolo, this year’s edition will examine not just how the environment is represented in art, but how humanity’s place in the world is depicted. This exhibition will open up an important dialogue about the Earth’s past, present, and future, uniting the community around discussions of the global climate crisis and potential solutions.

“One of the most powerful things about art is that it brings people together, and transforms the way we communicate. The goal of DIVERSEartLA 2022 is to view this sector of art within the show through ecological glasses.

This topic is at the heart of a growing number of art narratives, including exhibitions built with high-tech innovations, designed to inspire artistic appreciation and the desire to respond to environmental challenges – reinforcing the value of translating environmental advocacy into art.

The installations, immersive experiences, and performances represent our present day and the looming impact we will all face if the planet continues to warm. DIVERSEartLA 2022 will encourage visitors to confront the complex challenges of our global climate crisis and imagine potential solutions.” – Marisa Caichiolo

Our engagement with museums and institutions this year includes projects with Dox Contemporary in Prague/Czech Center New York and The General Consulate of The Czech Republic in Los Angeles; MUSA Museum of the Arts of the University of Guadalajara and MCA Museum of Environmental Science; MUMBAT Museum of Fine Arts of Tandil & Museum of Nature and Science Antonio Serrano of Entre Rios, Argentina; Museum of Nature of Cantabria, Spain; Skid Row communities; Torrance Art Museum; Raubtier Productions & Unicus.

THE SIGN (part of the Real News series)
Site specific installation by: Swen Leer
Dox Contemporary, Prague / Czech Center New York &
The General Consulate of The Czech Republic in Los Angeles

Highway signs are always right. Not in a political way but by way of conveying a fact. In our time of social-media-fed competing narratives, “alternative facts” and fake news, the road sign seems to be one of the last anchors of truth that everyone can agree on, left and right. It is a true icon of Los Angeles, a city of freeways and cars, of people commuting to and fro, many hours a day, each day.

Arguably, road signs are the most read and trusted literature of Los Angeles, if we can call them that. On the one hand, they are a powerful symbol of progress of the last century, and of mobility. On the other hand, however, they represent the evidence of our technological rampage that has led us into a real climate crisis.

The installation, The Sign, plugs into this a-priori factuality by mimicking the iconic freeway signage, while communicating an unexpected message: “Your children WILL hate you – eventually”. The text is speculation about the future of our society as well as a deeply disturbing existential thought that has probably crossed the mind of most parents. Their kids are  the ones who will pick up the tab of our celebrated economical progress – a religion of economical growth at all costs. Placing the iconographic freeway sign into the interior of the LA Convention Center creates an absurd situation for the viewer, conveying a disturbing message in the matter-of-fact form they have recently seen getting off the freeway to get to the LA Art Show. And the message stands, after all – highway signs are always right. Right?

The Other Waterfall & Chapala Also Drops Itself
by Claudia Rodriguez
MUSA Museum of the Arts of the University of Guadalajara
and MCA Museum of Environmental Science

Through the University of Guadalajara Foundation | USA, the Universidad de Guadalajara presents their most relevant museum projects: MUSA Museum of the Arts of the University of Guadalajara and MCA Museum of Environmental Science.

MUSA is a museum with 27 years of history. Their exhibition program includes activities in which the arts become an impulse to motivate social transformation. Their compromise with the environment was consolidated with a state certification that recognizes the process and actions of the institution to protect the natural environment. The MUSA Museum of the Arts was one of the first university properties that implemented sustainable actions related to the management and recycling of waste, as well as, the rational use of water and energy.

The MCA Museum of Environmental Science is an upcoming project of the university. Envisioned as a space engaging with the community in order to foster a sense of belonging through empathy and closeness, that will lead the community to initiate actions of ecology preservation. There are three main visions that constitute the vocation of this museum: to understand the urban dynamics and their impact in nature, the equal disclosure of science, and the generation of emotions that lead to learning.

The MCA presents two installations from the artist, Claudia Rodríguez: La otra cascada — The Other Waterfall and Chapala también se-a-gota — Chapala also Drops Itself, both reflecting the contamination and lack of water that has affected the state of Jalisco, Mexico in the last decades.

The Earth’s Fruits
by Guillermo Anselmo Vezzosi
Curated by Indiana Gnocchini
MUMBAT Museum of Fine Arts of Tandil & Museum of Nature and
Science Antonio Serrano of Entre Rios, Argentina

The artist, Guillermo Anselmo Vezzosi, expresses a reflection on his long-standing concern about how our primacies and human values have increasingly distanced us from our true essence, and rethinking our priorities as a society. Our social habits within the last few decades – which have been based around consumption – have had an impact on climate change, on the conservation of the environment, and the necessary care of the environment – individually and collectively.

Artists have explored new perspectives on approaching “creative doing” by using environmental art, by creating awareness through ecological activism. In this sense, Guillermo shows us the huge colossal amounts of waste that we add every day and it is from his own work, in line with the community, that he dedicates his hours collecting from the same environment he inhabits, which he calls Fruits of Progress. He aims to heal the footprint of contemporary man, which at present it seems irreversible.

The Earth’s Fruits is constituted as a scientific research project whose ideology culminates with an installation work of a specific ephemeral site, where the waste that takes on a second life is dignified. The immersive installation invites us to reconsider that we are part of a whole with nature – a complex whole in constant mutation and adaptation. It challenges us to examine our most recondite thoughts, questioning who we are and the links that unite us to our habitat. In this way, it propositions the visitor to act on new imaginaries, creating an illusion of time and place, where he is the protagonist.

Our Turn To Change
by Andrea Juan and Gabriel Penedo Diego
Museum of Nature of Cantabria, Spain

Presented by Museum of Nature of Cantabria, Spain, the video installation appeals to the viewer, through images, to awaken to an increasingly worrying reality. Our Turn To Change deals with climate change and the consequences that these changes produce in our habitat. Nature speaks to us, screams at us…

One small drop fell and then another and another and another. Thus, drop by drop, large amounts of ice are lost every second. The poles are melting. Meanwhile, we continue on with our lives, with our dreams, as if this could never affect us. The dripping continues and vast frozen expanses have already been lost. The Arctic is at minimum levels, Antarctica has lost ice shelves, glaciers have retracted and the ocean levels continue to rise.

Forest fires, droughts, tidal waves, floods. It is our turn to change. We can still do it.

Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood: Skid Row Cooling Resources
Curated by Tom Grode

Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood is how DTLA 2040 (Department of City Planning) formally presented Skid Row this year to City Hall as part of updating the Downtown Community Plan. Skid Row is a dynamic, primarily African American, residential neighborhood – not a problem to be fixed. The brutal heat waves of September 2020 created Skid Row Cooling Resources, a collaborative planning effort and think tank to ensure the summer of 2021 and beyond was better for Skid Row residents. Skid Row is a unique Urban Heat Island in the larger Heat Island of Downtown Los Angeles.

Tom Grode

Tom moved from Santa Monica to 5th and Main in May 2012, not realizing he was a block from Skid Row. Since then, he’s focused on advocacy around Skid Row as a Community. Tom is an original member of the Skid Row Cooling Resources coalition, the Skid Row Now and 2040 coalition, the Skid Row Community Improvement Coalition, and the Skid Row Arts Alliance. He is heavily engaged with Skid Row as a powerful arts community, in particular a part of the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) and Urban Voices Project.

DIVERSEartLA 2021

The 2021 edition of DIVERSEartLA, curated by Marisa Caichiolo, will focus on the presence, contributions, research and documentation of women and non- binary artists at the forefront of work at the intersection of art, science and technology represented by guest Museums, Institutions and Not-for-Profit Organizations.

“Science, art and technology are human attempts to understand and describe the world around us. The subjects and methods have different traditions and the intended audiences are different, but I think the motivations and goals are fundamentally the same. I think one of the most primal and innate needs of humans is to understand the world around us, and then share that understanding,” said Caichiolo.

In the field of digital art in the last fifteen years, many artists have been working on materializing the digital information and new media practices by audio or visual means (such as installation works, audio-visual and performances which include technology) in order to grasp the imagination of it; while other artists are aiming to present the concept of ‘signals’ from the perspective of synesthesia: they try to visualize sound signals with the aid of machinery and therefore transform the abstract geometric images into sounds through computer operations.

This wave began in the 1920s, when many artists aimed to create time-based visual works. Although some of the works seemed to embody the technology and innovation, much of it actually originated from the most tangible form of reality, the artist’s surrounding natural environments.

DIVERSEartLA will be an examination and a compilation of material, as well as an exhibition featuring the work of women and non-binary artists who have played a central role in the development of new media practices within art institutions and throughout history. We are also diving into a new period where we’ve had to deal with the breakdown of traditional relationships between the material and the immaterial.

While the cryptographic tokens used to create NFTs, are similar to cryptocurrencies such as BitCoin, the tokens in NFTs aren’t fungible, or interchangeable. So, it’s impossible to exchange one NFT for another, as one could do with currency. It’s often equated to an autograph, but on a digital file. An NFT not only tracks the creator of the artwork, but also the ownership and market value. Because it is securely stored in the blockchain, an NFT is unique and non-interchangeable. Photographs, videos, gifs, audio, and any digital file can be represented as an NFT.

Also check out our DIVERSEartLA Talks series, an online platform where the Museums and Institutions have a space to dialog, and share with the general public their programs in 2021.

Dignidad, National Archive of Chile performance, series of Dignidad, 2018
by María Verónica San Martín, Luis Cobelo and Yolanda Leal
Curated by Fabian Goncálves
AMA Art Museum of the Americas, Washington DC

Art Museum of the Americas (AMA) has joined with a special project curated by Fabian Goncálves, that will feature a compilation of material and the work of women artists who have played a central role in the development of new media practices throughout history, as well as by women and non binary people whose forward-thinking practices are currently reshaping the field.

Venezuelan artist Luis Cobelo (PILAR) will be part of AMA with a performance, Yolanda Leal from Mexico will present the performance Gorilla Nature and a special performance will also be presented by María Veroónica San Martin.

Dignidad is an art installation at The National Archive of Chile based on secret telephone documents about Colonia Dignidad. Found in 2012 by the ex-settler and activist, Winfried Hempel, the audios reveal for the first time to the public conversations between Paul Schäfer and other Nazi agents in 1978. Through sculpture, sound, performance, text, and a selection of historical archives, the installation reveals a complex system of codes and transcontinental actions that culminated in crimes against minors and opponents of the Chilean civic-military dictatorship (1973-1990).

DATA | ergo sum | RELOADED Installation
by Ana Marcos
Museum La Neomudejar/ Madrid, Spain

DATA | ergo sum | RELOADED is an interactive Art installation that visualizes the capability of viewing machines using Artificial Intelligence to extract data by a simple observation of visitors, created by artist Ana Marcos.

Ana Marcos is a graduate in Fine Arts from Madrid University and Industrial Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. As a multidisciplinary artist, she combines different art forms like interactive installations, video, and photography, working on new ways of experimentation in the field of arts.

She is the leader and co-founder of 3Dinteractive, a group of engineers and artists that seeks, through research, a deeper understanding of the relationship among art- science-technology and the public. All technology produces a change in our way of living and understanding reality. Today, we have at our disposal complex, innovative technological environments, works based on experimentation and studies of Universities from all over the world and all that knowledge is available on the network to be shared not only by technologists, but also by artists.

It is clear the momentum and relevance of that technology in general, and Artificial Intelligence in particular, is gaining in our society and, as an artist, she believes that artistic work has the obligation to explore and experiment in the field of AI. Art always makes its way into thought and therefore also into technology, and can provide other perspectives to the most innovative developments. Whether AI it is a tool or a discipline, it is – and will be – a topic of work for artists. Hopefully, art will also be able to influence the developments in AI.

The Symphony of Now
by Angie Bonino
San Marcos Museum of Art (MASM), Lima, Perú

The San Marcos Museum of Art (MASM) from Lima, Perú will bring a new media project of augmented reality by Peruvian artist Angie Bonino, titled “THE SYMPHONY OF NOW, which consists of a video installation, and interactive sound installation focusing on the Andean techno de-colonial shamanism.

The artist, Angie Bonino, was born in Lima (Peru), in 1974, and she has continuously travelled all over the world – she even lived and worked in Barcelona, Spain for eleven years. It should come as no surprise then that the main medium of her artistic proposals is precisely the motion pictures, specifically video and video installations. However, this does not mean that they are her only forms of expression. Angie Bonino is an artist of our time in all senses, a multimedia artist focusing on the crossover of art and technology. After all, in addition to video, her works are also expressed in animation, digital techniques, graphic prints, drawings, paintings and sculptures. Yet, through all of this plurality of media, there remains at all times the same predominant aesthetic intention: to question the image.

In Angie Bonino’s work, this questioning of the image through artworks always has a moral and political intent. Her goal is to reveal, in all the hyper-mediatic image production and transmission networks, the dissemination of the invisible, occult, power spheres and systems which determine the configuration of what she calls the image world:

“This world in which we live today, which has become an engulfing universal screen that traps and subjects our eyes, but that does not let us see. Because of their extreme, extraordinarily intense visibility – repetitive, hypnotizing, alienating – the power networks and their objectives of domination become invisible. And thus, unnoticed, their domination becomes inscrutable and fully irreversible.”

This is what Angie Bonino tries to get us to see in her works.

Immersive Distancing
by Carmen Argote and Zeynep Abes
Curated by Chon Noriega
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center

Curated by Chon Noriega, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center will present a special project titled Immersive Distancing by artists Carmen Argote and Zeynep Abes. This exhibition will examine recent media art produced during the Covid-19 pandemic by L.A.-based artists Carmen Argote (Mexico, b. 1981) and Zeynep Abes (Turkey, b. 1993). Zeynep Abes now lives and works in Los Angeles.

These artists address our ongoing cultural and political moment in relation to the body, memory, archival traces, and the urban landscape. Immigration – as both personal experience and socio-political reality – informs their larger body of work. These artists have previously worked in installation and sculpture, drawing heavily on family artifacts and archives as well as explorations of architectural space. Here, they approach media as a visualizing technology that brings their site-based works into an immersive narrative, while they also engage, adapt, and challenge the abstraction inherent in science – but especially digital science.

The production, formal characteristic, and content of these media works were directly impacted by Covid-19 restrictions, moving each artist to develop remote modes of working that blurred the line between production and post-production. Both artists drew upon multiple digital sources: video, photography, and audio recordings.

In Last Light, Argote uses the sights and sounds of her walks across L.A. during the pandemic as the basis for a meditation on dis-ease and destruction. She turns to the foundation for all science – measurement – proposing to measure her body in relation to the scale of the city and the world, but uses the foundation for all art – the hand – as the basis for establishing scale.

In Memory Place, Abes explores three moments in her “fraying certainty” about Istanbul as it becomes an idea more than a place, visualizing this process through point cloud data and photogrammetry that transform video and photographs into 3D environments that recede from the viewer. These environments are impressionistic and partial – with gaps here and there in the scenes depicted, and with portions of imagery coming into sharper focus as they move toward the vanishing point. In both works, the fragmentary nature of the imagery is made immersive by the sound design.

Agua
by Luciana Abait
Now Art LA and Building Bridges Art Exchange

Now Art LA and Building Bridges Art Exchange have joined together as local non profit organizations to present the work Agua by artist Luciana Abait, a video projection inspired by the flood-myth motif that occurs in many cultures in which water acts a healing and re-birth tool, often referencing ideas of creation, purification and sustaining life.

Agua offers the public a space, an oasis, for healing and understanding. The work is site specific and architecturally integrated to foster a poetic awareness of water as a sacred resource for humanity while creating a moment of reflection for those who attend. Agua is a multichannel artwork combining videos of water gathered through years from nature exploration around the globe. The shifting color hues seen throughout express various states of mind and emotion, harmonizing the interactive experience physically with an internal one.

Agua as exhibited in downtown Los Angeles supports a call to action and underlines the importance of water as a key component to our future survival. I intend for this work to participate in opening awareness and actions surrounding environmental initiatives with depth, beauty, grace and wonder.

Girls’ Voices Now
Women’s Voices Now

Women’s Voices Now (WVN) is a Los Angeles-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization that uses the power of film to drive positive social change that advances the rights of women and girls globally. We seek to challenge the mis- and under-representation of women by promoting films made by women, about women, for all.

Girls’ Voices Now has served 70 girls from under-resourced communities and overseen the production of their 12 short films, which have been selected and awarded in 48 film festivals, and watched by over 522,000+ online viewers thanks to our partnerships with Here Media, Kanopy, UN Women, and the UN #HeforShe Campaign. This program empowers girls and femme-identifying youth from under- resourced communities to find, develop, and use their voices for positive social change through filmmaking.

PERFORMANCE: Un/Seen
by artist Tiffany Trenda
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

Artist Tiffany Trenda presents Un/Seen, a live performance within an immersive experience using volumetric capture. It transforms in real-time depending upon the actions of the public.

With new immersive experiences, we become disembodied. That is, we are physically in one space while our eyes and thoughts are experiencing another world simultaneously. Our bodies become dissociated as we shift between the simulated and the real. Furthermore, we are not immediately within the presence of another. Our presence is mediated and transported into another space that doesn’t actually exist. We are in essence, seen and unseen.

These new applications also blur the role of the user and creator by allowing both parties to change the experience. That is, the spectator is no longer a witness but a collaborator. Also, all parties are represented as avatars and this opens a narrative of, “who is this?” and “what will happen?” Our roles as players in these games are ambiguous, a perfect reflection of our time with the uncertainty of our future.

IMAGRAPHY (Documentary)
Directed by Alejandro Ordoñez
Produced by Yesenia Higuera, Alejandro Ordoñez & Benjamin Price

Imagraphy is a documentary where a variety of international photographers share their stories about the craft, the industry, techniques and their overall impressions of the world as seen through their lenses. Featuring: Roger Ballen, James Balog, John Batho, Peter Bialobrzeski, Michel Comte, Ralph Gibson, Greg Gorman, Henry Horenstein, Graciela Iturbide, Hiroji Kubota, Sir Derry Moore, Howard Schatz, Andres Serrano, Sandy Skoglund, Paul Watson, and Stephen Wilkes.

Rose River Memorial
by Marcos Lutyens
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

The Rose River Memorial is a community art collaboration that honors and grieves the many lives lost during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

We aspire to create a felt rose as a symbol of grief for every life lost. The installation will be a sacred space for healing, where people can connect with their own feelings and senses to experience their own grieving, individually or in a collective, as well as celebrating life and inviting humanity to celebrate new beginnings.

DIVERSEartLA 2020

For 2020, Marisa Caichiolo’s curatorial focus for DIVERSEartLA will be expanded to embrace and celebrate those art institutions and art collectors who support LA’s blossoming art community.

DIVERSEartLA is dedicated to bringing together some of the most important local and international art institutions, museums and non-profit organizations for an elevated and thoughtful dialogue.

The communities of Los Angeles reflect an impressive variety of ethnic backgrounds, and it’s iconic natural environs are equally varied and vast. To honor this unique biodiversity we are focusing on the representation of contemporary artists from around the world as a part of each institution.

As we approach the 2020 US presidential election, I believe the importance of this year’s curatorial focus should remain committed to fostering and learning about the organizations supporting inclusion and diversity.

DIVERSEartLA will be expanded to embrace and celebrate those art institutions and art collectors who support LA’s newest and largest iteration of art community, as well as to create a strong conversation around a variety of events and programs. Thus serving as a platform and resource for diversity best practices and leadership, including ALL of Los Angeles’s communities.

This year, we are thrilled to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the LA Art Show with a magnificent event that will reflect LA’s expansive natural habitats and cultural diversity, as well as DIVERSEartLA as an essential part of making museums and cultural institutions models for pluralistic communities. There is nothing more important than inclusion in a moment where U.S. political and social culture is defined by division.

Pyramids by Gronk
Curated by Chon Noriega
Presented by LACMA & UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center

For his new work called “Pyramids,” L.A. artist Gronk will be re-imaging the opera stage he originally designed and painted in 2013 for Peter Sellar’s adaptation of Purcell’s semi-opera “The Indian Queen (1695). That work connected Purcell’s fanciful notions of the Conquest with current issues of immigration and authoritarianism. During the run of the LA Art Show, Gronk will be painting on a full-size mock-up of a theatrical stage, providing visitors with a behind-the-curtain view of his artistic practice as well as of the set making involved in performance and media culture. Unlike a theatrical performance, the set design will be completed only after the exhibition closes and the audience is gone. Rather than see a finished work, visitors will be able to interact with the artist, participating in the process of making a “political theater” for our contemporary moment. Programs will include a dialogue between Gronk and Peter Sellars, and an impromptu performance, both using the theatrical space created by “Pyramids.”

I See You, I Am Seen: On the Impact of the Diversity
Curated by George Luna Peña
Presented by The Broad

In recent years, initiatives to diversify art museum staff have accrued considerable currency. Although more work is still needed, the calls for greater diversity have rippled through the art world. In Los Angeles, The Broad has been a leading institution in this work through its innovative Diversity Apprenticeship Program (DAP). A full time, paid apprenticeship in art handling and preparations for those underrepresented on museum staffs, the DAP is shifting demographics and changing the landscape of equity in the museum field.

Taking its title from a speech by educator and former Black Panther party member Ericka Huggins to the American Alliance of Museums, this space features immersive photography and video which highlight the first-hand experiences of DAP participants as they build museum careers..

The Birth of the Niemand
by Viktor Freso
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo
Presented by Danubiana Museum | Bratislava

The Birth of the Niemand consists of monumental large sculptures. They represent a whole range of negative emotions that people try to hide in their lives, such as maliciousness, inferiority complex, and unhealthy self-confidence. The artist studied in Bratislava at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and in Prague at the Academy of Fine Arts. Frešo belongs to the most remarkable figures of the contemporary art in the region of the former Czechoslovakia, Europe. His work and overall approach to art is rather untypical but at the same time they reflect the situation in the society and culture.

The artist creates sophisticated concepts and projects presenting them as seemingly simple closed “Pieces of Art”. He is often critical in his works and aggressively expresses his contempt of the art scene itself and its processes but with a light, humorous and playful undertone. One of the most fascinating elements of his creation is the seeming counterpoint of emphasis on huge, grandiose EGO connected with a Gesture in combination with disarming self-ironic humility. His ability to reveal dark sides of his soul, or stumbles and throws them to the world regardless of consequences, shifts the author ́s concepts to broader possibilities of perception of the reasons of his work. Viktor Frešo is interested in direct, efficient, visual tools. He creates a certain space between action- reaction and the conditions of quick recognition of relations between the expressing of me and the indication of others.

From The South
Portraits: Punta Arenas and Valparaíso
By Vicente González Mimica
Curated by Fabian Goncalvez
Presented by AMA | Art Museum of the Americas

The artist presents black-and-white portraits from two cities in the south of Chile. Like in the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities, one city (London) is described as law-abiding and orderly— analogous to how the artist presents Punta Arenas—and is contrasted with a largely politically agitated city (Paris), which is how González sees Valparaíso. As the artist describes: “The city is violent to me at first sight, perhaps with the character of who has made himself. It grows every day like the jungle that penetrates its streams in all the hills that make it up to reach the sea. It is not planned, it only occupies the spaces left by nature, like plants in an abandoned garden.”

In González’s Liceo series, he celebrates the individual achievements of each student, while seeing the fruits of hard work of families, teachers, and friends. They have been suspended in a time defining adolescence and hope. These students’ portraits in school uniforms, in long Liceo hallways and in workshops wearing trade uniforms, is reminiscent of a hopeful past. It is as if González were evoking the ancestors who arrived to these shores to fulfill dreams and prosper. As Alfred Doblin wrote on August Sanders’ portraits of German people: they are a maximized expression of the combined efforts of a social class, where the greatest achievement is the taming of individuality. He adds that it was their desire to succeed that brought them to this point, and that belonging to this place ultimately held them back as people.

Dactiloscopia Rosa: Video Art and QUEER Constructions
Curated by Nestor Prieto
Presented by Museo La Neomudejar (Madrid, Spain)

The exhibition will be from the archive materials, documentations and teachings from the transfeminist/Queer archive of the Museum, didactic materials from the constructions of social movements that managed to pass the social perspective that existed on the LGTBQ community in the 70s, 80s and 90s in Spain under Franco Dictatorship, the audiovisual material is a compilation of demonstrations, celebrations and activisms, vintage posters. The first version of this installation outside of the Museum La Neomudejar was in 2018 at the Matadero Space in Madrid, parallel to the world pride celebration in the city.

It will be a chronology of the movement of sexual liberation / LGTBQ in Spain (1970-2016)

Celebrating Diversity
By Chiachio & Giannone
Curated by Gabriela Urtiaga, Chief Curator at MOLAA
Presented by MOLAA | Museum of Latin American Art

In order to commemorate local and international LGBTQ+ communities around the world, the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) is presenting a special installation about diversity and pride in collaboration with world-known Argentinian artistic duo, Leo Chiachio & Daniel Giannone. The presentation includes the 120 ft. long textile flag, MOLAA’s new acquisition “Californian Family in Six Colors 1” and a recorded interview about their creative process. These artworks were created by the artists at MOLAA where more than 3,000 members of the Long Beach and Los Angeles community collaborated in the creation of the flag. The creation of this work of art took place during the artists’ MOLAA residency between March and June, 2019. Visitors and community members were invited to contribute with the construction of the work of art by adding their own messages about the meaning of diversity and acceptance. The banner was carried by over 100 volunteers at the Long Beach Pride Parade and exhibited at the event Pride at The Port in San Pedro, CA. The Museum highlights underrepresented voices of Latin Americans and Latinos in the US and around the world. This installation represents the commitment of MOLAA towards the values of diversity and inclusion for all through the arts.

The True Love of Collecting
How Collectors Reshape the International Art Scene
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo & Elisa Massardo
Presented by Arte Al Límite (Chile)

It’s no mystery that many of our museum experiences are led by visionary collectors who have either made significant donations or opened new museums to exhibit their extensive art collections.

Art Collectors shape the international contemporary art scene because of the unique decisions and thoughtful connections with other art enthusiasts and art market players.

AAL Magazine from Chile will bring an exhibition that explores the Subjectivity of Collecting in the contemporary art world today.

It will reveal the mystery behind the passion of collecting, and focusing on the question about what exactly makes them fall in love with an art piece. Collectors recognize the value that artists bring to communities, and bring them to the light of other art professionals and art institutions.

COLLECTORS & ARTISTS
Collection AAL, Chile – Bernardo Oyarzún
Collection Ca.Sa., Chile – Mono Lira
Collection AMA Foundation, Chile – Enrique Ramirez
Kim Martindale, USA – Raphael Montañez Ortiz
Lidia Rubinstein, Argentina/USA – Mariana Telleria
Kai Loebach, Germany/USA – Ricardo Alcaide

Art Collector: Homeira Goldstein
Artwork By Tim Tompkins
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

A descendent of the Qajar Royal Dynasty in Middle East, a multitalented force dedicated to creativity and arts, and an avid contemporary art collector, Homeira Goldstein has built an unrivaled reputation championing national and international artists promoting art and culture in Greater Los Angeles. As the Chairman of the Board of TIME4ART, she has been instrumental in creating opportunities for artists to reach public audiences using traditional and innovative venues, such as art centers, pop-up venues, open spaces, and private homes.

The inspiration for Timothy Tompkins’s work is the reflection of both physically and metaphorically a relational narrative which dissolves into form and color. This effect endeavors to mimic the layers of codes and semiotics of an image while simultaneously asking the viewer to participate in an expanded dialogue of contemplation and connotation of content. Additionally, the paintings attempt to reflect the influences of contemporary society, such as consumerism, mass media, and digital culture. Tompkins’s interest in both the language of painting and contemporary theories of visual culture attract him to the images produced by various media, as a loose visual connection to painting’s history and the medium’s influence as a visual communicator.

I GOING TO..
(An interactive space intervention): By Adriana Ramirez
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

Adriana Ramirez is a conceptual artist from Colombia. Her work was part of biennials, exhibitions in different parts of the world inviting the collective to participate in most of her installations. This platform has an axis: Everyone’s capacity to decide and become the creator of his or her own destiny, and therefore the responsibility of the community’s future. It is based on two premises: the first, is that we do not come to this world only to know ourselves, but also we come to it with the possibility of creating ourselves; and the second, is that every individual is surrounded by a social group and coexists thanks to language.

In order of that, this platform invites people to experience the language`s power to built future realities by declaring: when one AFFIRMS something, language is used to describe reality; it means that words depend on the world which already exists; for instance “Today is raining”. On the other hand, when one DECLARES something, language is used to define reality, therefore our world will depend on the words pronounced; for example, “Today, I am going to listen before speaking”.

There Could Be A Monster Inside You
By PSJM Collective (Canary Islands)
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

PSJM is a team of creation, theory and management formed by Cynthia Viera (Las Palmas G.C., 1973) and Pablo San José (Mieres, 1969). PSJM present themselves as an «art brand», thus appropriating the procedures and strategies of advanced capitalism to subvert their symbolic structures. PSJM acts as an trademark of happening art addressing issues of the artwork in the market, communication with consumers, or function as an artistic quality, using communication resources borrowed from capitalism of the spectacle to underscore the paradoxes produced by its unbridled development.

PSJM will present at the LA ART SHOW 2020 the same performance they created for the 58th Venice Biennale context, one of its corporate performances in which uniformed hostesses interact with the public in order to cause startle and reflection. Combining marketing and totalitarianism, using the strategy of “overidentification” theorized by Zizek, the collective presents itself aesthetically appropriating the strategies and modes of seduction of the capitalist system in an authoritarian way.

Diversity Walks and Talks
By Miss Art World
Curated by Peter Mays
Presented by Los Angeles Arts Association / Gallery 825

The “Diversity Walks and Talks” performance invites individual proclaimers of LA’s culture to strut the runway in celebration of their uniqueness, showcasing LA’s diversity. A variety of participants will be pre-selected and interviewed about what diversity represents to them. Their interviews will play during the runway either in video or audio format. Spectators will also be recruited live to walk the runway. A photographer at the end of the runway will document all individuals and their photos will be instantly displayed on a runway wall. This performance, like LA’s fashion and celebrity culture, is high energy, fast paced, and confident.

Transcendients:
Heroes At Borders, a Contemporary Art Exhibition
By Taiji Terasaki in Collaboration with
the Japanese American National Museum
Curated by Emily Anderson, PhD
Presented by Japanese American National Museum

TRANSCENDIENTS is a unique collaboration between artist Taiji Terasaki and JANM that honors HEROES AT BORDERS: individuals that advocate and fight for those who face discrimination, prejudice and inequity at borders both physical and conceptual. These heroes, whether known or unsung, inspire their fellow Americans, their neighborhoods and communities, government policy, and social change. By illuminating their stories, we hope to educate museumgoers about their work and inspire a spirit of unity and action in support of democracy and justice for all.

This exhibition spotlights important figures working to overcome and transcend borders that reinforce discrimination, inequity, and intolerance. Whether it be those fighting to rectify human rights injustices and to counter anti-immigrant sentiments and actions, members of the LGBTQ+ community seeking equal rights, women pressing for equal pay, or religious adherents who want to worship in safety, these heroes use their personal experiences to build bridges of understanding that connect us at the core of our collective humanity. It is imperative that those who believe in freedom, fairness, and social justice are emboldened to unite and support the forces of democracy and human decency. These concerns–their echoes in history and their far-reaching future impact–are the impetus for this unique collaboration between artist Taiji Terasaki and JANM.

DIVERSEartLA 2019

The Parthenon of Books & Rayuelarte: Marta Minujín
Curated by Gabriela Urtiaga
Presented by CCK, Buenos Aires, Argentina

CCK, Buenos Aires, Argentina is pleased to present renowned Argentinian artist Marta Minujín, who arrives with two of her most emblematic art works: The Parthenon of Books and Rayuelarte.

The Parthenon of Books: The return of democracy to Argentina in December 1983 was the inspiration that led Marta Minujín to create a replica of the Greek Parthenon on the “9 de Julio Avenue,” a street located in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Mujín’s Parthenon has a metal structure covered with more than 20,000 books, many of which had been banned during the military dictatorship. The Parthenon of Books honors the world’s first democracy and the values of that era, which have served as the basis for today’s Western democratic societies. This work also stands as a symbol of the country’s prolonged need and renewed hope to transition back to democracy.

“Memorable Mud” – Installation, 2017: Andrés Paredes
Curated by Gabriela Urtiaga
Presented by CCK, Buenos Aires, Argentina

“Memorable Mud” is a participative installation that draws viewers into a multi-sensorial experience featuring scents, music – exclusively composed for this art work – and a carefully designed system reflecting light through translucent stones. The piece is the end result of an exploratory process that generates two experiences for attendees. The first experience begins as the viewer enters the room and comes across giant clay structures, clay domes with pinnacles and other elements, which hang from the ceiling from a height of 1.4 meters. This landscape acts as a bubble of clay, which is retrieved from the production place. The domes have their own inner world – one which can be accessed by the public through holes located in the lower part. This all acts as a place where the artist’s life and personal memories are stored and materialize in clay.

Andrés Paredes’s work ranges from drawings and two-dimensional cutting paper to immersive installations, and make up private collections in Argentina and in several countries abroad. He lives and works in both Misiones and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Virtual Futures: XR Showcase
Curated by Britt Salvesen and Jesse Damiani
Presented by Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA

Virtual Reality is one of the most eagerly discussed topics in contemporary culture, yet many in the art world are only starting to consider its impact – aesthetic, technological, psychological, therapeutic, economic, and so forth. This year, DIVERSEartLA offers four VR experiences that demonstrate the range of practices and possibilities that are defining VR in 2019.

Visitors can get a glimpse of the future as seen by four different creative innovators: Wesley Allsbrook, Nancy Baker Cahill, Jorge R. Gutiérrez, and Drue Kataoka.

The tools for VR and AR creation and display – once the purview of engineers, available mainly in academia and the military – are now much more accessible to anyone with a story to tell: game designers, painters, screenwriters, documentarians, journalists, architects, choreographers, and many more. Often working collaboratively across several disciplines, this diverse community of creators is discovering the technology’s potential, involving audiences in the very act of creation.

To Make Water: Guido Yannito
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo
Presented by Museum of Contemporary Art of Salta, Argentina,
MAC SALTA

This work is part of a project Hemisphere, created in Antarctica and generating a dialog on the geographical situation (hemispheres north & south) and of the mind (hemispheres right & left).

Antarctica is a radical environment and could be considered a geographic displacement. The hemisphere is presented as an undefined state where the body is situated as an idea of territory and landscape but also as a state of mind.

In the beginning this project consisted of researching the use of fresh water on the Antarctica bases, because Antarctica is the largest reservoir of fresh water on the planet, an ongoing interest of the artist. “To Make Water” is a phrase used by the people working on the base to describe the production of consumable water, because although it is the largest reserve of fresh water, it is very difficult to procure. “To Make Water” is a video filmed the day the members of the base attempted the extraction.

White Lies: Gaston Ugalde, Matilde Marin, Sandra Mann, Fernando Arias
Curated by Elisa Massardo & Daniel Alfonso
Presented by AAL (Arte Al Límite)

White Lies is an exhibition that emerges from the dialogue of visual arts and politics; the visual arts and the reality around the world, where the politic act looks like a manifestation of power that dominates and control the masses and minds, forgetting the initial idea of common benefit and the social welfare.

Arte Al Límite (AAL) promotes the work of contemporary artists from all over the globe, aiming to Foster art circulation, encouraging art collecting and bringing art closer to the community through worldwide activities.

27 Peces/27 Fish, Installation, 2018: Cristian Castro
Curated by Carlos Ortega, Curator of Collections, MOLAA
Presented by Museum of Latin American Art, MOLAA

The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) has selected Argentinian artist, Cristian Castro and his site-specific installation, 27 Peces / 27 Fish, 2018 to highlight the contemporary art of Latin America in the 2019 edition of the Los Angeles Art Show.

Cristian Castro, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1971 and currently based in LA, expresses his artistic talent by repurposing discarded vintage household appliances and old mechanical tools with contemporary designs of his own. In the 27 Fish installation, the artist used 1950s Johnson brand outboard motors for the main body, stainless steel cat bowls, kitchen hinges, nails for the teeth, electrical conduits, fiber glass, custom laser cut aluminum parts molded with a hydraulic press for the fins, and automotive paint with chromed and polished parts to create these hybrid creatures that appear to come from a 19th century vision of the future.

Very much like the Argentinian collective Center for Art and Communication (CAyC) in the 70s and 80s, the artist conceives his installations as a multidisciplinary space in which to explore the relationship between art, science, environment and society. The deep-sea fish in 27 Fish were created in a retro-futuristic style, incorporating kinetic movement and light.

A Black Man in the World:
Selections from the Robert E. Holmes Collection
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

For Bob Holmes who calls himself “a citizen of the world,” his art collection is a reflection of his life and times. The history of both colonial oppression by Europeans in Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America, and the history of slavery in the United States have created a warped perception of Black people as they have moved, or been forced to move, throughout the world. That perception has often created a narrow impression of Black people’s and other peoples of colors’ interests, limitations, possibilities and futures.

Holmes says, “As one steps out of the manner in which he is perceived, challenges widely held perceptions about the Black body, travels throughout the world and accumulates broad interests, that accumulated knowledge and experience can lift one out of seeing and being seen in a purely racial context, while at the same time, standing firmly upon the foundation of one’s ethnic culture.” In Holmes’ particular case, those tenets have enriched his life beyond the prescribed boundaries of narrow perceptions and identity, and have led to a broad collection of art that reflects his appreciation and love of rich cultural identities of so-called ethnic categories.

In his wide collection we can find a diverse offering of cultures through artists such as Dan McCleary, Matsumi Kanemitsu, Derrick Maddox, Charles White, Romare Bearden, Gronk, Deni Ponty, Betty Parsons, Elizabeth Catlett, David Alfaro Siquieros and Aime Mpane, among many others.

Nodrissx/Narcissx: Performance – Dorian Wood
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

Artist Dorian Wood seeks to glorify both the sanctity and irreverence of intimacy. Through the use of their corpulent body and booming voice, Wood revels in challenging the artist-audience separation, using subject matter informed by their own position in society as a non-binary person of color and an autodidact without a formal college education nor a strong alliance to any particular community.

For “Nodrissx/Narcissx,” the artist will be in a chair in the center of a darkened room, covered from head to toe in a cloth, with a slit that exposes their left breast. The artist will have a microphone propped in front of their face. Attendees are invited to kneel in front of the artist and suckle on artist’s breast. Attendees may suckle on the breast for as long as they want. During the performance installation, artist will vocalize to a 4-channel soundscape created solely by artist’s voice.

Wood’s work has been showcased in concert halls and performance spaces around the world, including at such institutions as The Broad (Los Angeles), LACMA (Los Angeles), The Stone (NYC), MASS Gallery (Austin), Kulturhuset (Stockholm), and Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin). As a musician, they have released over a dozen recordings, among them two back-to-back albums, Rattle Rattle and Down, The Dirty Roof, showcasing a series of doomsday-themed songs that incorporate over 60 musicians. Their most recent album, XALÁ, marks the first time that Wood has recorded a full-length work in their mother tongue of Spanish.

You should wear your revolution: Performance – Sarah Trouche
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

Sarah Trouche is a French visual artist who uses performance, photography, video and sculpture in her practice. She uses her body as a social and political tool. Trouche’s work is centered around cultural and political issues such as migration and displacement, and invites us to question the major challenges we face today.

For the “You should wear your revolution” project, Trouche is committed to research on women’s emancipation, inspired by the history of France during the French Revolution and the movement of the “Sans culottes.”

Sarah Trouche will perform using hundreds of underwear that she has collected, washed and dyed beforehand. Through this action, she imagines a manifesto around the notion of female emancipation, radical and collective.

Boho Highs & Visual Drive-bys: Adah Glenn
Curated by Mar Hollingsworth, Visual Arts Curator,
California African American Museum
and James Panozzo, LAUNCH LA
Presented by LAUNCH LA

Adah Glenn, also known as “AfroPuff,” is a Los Angeles-based artist, designer, and entrepreneur. Graffiti, hip-hop, punk, and rock, as well as Japanese anime, inform her work. Her practice is multidisciplinary, extending broadly from murals, paintings on canvas and shaped board, prints, art quilts, and books, to digital art and animation. Glenn has also ventured into the applied arts, creating wearable art, such as hats and jewelry, and toys, including fabric dolls and resin collectable figurines. Most recently, Glenn has embarked in performance art, that provides her an opportunity to integrate her many creative impulses.

Glenn’s art is vibrant and colorful, multi-layered, and highly textural. As an African American woman, she often interweaves themes of race and gender politics in her work. Adah Glenn: Boho Highs & Visual Drive-bys presents a wide selection of her many talents in many mediums. The exhibit not only celebrates ethnic and cultural pride, music, and the female form, but also features a selection of Glenn’s poignant social commentary works.

PING PONG
Presented by Los Angeles Art Association

Los Angeles Art Association is pleased to present Ping Pong, an independent exhibition project founded in 2007 to cultivate artistic interaction and exchange between selected cities Basel, Miami and Los Angeles.

This iteration of Ping Pong at the 2019 LA Art Show will feature artists Pam Doulas, Jerry Haenggli, Cathy Immordino, Sue Irion, Dan Künzler, Sungjae Lee and Elizabeth Tobias, and mirrors the commonalities and conflicts surging through our culture in 2019. Each artist’s singular vision is maintained while adapting to the aesthetic and cultural aesthetic imposed by their fellow artists. Sungjae Lee’s expansive piece Her Real Secret and Elizabeth Tobias’ performance Survivor! Share Your 98 Second Story are both timely reflections on the state of gender politics and identity. Pam Douglas and Cathy Immordino share a fascination with historical relevance but differ dramatically in execution and approach. Furthermore, Jerry Haenggli and Dan Künzler share a certain Swiss formality that approaches narrative with opposing emotive centers.

Ping Pong strives to show both the similarities and differences in the various cultural landscapes represented. While the artists represented in Ping Pong have shifted over the years and venues, the spirit of artist-centered collaboration and ambition remain intact.

Survivor! Share Your 98 Second Story: Performance – Elizabeth Tobias
Presented by Los Angeles Art Association

Elizabeth Tobias will amplify her fusion of social practice, performance and sound to debut Survivor! Share your 98 Second Story at 2019 The Los Angeles Art Show. This immersive project addresses the sexual assault epidemic, one of the most pervasive, yet most underreported crimes. Survivor! addresses the staggering statistic that every 98 seconds, there is a sexual assault in America.

Weaving together spoken word and improvised sound, Elizabeth Tobias will perform with an ensemble of artist survivors to collectively promote needed awareness and advocacy for sexual assault survivors in the art community and throughout the public sphere.

Those victimized by violence often lack the support and resources needed to come forward. For artists who have been impacted by the trauma of sexualized assault, rarely, if ever, are there adequate opportunities to create work that addresses their stories within and beyond the larger art community.

Dr Jennifer Freyd, expert in the field of interpersonal violence, has identified that the act of speaking out has a measurable impact on decreasing violence. Consequently, the performance has the potential to directly reduce the statistics. Survivor! Share Your 98 Second Story is a ground breaking new performance that addresses trauma, courage and continuance.

Art Lives Here: S. C. Mero
Presented by Art Share L.A.

Art Share L.A. has partnered with skid-row based, emerging guerrilla artist S.C. Mero to bring a taste of the streets of Downtown Los Angeles to LA Art Show. Embodying the nature of downtown, the onsite installation pieces are just a teaser to the larger site map of her work – which guides attendees into downtown to explore our community under the guise of a pseudo street art scavenger hunt. Each of her site-specific, clever creations calls attention to issues surrounding homelessness, gentrification, drug use, global warming, and more. The goal of this project is to encourage further exploration of underground art, arts activism, and social justice in the Downtown community in a way that is inviting and accessible for everyone.

DIVERSEartLA 2018

Metaphysical Orozco: José Clemente Orozco
Curated by Laura Ayala, MUSA
Co-Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

The Museum of the Arts of the University of Guadalajara, Mexico (MUSA) presents Metaphysical Orozco, shown for the first time ever in the United States.

The images, projected by a multi-layer mapping, belong to the murals made by the artist between 1935 and 1937 at the auditorium known as Paraninfo, inside the building in which is located the Museum of the Arts.

The installation involves the public in an exploration of the fields of thought found within Orozco’s murals, as well as the history and themes that inspired them.

The projection of the master works will be accompanied by a musical soundtrack, giving visitors a comprehensive sensory experience that will be complemented by informative graphic material.

IF YOU DRINK HEMLOCK, I SHALL DRINK IT WITH YOU or A BEAUTIFUL DEATH; player to player, pimp to pimp.
(As performed by the inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade): Daniel Joseph Martinez
Curated by Chon Noriega
Presented by LACMA and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center

Daniel Joseph Martinez’s immersive environment references Jacques-Louis David’s seminal portrait The Death of Marat (1793), painted and also reproduced shortly after Marat’s assassination during the French Revolution. Whereas David’s painting represents a single moment, both sanitized and accurate in its details, Martinez creates a mise en scène using three life-like sculptures modeled after the artist’s own body. These depict Marat in his bath as well as assassin Charlotte Corday and Martinez himself both standing behind Marat (each with a bloodied dagger in hand).

Martinez stages Marat’s assassination as a public spectacle surrounded by bleachers, although viewers can also immerse themselves within the scene, no doubt taking selfies. In this way, Martinez connects David’s painting with our present moment, giving a historical dimension for modern politics as a form of theater, sport, and business. But Martinez pushes even further. The Death of Marat quickly became iconic of the French Revolution, not because it depicted a public spectacle, but rather because it circulated a political image that focused attention on the personal and private. Once that happened, politics-as-spectacle was no longer dependent on public space – it was in our minds..

“Left” or “Right”/Punching Bags:Antuan Rodriguez
Curated by Marisa Caichiolo

Left or Right is a healing project curated by Marisa Caichiolo. The interactive installation depicts different world leaders and tyrants, and will allow the spectator, through the punching of the bags, to release anger, hatred and resentment. This release of negative emotions will transform these objects into tools of detoxification and mental healing.

Current global politics has created an environment of disrespect for humanity and our planet. Lack of harmony, senseless war, violence, racism, ignorance, loss of values and principles, lack of consciousness, super egos and demagoguery, corruption, disrespect of women, false promises, and outright lies.

DIVERSEartLA 2017

Raphael Montañez Ortiz
Piano Destruction Ritual: Cowboy and Indian, Part Two
Couch Destruction: Angel Release (Pennies from Heaven)
Shred Your Worries part of FRAGMENTS FROM HOME
Curated By Chon Noriega
Presented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Part of Fragments From Home, a preview of Home So Different, So Appealing
Opening on June 7, 2017 as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA

THE WORK
There is Passive ART and Active ART. Active ART requires you to participate.

PIANO DESTRUCTION RITUAL: COWBOY AND INDIAN, PART TWO
Participatory Performance. Background Sound Thunder and Lighting. The Piano is a powerful instrument of sound to convey the message of Sacrifice I wish to convey to the Universe. The Sounds of its Destruction gives full voice to Sacrifice: To the Destruction Creation in it cycle of Creation is giving us time to understand the preciousness of Mortal Life that it never be given up to or for Sacrifice of any kind…

View Couch Destruction: Angel Release (Pennies from Heaven)

Carlos Martiel | Cauce/Riverbed
Curated By Marisa Caichiolo

THE WORK
In his work “Cauce/Riverbed,” the artist exposes the significant challenges faced by immigrants in California and the larger United States. Martiel digs deep into the nature of undocumented immigration and shows how it impacts the lives of some eleven million individuals and their families in the world’s most powerful nation.

His performance is a window to the human tragedy that grossly affects immigrants with low-education levels and limited English language skills, who come to the United States risking their lives as they venture into the dangerous desert in an attempt to cross the Mexico-US border. As Martiel shows, despite the highly-publicized “American Dream,” for these poor and uneducated immigrants, making it alive into US territory does not necessarily guarantee access to better opportunities or to a higher quality of life.