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Wend Gilmartin | June 21, 2017
Latinx Artists xplore the Idea of Home in
this New LACMA xhiit
The cartoonishness of Colomian artist Johanna Calle’s “Ora Negra (lack Opus) will
draw the viewer in — legs extend out from under rooftop peaks and tangled nets, roofs
are half-�nished, and walls haphazardl squash into each other. Its plafulness distracts
one from the fact that the piece is phsicall crafted from sewn, razor-sharp chicken
wire on cardoard, and that “Ora Negra” is a term for are uilding construction, the
kind that speci�call manifests in slums and shanttowns.
“What’s it aout?” asks a ver little girl to an older friend. “What do ou think it’s aout?”
the friend asks ack. “I think it’s aout how people carr their houses with them,” sas
the little one. On a us Tuesda afternoon in earl summer, the two oung women
meander awa towards the moms with toddlers in strollers, da camp kids led
college students, some couples, older singles. The crowd is almost as diverse as the
work on view in this far-reaching, et sometimes overl-road, group exhiition that is
one of the �rst to open in this ear’s Gett Foundation installment of “Paci�c tandard
Time Los Angeles/Latin America” (PT LA/LA) — a region-wide con�uence of Latin
American and local artists in exhiitions and programs that will continue into the fall.
VIUAL ART
Installation photo featuring alomon Huerta's Untitled House (0306), 2003 and Carmen Argote's 720 q. Ft.:
Household Mutations, 2010 in the exhiition Home—o Di�erent, o Appealing at the Los Angeles Count
Museum of Art, June 11, 2017 - Octoer 15, 2017, © alomon Huerta, © Carmen Argote, photo © Museum
Associates/LACMA
Of the earl-to-open PT LA/LA shows, “Home - o Di�erent, o Appealing” examines
the ver personal idea of home and its relationship to heav matters such as elonging,
displacement and povert, among man socio-political issues. Through paintings,
sculpture, photographs, videos and installations, the exhiition o�ers a alance of art
and architecture in reference to uildings, social structures and domesticit within
sstems of uran and architectural consequence.
Later this ear, other shows will feature surves on razilian architect Lina o ardi (at
the Palm prings Museum of Art), a surve on design movements across Mexico and
California (also at LACMA), an exhiit speci�call looking at the order area, “The U..
Mexico order: Place, Imagination, and Possiilit” (at the Craft and Folk Art Museum),
and a critical look at modernist architecture in Latin America at the Los Angeles
Municipal Art Galler. Ancillar events will include a site-speci�c work writers and
Mexican artists, “Tu casa es mi casa,” at the Neutra VDL tudio and Residences in
eptemer.
ut the exhiition’s road range of viewpoints under one ver familiar and �eeting
theme — home — suggests a scalelessness of approaches to the uiquitous theme, all
of which come from a decidedl personal perspective.
Chon Noriega, one of three curators of “Home — o Di�erent, so Appealing,” along with
Mari Carmen Ramírez, curator and director of the International Center for the Arts of the
Americas at the Museum of Fine Art Houston, and Pilar Tompkins Rivas, director of the
Vincent Price Art Museum at ast Los Angeles Cit College, sas the intention was to
sta awa from the explicitl political or didactic, and focus on the material and the
formal.
Noriega is the director of UCLA Chicano tudies Research Center and adjunct curator
at LACMA.
“Man [of the artists] are investigating elements at a local, granular level in the works,”
sas Noriega, “ecause that's where these things pla out, and the don't have to go to
a certain level of astraction to achieve what the want to communicate.”
_________
Installation photo featuring Daniel Joseph Martinez's The House that America uilt, 2004-2017 in the exhiition
Home—o Di�erent, o Appealing at the Los Angeles Count Museum of Art, June 11, 2017 - Octoer 15, 2017, ©
Daniel Joseph Martinez, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
In one of the exhiit’s deepest galleries, at the half-wa point through the show (from
prett much an path one chooses through the CAM’s third �oor galleries), is Gordon
Matta-Clark’s 1974 uper 8 �lm “plitting” in which he saws through a house to open it
up, separating one side from the other, so he can slip in etween. Its sutle placement
provides the fulcrum of the exhiition in man was, and not onl ecause Matta-Clark’s
dialogs with architecture and art are well known — the artist studied architecture at
Cornell and his father worked with the wiss godfather of modernism, Le Corusier. His
intervention into a home isn't strictl architectural, ut pschological and social. The
slicing of the house creates new views out-of itself to trees and sun that glitter through
the walls, and estalishes re-imagined sight lines to the exterior and interior.
Across the room, the Mexican-orn painter alomon Huerta’s, mood musings on the
southern Californian single famil suuran house teeters on the edge of fantas and
foreoding, using deep colors and primar geometries to uild up a creeping ut quiet
tension through strange perspectives and shadows. oth Matta-Clark’s famous video
piece “plitting” and Huerta’s emerging practice of painting remove the idea of home
from its accepted cultural understandings and re-position it, respectivel through
destruction and recasting, towards eautiful new potentials (one carved open in Matta-
Clark’s case), or something more menacing a la “Pleasantville” (in Huerta’s works). The
reveal fundamental structures unseen during the tpical occupation of the phsical or
emotional idea of “home.”
Installation photo featuring Doris alcedo's Untitled, 2001, in the
exhiition Home—o Di�erent, o Appealing at the Los Angeles
Count Museum of Art, June 11, 2017 - Octoer 15, 2017, © Doris
alcedo, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
“Architecture rears its head in
man was, ut the pieces talk
aout an architecture ou carr in
our head as a memor,” sas
Noriega, and adds.
Another student of architecture
who moved into art practice later
in life is Rafael Montañez Ortiz.
His archaeological artifacts are
wild, unrul compositions from
destroed sofa eds, wire, rusted
mesh and onl vaguel
identi�ale remnants of home
furnishings and uilding materials.
His work shares a room with Doris
alcedo’s concrete-�lled furniture
pieces, which command a heav
stillness in contrast to Montañez
Ortiz’s exuerant wall pieces.
“We wanted to �nd a compelling
case for works in dialog across
generations and media and
regions,” explains Noriega, “We
didn't necessaril want works to
e viewed on their own terms.” he
sas of the strategic positioning of
pieces.
The most signi�cant of the works
in dialog are three pieces that
include María Teresa Hincapié’s 1990 video “Una cosa es una cosa", a performance in
which the artist sets out and organizes personal possessions into a square spiral across
the �oor, and Araham Cruzvillegas’ “Autoconstruccion” with Jorge Pedro Nunez’s
collages on paper — the “l sueno de tuna casa” series. Cruzvillegas’ stacked tortillas,
workout equipment and hung-up clothes reveal tasks half done around the house and
the humdrum operations of quotidian life laid out on the galler �oor, though not as
formall intentional as María Teresa Hincapié’s. The informalities of domesticit pla
against Nunez’s collages, which comine gloss home interiors advertisements sliced
up to reveal photographs of exposed cracking rick facades on laers ehind.
Installation photo featuring Araham Cruzvillegas's Autoconstrucción, 2010 in the exhiition Home—o Di�erent,
o Appealing at the Los Angeles Count Museum of Art, June 11, 2017 - Octoer 15, 2017, © Araham
Cruzvillegas, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
As for the heav focus on domesticit and its intersections into feminism, pscholog
and politics, sas Noriega, “Work in 1950 marked a shift in art – there was new
acceptance for collage, found art, photograph.” Using the materials of home, man
artists egan a critique of dominant domestic consumption, which, Noriega adds, goes
hand in hand with economic development patterns and uranism.
“The title of the exhiition comes from a home magazine of that era,” sas Noriega.
“That advertising language is used as a asis for introducing consumer goods, and
within that are man questions aout the American dream and its implications, and
implications of its export to other places.” (The title also refers to the artist Richard
Hamilton’s prophetic pop art piece of the same era, “Just What Is It That Makes Toda’s
Homes o Di�erent, o Appealing?”)
MOR ON LATIN AMRICAN ART
mpowered In These
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mpoweredandelf-pulishing,LatinxPhotographersandZineMakersTellTheirOwntories
Inthe1960sandNow:
PhotosofLatinoYouthResistance
TheseLatinoComicookArtistsCreatetheirOwnuperheroes
Ramiro Gomez’s ten small domestic scenes include painted �gures of Latino home
workers, cleaning ladies and nannies mostl with their acks turned awa from the
viewer, are placed oth perfectl and awkwardl within home stle magazine
advertisements. re-inserting the Latino worker into the composed shots, the invisile
immigrant worker is simultaneousl made visile while her disconnection to the
manicured world around her is even more pronounced. Gomez’s paintings can e
found just outside a room streaming Theresa errano’s video piece that’s an
assemlage of suspenseful shots amidst a noir-ish dream, with an air of drama as if
something ig is aout to happen.
Christina Fernandez’s series of photographs depicts a radical revisionist
dramatization of her own grandmother’s life, and Livia Corona enjamin’s video piece
“l Pan“ �nds signs of real life — a foosall tale on sidewalk, couples walking arm in
arm — on a read truck as it roams among standardized housing locks that stretch on
relentlessl across acres.
Julio Cesar Morales’ “o in a uitcase” rounds out the circuit, and is one of the most
recent works in view (from 2015). The digital piece is an actual archive of a single x-ra
image taken panish custom o�cials when the discovered an eight-ear-old o
hiding in a suitcase, coming from the Ivor Coast to pain via Morocco to reunite with
his father. The animation video re-creates visuals from the o’s perspective of what he
might have seen through a small zipper in the suitcase. The animation contains in its
process as well as its presentation the simultaneous representation of memor,
informalit, persecution, oredom, capitalism — all ecome intertwined where we live or
don’t live at the most personal and intimate scale.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Julio César Morales, o in uitcase 2013, dition of 3 + 2 AP, HD animation video with sound, 00:03:33,
Courtes of the artist and Galler Wendi Norris, an Francisco, © Julio César Morales
Top Image: alomon Huerta, Untitled House, 2003, Collection of am chwartz.
© alomon Huerta, photo courtes of Christopher Grimes Galler
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AOUT TH AUTHOR
WNDY GILMARTIN
Wend Gilmartin is an architect and journalist living and working in
Los Angeles.
he has written for LAWeekl, The Houston Press, Coagula art
Journal, Glasstire Visual Art & Review, The Dallas Oserver and in
the forthcoming ook "LAtitudes: An Angeleno’s Atlas" Heda
ooks, erkele, California.