Recent Pasts
An Exhibition in Two Parts
Part 1:
November 13, 2020 - January 16, 2021
Recent Pasts, Tomorrow's Archives
Online, organized by the Southland Institute
With workshops led by Taeyoon Choi, Hagar Cygler, Shannon Finnegan, Maternal Fantasies (Isabell Spengler and Maicyra Leão), and Chang Yuchen
Part 2:
September 20 - October 23, 2021
Recent Pasts, Revisited
On view at ArtCenter DTLA
Including work by Nick Angelo, Neha Choksi, Dorit Cypis, Katie Herzog, Janna Ireland, Ruben Ochoa, and noé olivas
Recent Pasts is an exhibition in two parts, launching online with programming from the Southland Institute in Fall/Winter 2020, and continuing offline with a group exhibition of works at ArtCenter DTLA in Fall 2021.
Recent Pasts considers the changes and perpetual recalibration in arts education and institutions over the recent past of 2005-2020, and into 2021, and in the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts they are situated within. Extending over a year, the exhibition looks to these recent pasts and reflects on where we have come, while questioning and offering possibilities of moving forward. Recent Pasts is also an attempt at reconsidering how we produce and present exhibitions -- a process rooted in planning -- in a future that is increasingly difficult to predict.
Recent Pasts is organized by Aurora Tang, independent curator in collaboration with Love's Remedies (ArtCenter DTLA Residency Project 2020), the Southland Institute, and ArtCenter DTLA. Recent Pasts is supported in part by ArtCenter's Exhibitions and the Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
About Recent Pasts
Recent Pasts is an exhibition in two parts, launching online with programming from the Southland Institute in Fall/Winter 2020, and continuing offline with a group exhibition of works at ArtCenter DTLA in Fall 2021.
Originally conceived as an exhibition examining the structures, conditions, and concerns of arts education and institutions in Southern California over the last 15 years, Recent Pasts was scheduled to be on view at ArtCenter DTLA Fall 2020. Due to Covid-19, the exhibition was rescheduled for Fall 2021.
The project's title comes from the 2004-5 symposium and publication by the Southern California Consortium of Art Schools (SoCCAS), that brought together graduate art programs across Southern California.1 In educator and critic Norman Klein's 2004 SoCCAS catalogue essay, Klein suggests cross-institutional initiatives such as SoCCAS can offer a step towards making a restructuring possible: "New forms require new systems of production and cultural theory. I leave it to readers to locate their own possibilities in what follows."2
Informed by Klein's prompt, Recent Pasts is an exhibition presented in partnership with ArtCenter DTLA (est. 2019), Love's Remedies (est. 2018), and the Southland Institute (est. 2016) that considers the changes in arts education and institutions, and in the socio-political, economic, and cultural sectors they are situated in, over the recent past of 2005-2020, and into 2021, as our understanding of the recent past continues to re-calibrate each day. Extending over a year, the exhibition looks to these recent pasts and reflects on where we have come, while questioning and offering new possibilities of moving forward. Recent Pasts is also an attempt at reconsidering how we produce and present exhibitions -- a process rooted in planning -- in a future that is increasingly difficult to predict, amidst overwhelming and overlapping rates of change.
The exhibition's first presentation, Recent Pasts, Tomorrow's Archives, takes place Fall/Winter 2020, with a series of online programs focusing on issues of access in the institution today -- when schools, museums, and cultural organizations are physically inaccessible due to health and safety measures. How can attention to accessibility take on a central role in the production and presentation of cultural programming and display? Organized by the Southland Institute, these free public workshops are an attempt to provide tools, and structure, to an ever-shifting response to a tenuous present, an uncertain future, and a rapid sequence of recent pasts in which the precarity of our present moment, as well as our immediate and distant futures, feels especially pronounced.
notes:
1: This inaugural SoCCAS symposium was organized in conjunction with Supersonic: 1 Wind Tunnel, 8 Schools, 120 Artists, a group exhibition of graduating artists from the MFA programs at SoCCAS schools: ArtCenter, Cal Arts, Claremont, Otis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC San Diego, and USC. This was the first major exhibition to be held in ArtCenter's "Wind Tunnel" space.
2.Norman M. Klein, "The Boost: Cultural Meteorology in Southern California." In Recent Pasts: Art in Southern California from the 90s to Now, ed. John C. Welchman (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2005), 30.
Part 1: Recent Pasts, Tomorrow's Archives
November 13, 2020 - January 16, 2021
Online, organized by the Southland Institute
A series of free, public online workshops organized by the Southland Institute, and led by Shannon Finnegan, Chang Yuchen, Maternal Fantasies (Isabell Spengler and Maicyra Leão), Hagar Cygler, and Taeyoon Choi
links to eventbrite pages where you can register for workshops are below. You can also register by sending an email to general@southlandinstitute.org with your name and the workshop you'd like to attend
Friday, Nov. 13, 3-5pm (PST)
Alt-text as Poetry
with Shannon Finnegan
Friday, December 4, 2020, 3-4pm (PST)
A Book Is a Flat File Is a Butterfly
with Chang Yuchen
Sunday, December 6, 10am-12:30pm (PST)
Collage Thinking, Collage Doing
with Maternal Fantasies // Isabell Spengler and Maicyra Leão
Friday, January, 8, 2021, 11am-12pm (PST)
Faded but Not Forgotten: A workshop
with Hagar Cygler
Saturday, January 16, 3:30-6pm (PST)
Distributed Web of Care
with Taeyoon Choi
The Tomorrow's Archives workshop series was conceived collectively in an ad hoc Southland Institute course -- "what is programming?" -- formed in the wake of Covid-19, and in response to an invitation to contribute programming to the Recent Pasts exhibition. Participants included Kate Brown, Adam Feldmeth, Chloe Ginnegar, Christina Niazian, and Joe Potts.
Recent Pasts is organized by Aurora Tang, independent curator in collaboration with Love's Remedies (ArtCenter DTLA Residency Project 2020), the Southland Institute, and ArtCenter DTLA. Recent Pasts is supported in part by ArtCenter's Exhibitions and the Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Tomorrow's Archives Workshops Overview
In Spring 2020, the Southland Institute received an invitation from curator Aurora Tang to contribute to a forthcoming exhibition Recent Pasts, set to take place at ArtCenter DTLA, by way of complementary programming to the on-site show. Constituents of the Southland Institute began developing a response through posing the question, "what is programming?"
The discussions over subsequent months navigated questions of exhibition access and the constantly moving target of when public hours would be reinstated following mandated state and city-wide closures due to Covid-19. Anticipating the prolonged closure of the space turned programmatic attention toward an inquiry of what programming could be and mean through approaches to observing distance, which is today as much a spatial consideration as this exhibition's premise advances a temporal one.
This responsive programming, consisting of five free public workshops, now constitutes the first half of the Recent Pasts exhibition. Each occasion offers a jumping off point for exploring ways of increasing access to exhibitions and engaging often unbeknownst, adjacent entries during a time when forced closure grants a reflexive period to collectively question the limits and limitations of the finite, physical exhibition comparative to its prolonged access through corollary materials, marginalia, and alternative points of entrance. In the absence of a concrete catalog, the implementation of an online "flat file" was proposed by the Southland Institute as a motif to the exhibition which serves as a liminal binding between preliminary notes and eventual archives.
Workshops include: a deeper exploration of alt-text as a mode of documentation, communication, and sharing; the heavy and light aspects that accompany bookmaking and book-keeping; looking at ways collage can be performed collectively; the tactile assembly of publications as life practice; and alternate modes of (digital) distribution and sharing. Inviting the public to actively participate in these explorations, Tomorrow's Archives looks backwards, forwards, and into the present at ways of engaging the unbound(ed) exhibition, building opportunities for proximity during a time of obligatory distance.
All workshops will be closed captioned with transcripts subsequently available in the flat file.
Alt-text as Poetry with Shannon Finnegan
Friday, November 13, 3-5pm (PST)
organized by Joe Potts
Alt-text is an essential part of web accessibility, making visual content accessible through short textual descriptions for blind and low-vision people who use screen reading software to access digital content. Alt-text is often overlooked altogether or understood through the lens of compliance, as an unwelcome burden to be met with minimum effort. How can we instead approach alt-text thoughtfully and creatively, while still prioritizing alt-text as an accessibility practice? In this workshop, led by Shannon Finnegan and developed in collaboration with Bojana Coklyat, we will reframe alt-text as a type of poetry and practice writing it together. We will look at examples of poetic and creative approaches to alt-text, then do several writing exercises designed to focus on issues that often come up in alt-text, including attention to language and word economy, alt-text as translation, structuring and prioritizing, subjectivity, identity, and representation.
Access Info:
The workshop will take place on Zoom with CART by Total Captions. The workshop uses a slide presentation, and all content from the presentation is read aloud and described. We'll do some exercises that involve participants describing images. The exercises involve writing 2-3 sentences in 4-5 minutes, but participants don't need to do the writing in order to participate in the discussion. All workshop materials can be emailed ahead of time upon request by emailing studio@shannonfinnegan.com. If you have any access questions or requests, email joe@southlandinstitute.org.
Shannon Finnegan is a multidisciplinary artist making work about disability culture and accessibility. They have done projects with Friends of the High Line, The Invisible Dog, and the Wassaic Project. They have spoken at the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum, School for Poetic Computation, The 8th Floor, and The Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library. In 2018, they received a Wynn Newhouse Award and participated in Art Beyond Sight's Art + Disability Residency. In 2019, they were a resident at Eyebeam.
A Book Is a Flat File Is a Butterfly: a lecture-workshop by Chang Yuchen
Friday, December 4, 2020, 3-4pm (PST)
organized by Christina Niazian
Artists' books are a heavy business- both figuratively and conceptually. In her 7 years working around artists' books, artist Chang Yuchen has worn her wrists out carrying boxes and boxes of books. Combining conversation and hands-on exercises, this lecture-workshop will guide participants through a contemplation on the heavy elements associated with bookmaking (the archive, the administration, the inventory) as well as lighter aspects such as dream, memory and imagination.
Chang Yuchen is an artist based in New York. She works in an interdisciplinary manner -- writing as weaving, drawing as translation, clothing as portable theater, commerce as everyday revolution (see Use Value). By constantly entering and exiting each medium, she strolls against the category of things, the labor division among people. Yuchen was an artist in residence at MASS MoCA (North Adams), Offshore (Sabah), MAD Museum (New York), Bananafish Books (Shanghai) and Textile Art Center (Brooklyn). She has shown/performed her works at UCCA Dune, Taikwun Contemporary, Abrons Art Center, Para Site, Salt Projects, Assembly Room and etc. Yuchen teaches through Center for Book Arts, Printed Matter, Asia Art Archive in America, CUE Art Foundation and more.
Collage Thinking, Collage Doing with Maternal Fantasies // Isabell Spengler and Maicyra Leão
Sunday, December 6, 10am-12:30pm (PST)
organized by Kate Brown and Joe Potts
Based on creative methods used by the art collective Maternal Fantasies, the workshop proposes a broader sense of translation between thinking/discourse and practice/performative visibility. Using as a reference and starting point representative texts in the field of art focusing on domesticity and isolation as subjects, the participants will be asked to "digest" the provided materials in connection to their own recent experiences. Building on the personal experiences and individual voices expressed, the second part of the workshop addresses the notion of collage in terms of a collective action. Rotational authorship is explored as a way to reverberate, line up and layer written content. In turn, performative exercises - within online video conference and screen sharing possibilities - allow rendering the processed discourse in an audiovisual form of collage, bestowing a fantastical visibility on it.
Maternal Fantasies is an evolving and interdisciplinary group of international artists and cultural producers based in Berlin, Germany. We share our research on motherhood, care work and its representation in the arts to reflect through autobiographic material within our group. We seek to shape the discourse of motherhood through our artistic working process and to enhance the visibility of contemporary feminist positions addressing motherhood(s) in the arts. Working since 2018 on collaborative projects, we have developed our own repertoire of methods - using performative games, writing sessions, rotational authorship/direction/hosting of events, coming up with various sets of rules for our different projects in photography, performance, installations, workshops and film/video.
Isabell Spengler (Berlin) is an artist working in the field of Expanded Cinema. Her films are elaborate audio-visual compositions, branching out and connecting various forms of experimental and queer film and performance practice. Since 2006 Isabell Spengler has created a series of conceptual films and installations, analyzing and mediating the construction of imaginary worlds in dialogues with choreographers, musicians, colleagues, friends and her parents. She was a funding member of the performance group Ex Machinis, the film collective HMI, and is currently part of the feminist art collective Maternal Fantasies. Her award winning works have been presented worldwide at festivals and exhibitions since 1998, including solo exhibitions in Berlin, Toronto, Los Angeles (2017) and Tel Aviv. She has been teaching at various art colleges and universities in Germany and North-America, most notably at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she taught experimental film from 2004 to 2014 as a lecturer and a guest professor. From 1998 to 2004 she lived in Los Angeles, where she completed her studies with an MFA in Film/Video from CalArts.
Maicyra Leão e Silva is Professor at Theater Department of Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil currently on a sabbatical in Berlin. She holds a PhD in Performing Arts and a Masters in Contemporary Art, working interdisciplinary between theater, performance art and photography. Her practice-based research explores performance art in public spaces and collaborative methodologies in convivial situations. Within her collective and solo works, she has led socially engaged projects, as well as experimental artistic configurations, which have been awarded four grants by the Brazilian National Arts Foundation, and were performed along Europe and Latin America. As a scholar, she published a number of articles in academic journals, especially in Brazilian context. She recently completed a postdoctoral project at Freie Universität Berlin on motherhood and art.
Faded but Not Forgotten: A workshop with Hagar Cygler
Friday, January, 8, 2021, 11am-12pm (PST)
Organized by Christina Niazian
"I read used books and find sentences underlined by others, and scavenge through endless piles of photos in thrift stores. I find it easier to be an outsider to the leftovers of others. I build the story behind it, and imagine the full life through a couple of signs. I think about others like me, also looking for missing parts. Maybe I am holding their missing pieces of the story, holding them in my context of imagination … When approaching old materials, there is always the ambivalence of what to do with them, what to hold on to, how and where to store them, what are the rules and laws we can work by to know how to handle the ephemera of a life."
-Hager Cygler
Drawn from her book set made of found books and photographs, Faded but Not Forgotten, negotiates the delicate, trace remnants of strangers' pasts. This workshop led by Hagar Cygler in collaboration with Christina Niazian is an invitation to engage book making as a life practice with an emphasis on the process of exploring the common variables one faces when assembling a book: instinct, archives, decisions, sequence, and binding. This workshop will give participants the opportunity to engage in a conversation about bookbinding techniques and the role they can play to convey an interwoven concept. Various styles will be discussed including how to bind a one page book.
Hagar Cygler is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (BFA, 2006) and the California Institute of the Arts (MFA, 2017). Cygler had solo shows at Pracownia Portretu, Lodz, Poland (2019), Kav 16 gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel (2018), Nolobaz gallery, Tel-Aviv, Israel (2018), AJU gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2017). She published 2 artist books: 'Hana' (2014) and 'Faded but not Forgotten' (2017).
Cygler works in the larger context of archives and collections, focusing on the classification and reorganization of material and information. Her focus is on personal and historical memory, and by connecting photographs with personal and anonymous objects, she explores the act of collecting and its role within the archive as cultural memory.
Cygler has assisted artists and curators in Israel and abroad in research, teaching, and management of private archives: she was the main researcher at the Batsheva dance company archive (2012-2015) and currently manages the video archive and The Public art and Early Media archive at the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon (2018-ongoing).
Distributed Web of Care with Taeyoon Choi
Saturday January 16, 3:30-6pm (PST)
organized by Chloe Ginnegar
If we consider the Internet as an environment -- a digital space where limits are imposed upon access just as in physical environments -- that reflects the society we inhabit, we come to realize discriminatory principles are embedded in the digital space through racist, sexist, and ableist ideologies and exclusionary algorithms. As this disparity unfolds in digital space, there is a shared responsibility to intervene in these systems of exclusion and to build a more equitable web of care. Divest from Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook! Learn about alternative social networks that are open source, free, and non-oppressive. This is a participatory workshop for beginners without prior experience of coding. Participants will learn about emergent strategies to resist the colonization of the Internet.
Taeyoon Choi is an artist, educator, and activist based in New York and Seoul. His art practice involves performance, electronics, drawing, and installations that often form the basis for storytelling in public spaces. His projects have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He co-founded the School for Poetic Computation, where he continues to organize sessions and teach classes.
Part 2: Recent Pasts, Revisited
September 20 - October 23, 2021
On view at ArtCenter DTLA
The exhibition's second presentation, Recent Pasts, Revisited, scheduled for Fall 2021 at ArtCenter DTLA, features a group exhibition of works by artists with a connection to Los Angeles, and an interest in making invisible institutional structures viscerally visible, with care and criticality.
Credits
Recent Pasts is organized by Aurora Tang, independent curator in collaboration with Love's Remedies (ArtCenter DTLA Residency Project 2020), the Southland Institute, and ArtCenter DTLA. Recent Pasts is supported in part by ArtCenter's Exhibitions and the Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
About the Workshop Leaders
Taeyoon Choi
Taeyoon Choi is an artist, educator, and activist based in New York and Seoul. His art practice involves performance, electronics, drawing, and installations that often form the basis for storytelling in public spaces. His projects have been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He co-founded the School for Poetic Computation, where he continues to organize sessions and teach classes.
www.taeyoonchoi.com
Hagar Cygler
Hagar Cygler is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (BFA, 2006) and the California Institute of the Arts (MFA, 2017). Cygler had solo shows at Pracownia Portretu, Lodz, Poland (2019), Kav 16 gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel (2018), Nolobaz gallery, Tel-Aviv, Israel (2018), AJU gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2017). She published 2 artist books: 'Hana' (2014) and 'Faded but not Forgotten' (2017).
Cygler works in the larger context of archives and collections, focusing on the classification and reorganization of material and information. Her focus is on personal and historical memory, and by connecting photographs with personal and anonymous objects, she explores the act of collecting and its role within the archive as cultural memory.
Cygler has assisted artists and curators in Israel and abroad in research, teaching, and management of private archives: she was the main researcher at the Batsheva dance company archive (2012-2015) and currently manages the video archive and The Public art and Early Media archive at the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon (2018-ongoing).
www.hagarcygler.com
Shannon Finnegan
Shannon Finnegan is a multidisciplinary artist making work about disability culture and accessibility. They have done projects with Friends of the High Line, The Invisible Dog, and the Wassaic Project. They have spoken at the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum, School for Poetic Computation, The 8th Floor, and The Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library. In 2018, they received a Wynn Newhouse Award and participated in Art Beyond Sight’s Art + Disability Residency. In 2019, they were a resident at Eyebeam.
www.shannonfinnegan.com
Maternal Fantasies (Isabell Spengler and Maicyra Leáo)
Maternal Fantasies is an evolving and interdisciplinary group of international artists and cultural producers based in Berlin, Germany. We share our research on motherhood, care work and its representation in the arts to reflect through autobiographic material within our group. We seek to shape the discourse of motherhood through our artistic working process and to enhance the visibility of contemporary feminist positions addressing motherhood(s) in the arts. Working since 2018 on collaborative projects, we have developed our own repertoire of methods - using performative games, writing sessions, rotational authorship/direction/hosting of events, coming up with various sets of rules for our different projects in photography, performance, installations, workshops and film/video.
Isabell Spengler (Berlin) is an artist working in the field of Expanded Cinema. Her films are elaborate audio-visual compositions, branching out and connecting various forms of experimental and queer film and performance practice. Since 2006 Isabell Spengler has created a series of conceptual films and installations, analyzing and mediating the construction of imaginary worlds in dialogues with choreographers, musicians, colleagues, friends and her parents. She was a funding member of the performance group Ex Machinis, the film collective HMI, and is currently part of the feminist art collective Maternal Fantasies. Her award winning works have been presented worldwide at festivals and exhibitions since 1998, including solo exhibitions in Berlin, Toronto, Los Angeles (2017) and Tel Aviv. She has been teaching at various art colleges and universities in Germany and North-America, most notably at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she taught experimental film from 2004 to 2014 as a lecturer and a guest professor. From 1998 to 2004 she lived in Los Angeles, where she completed her studies with an MFA in Film/Video from CalArts.
Maicyra Leáo e Silva is Professor at Theater Department of Federal University of Sergipe, Brazil currently on a sabbatical in Berlin. She holds a PhD in Performing Arts and a Masters in Contemporary Art, working interdisciplinary between theater, performance art and photography. Her practice-based research explores performance art in public spaces and collaborative methodologies in convivial situations. Within her collective and solo works, she has led socially engaged projects, as well as experimental artistic configurations, which have been awarded four grants by the Brazilian National Arts Foundation, and were performed along Europe and Latin America. As a scholar, she published a number of articles in academic journals, especially in Brazilian context. She recently completed a postdoctoral project at Freie Universität Berlin on motherhood and art.
www.maternalfantasies.net
Chang Yuchen
Chang Yuchen is an artist based in New York. She works in an interdisciplinary manner -- writing as weaving, drawing as translation, clothing as portable theater, commerce as everyday revolution (see Use Value). By constantly entering and exiting each medium, she strolls against the category of things, the labor division among people. Yuchen was an artist in residence at MASS MoCA (North Adams), Offshore (Sabah), MAD Museum (New York), Bananafish Books (Shanghai) and Textile Art Center (Brooklyn). She has shown/performed her works at UCCA Dune, Taikwun Contemporary, Abrons Art Center, Para Site, Salt Projects, Assembly Room and etc. Yuchen teaches through Center for Book Arts, Printed Matter, Asia Art Archive in America, CUE Art Foundation and more.
www.changyuchen.com
About the Artists
Nick Angelo
Nick Angelo (b. 1990, Los Angeles, California) is a Los Angeles-based artist. He holds a BA in Urban Studies from The Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts at the New School in New York City, and an MFA in Photography and Media from the California Institute of the Arts. His work has been included in recent exhibitions at Chateau Shatto and Human Resources in Los Angeles, and he has a forthcoming solo exhibition at F, Houston, in December 2020.
Angelo's work stretches across multiple mediums, and uses maps, topographies, and diagrams as methods of criticality towards American cultural and institutional power structures, constantly hinting at an "end times" enigma which seems omnipresent in a contemporary environment plagued by disinformation and dissent. He often references his experience as a "first wave opioid epidemic baby" as a lens and foundation to open up a larger conversation regarding mental health, addiction, "insanity," power relations, and institutional critique, with the pharmaceutical industrial complex acting as a starting point.
www.nickrangelo.com
Neha Choksi
Neha Choksi embraces a confluence of disciplines, including performance, video, installation, and sculpture. She disrupts logic by setting up poetic and absurd interventions in everyday life -- from stone to plant, animal to self, friends to institutions. Her process often involves collaborative and lived performances that negotiate relationships in unconventional settings.
Her most recent work-in-progress, Elementary, is a long-term, multi-format project that stems from a lived performance wherein she attends for an entire academic year (2018-2019) at a Los Angeles public elementary school as a kindergarten student. Work from another multi-part project, started in 2016, which explores human and artistic relationships with rocks and raw earth, will be presented offsite by the Kleefeld Contemporary (previously known as University Art Museum), California State University, Long Beach in 2021.
Recent honors include the 2019 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, the designation of Cultural Trailblazer by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs for 2017-2018 and 2019-2020, and the India Today Best New Media Artist of the Year Award for 2017. She serves on the editorial board of the Los Angeles-based arts journal, X-TRA. She lives and works in Los Angeles and Bombay.
www.nehachoksi.com
Dorit Cypis
Dorit Cypis has explored history, identity, and social relations since the 1980s. At the core of her work is exploration of the artist's role as creator, educator, mediator, and community-builder, with a guiding question, "Who are we to one other?"
Cypis' career covers: performance, photography, and immersive media installation; curriculum development at colleges and universities; civic programs on generative relations across conflict and differences; and publication on identity and social relations. Dorit has exhibited internationally including: Whitney Museum, Musee des Beaux Art/Bruxelles, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Musee D'Art Contemporaire/ Montráal, Walker Art Center, Orange County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Open City Festival/Lublin, Poland, Kestner Gesellschaft and at galleries and community centers.
Dorit has worked with and founded civic organizations: PeoplesLab, transforming conflict into possibility for communities in conflict; Mediators Beyond Borders, building local and global capacity for conflict engagement; and Kulture Klub Collaborative, artists and home-less youth bridging survival and inspiration to build social engagement.
Among many awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship and Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, 2014. Cypis earned a Master of Fine Arts, California Institute for the Arts, and a Masters of Dispute Resolution, Pepperdine University. Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and raised in Montreal, she currently lives in Los Angeles.
www.doritcypis.com
Katie Herzog
Katie Herzog (b. 1979, Palo Alto, California) received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001 and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, San Diego in 2005. Recent exhibitions include Yankee Candle at Klowden Mann in Culver City, California (2020), Mom's Historical Record at Sol Treasures in King City, California (2019), and Terms of Use at UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of Arts in Irvine, California (2019). She has participated in a number of artist residencies including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, The Banff Centre, Bblackboxx, Ox-Bow, Program Initiative for Art and Architecture Collaborations in Berlin, and the Soulangh Artist Village in Tainan City, Taiwan. Her work has been written about in publications including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Hyperallergic, Art and Cake, the Huffington Post, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and Artforum. She currently works for Monterey County Free Libraries and lives in Parkfield, California.
www.katieherzog.net
Janna Ireland
Janna Ireland was born in Philadelphia, but has chosen Los Angeles as her home. She holds an MFA from the UCLA Department of Art and a BFA from the Department of Photography and Imaging at NYU. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Chicago, and in group exhibitions across the United States and internationally. She has been published in Aperture, The New Yorker, Harper's, Art Papers, Vice, and The Los Angeles Times. Her first monograph, Regarding Paul R. Williams, was published by Angel City Press in 2020.
www.jannaireland.com
Ruben Ochoa
Ruben Ochoa is a Los Angeles-based artist whose practice engages space as both a concept and form. Sourcing from construction materials associated with inherent histories, Ochoa's works expose the ideological and broader socio-political and economic relationships that facilitate how the spaces we inhabit and move through are assembled.
While sculpture continues to be at the center of Ruben's practice, in recent years he has been increasingly interested in how his signature use of everyday materials can be used in two-dimensional works. In his "rust paintings," Ochoa approaches rust as a pigment and his compositions take full advantage of the unpredictable nature of the medium. Iron oxide, that striking russet color, is the bane of iron and steel. Its effect on the canvas call to mind the visible deterioration and class boundaries of a city. The end effect is trademark Ochoa -- striking at the outset, and after close inspection, seething with undercurrents of biting commentary of today's class and racial divisions.
His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford; and SITE Santa Fe in Santa Fe; and numerous group exhibitions, including at the 54th Venice Biennale Collateral Event (The Future Generation Art Prize Exhibition); Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas; and 2008 Whitney Biennial in New York. His work is in many public collections including, the Smithsonian American Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. In 2019, Ochoa completed Mis Marcadores, his first public art commission located at the San Ysidro Land Port of Entry for the GSA Art in Architecture program. He has been the recipient of a Creative Capital Foundation Grant, California Community Foundation Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He received his BFA from Otis College of Art and Design and his MFA from the University of California, Irvine.
www.vielmetter.com/artists/ruben-ochoa
noé olivas
noé olivas is a Southern California-based artist. Through printmaking, sculpture, and performance, he investigates the poetics of labour. He considers the relationship between labour as it fits into the conceptions of femininity and masculinity in order to play with and reshape cultural references, narratives, myths, traditions, and objects, ultimately employing a new meaning.
olivas is an artist-gallerist-organizer and co-founder of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart and inaugural professor for the Social and Environmental Arts Practice MFA at Prescott College, where he is teaching a course on art and healing. olivas received his BA in Visual Arts from the University of San Diego and his MFA in Art from the University of Southern California. He lives and works in South Central, Los Angeles, California.
www.noeolivas.com
About the Curator
Aurora Tang
Aurora Tang is a curator and researcher based in Los Angeles. Since 2009 she has been a program manager at The Center for Land Use Interpretation. From 2011-2015 she was managing director of High Desert Test Sites. She has taught at Otis College of Art and Design and the University of Southern California, and is on the board of directors of Common Field.
www.auroratang.net
About the Partnering Organizations
Love's Remedies
Founded by Los Angeles artists Brd (Bridget Rosalia Driessen) and Hannah Kim Varamini, Love's Remedies focuses on building community through attention as material and supporting non-hierarchical interactions based on the premise of "nesting" into an institution.
www.lovesremedies.com
The Southland Institute
The Southland Institute (for critical, durational, and typographic post-studio practices) is dedicated to exploring, identifying, and implementing meaningful, affordable, sustainable alternatives in design and art education in the United States.
www.southland.institute
ArtCenter DTLA
As a satellite of the College, ArtCenter DTLA provides a platform for dialogue and engagement, intersecting the campus with the Los Angeles community. As an extension of the Exhibition department's mission, ArtCenter DTLA's programming will focus on events and exhibitions that are critically engaging from a transdisciplinary perspective. Drawing on the resources of the College and the Los Angeles art community to collaboratively build and contribute to a culture that is diverse, innovative and relevant.
www.artcenter.edu/about/campus/satellite-studios/artcenter-dtla.html
ArtCenter Exhibitions
ArtCenter Exhibitions includes the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at its north campus in Pasadena, the Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery, the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography Gallery and the Hutto-Patterson Exhibition Hall at its south campus in Pasadena, and ArtCenter DTLA Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. These curated spaces embody ArtCenter's institutional will to understand artistic thinking and design strategies as levers in promoting social advancement, the pursuit of humanitarian innovation and use of critical inquiry to clarify objectives and truths. Using the lens of contemporary art and design, the mission of ArtCenter Exhibitions is to ignite emotional resonance, provoke intellectual dissonance and conjure unexpected pathways of thinking.
www.artcenter.edu/about/exhibitions/overview.html
ArtCenter Center for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion [DEI] department at ArtCenter College of Design involves students, alumni, faculty and staff, as well as external communities, in robust research, exhibitions, symposia, lectures and curricular expansion on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in art and design. We create and support collaborative and transformative activities in the service of the College's values of DEI that are designed to break new ground through practice, scholarship and pedagogy.
www.artcenter.edu/about/get-to-know-artcenter/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/overview.html
ArtCenter
Founded in 1930 and located in Pasadena, California, ArtCenter College of Design is a global leader in art and design education. ArtCenter offers 11 undergraduate and seven graduate degrees in a wide variety of industrial design disciplines as well as visual and applied arts. In addition to its top-ranked academic programs, the College also serves members of the Greater Los Angeles region through a highly regarded series of year-round educational programs for all ages and levels of experience. Renowned for both its ties to industry and its social impact initiatives, ArtCenter is the first design school to receive the United Nations' Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status. Throughout the College's long and storied history, ArtCenter alumni have had a profound impact on popular culture, the way we live and important issues in our society.
www.artcenter.edu
Contact
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