Kenneth Tam. Still from “Breakfast in Bed”, 2016. Single-channel HD video, color, sound. 60 min. (approx.). Participants: Gilberto Arriaga, Ben Corley, Phillip Dickey, Bruce Dolen, Niko Flores, Spencer Freeman, and Trevor Meek.
Today the Hammer Museum announced the artists selected for Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only, co-curated by Aram Moshayedi and Hamza Walker, Director of Education and Associate Curator of the Renaissance Society in Chicago. The biennial exhibition takes place over the summer, opening June 12 and running through August 28, 2016. The subtitle of the exhibition takes inspiration from a new poem commissioned by Aram Saroyan for the exhibition.
This year’s Made in L.A. premise puts forth the idea that there is no “unifying regional aesthetic, sensibility or identity” tied to Los Angeles. This sense of freedom is often times associated with the West Coast and L.A., specifically. “L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me,” writes novelist Caroline Leavitt.
Adam Linder, “Vexed Vista”, 2015. Performance at Les Subsistances, Lyon, France, January 2015. Stage detail. Photograph by Shahryar Nashat.
The 26 artists that make up this year’s Made in L.A. are a global bunch, hailing from cities around the world; but many of them are locally born and bred, remaining in L.A. or coming back here to work. Regardless, they are all connected to Los Angeles today; this is the place that brings out their creativity in ways that some other place couldn’t. Perhaps that’s the beauty of Los Angeles, the city that the L.A.-based band YACHT refers to as “psychic city.”
Both the 2014 and 2012 installations of Made in L.A. have focused on emerging and under-recognized artists, and were curated entirely by L.A. culture workers. This year’s decision to bring in Hamza Walker from Chicago marked a new approach to interpreting what it means to be an L.A. artist. This marks the third installation of Made in L.A., which runs every two years, and first began in 2012.
The full list of 2016 Made in L.A. artists is here:
- Kelly Akashi (b. 1983, Los Angeles, CA)
- Huguette Caland (b. 1931, Beirut, Lebanon)
- Eckhaus Latta (est. 2011; Zoe Latta, b. 1987, Santa Cruz, CA, Mike Eckhaus, b. 1987, New York, NY)
- Rafa Esparza (b. 1981, Los Angeles, CA)
- Lauren Davis Fisher (b. 1984, Cambridge, MA)
- Todd Gray (b. 1954, Los Angeles, CA)
- Joel Holmberg (b. 1982, Bethesda, MD)
- Margaret Honda (b. 1961, San Diego, CA)
- Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, MS)
- Labor Link TV (est. 1988; Fred Lonidier, b. 1942, Lakeview, OR)
- Laida Lertxundi (b. 1981, Bilbao, Spain)
- Adam Linder (b. 1983, Sydney, Australia)
- Guthrie Lonergan (b. 1984, Los Angeles, CA)
- Rebecca Morris (b.1969, Honolulu, HI)
- Shahryar Nashat (b. 1975, Geneva, Switzerland)
- Silke Otto-Knapp (b.1970, Osnabrück, Germany)
- Gala Porras-Kim (b. 1984, Bogotá, Colombia)
- Sterling Ruby (b. 1972, Bitburg, Germany)
- Aram Saroyan (b. 1943, New York, NY)
- Kenzi Shiokava (b. 1938, São Paulo, Brazil)
- Daniel R. Small (b.1984, Centralia, IL)
- Wadada Leo Smith (b.1941, Leland, MS)
- Martine Syms (b. 1988, Los Angeles, CA)
- Kenneth Tam (b. 1982, New York, NY)
- Mark Verabioff (b. 1963, Kingston, Canada)
- Dena Yago (b. 1988, New York, NY)
Watch this video for a more visual exploration of this year’s artists:
Some more of the participating artists’ works:
Eckhaus Latta. “SS16 Ad Campaign”, 2015. Directed by Alexa Karolinski. Photo by Caleb Heller.
Guthrie Lonergan. “Built with Indexhibit”, 2016. Website widget.
Lauren Davis Fisher. “New Structures, New Orientations”, 2013. Dimensional lumber, cable, lights. Variable dimensions. Installation at Human Resources, Los Angeles. Photograph by Cameron Crone.
Margaret Honda. Cases and reels for “Color Correction”, 2015. Photograph by Brian Forrest.
