This fall, museums around Los Angeles are showcasing art’s ability to foster community, to rage against injustice, and to rewrite history. A historical survey of Mail Art in Latin America highlights subversive networks of artistic production in the face of political repression, while a traveling exhibition of radical Chicano prints from the Smithsonian lands at the Huntington. A show at the Getty pulls from the Guerrilla Girls’ archive, and a two-person exhibition at Skirball pairs the late Philip Guston with contemporary painter Trenton Doyle Hancock. The timely show Monuments, co-organized by the Brick and the Museum of Contemporary Art, juxtaposes decommissioned US monuments with work by artists engaging with current debates over how we want to reimagine our nation’s history. Ken Gonzales-Day and Tavares Strachan both engage in research-based practices that scrutinize who and what gets written into — and out of — mainstream narratives.
Guadalupe Maravilla: Les soñadores
REDCAT, 631 West 2nd Street, Downtown, Los Angeles
September 13–December 19
Guadalupe Maravilla fled his native El Salvador as a child during its bloody civil war, arriving in the US as an unaccompanied child. He later survived cancer, a disease he attributes to the trauma of violence, migration, and his previously undocumented status. Les soñadores, his first solo show in LA, includes sculptures that reflect his personal history of upheaval and resilience. These include “Migratory Birds Riding the Celestial Serpent (Aves migratorias montando la serpiente celestial)” (2021), an undulating serpentine form that incorporates objects picked up on a recreation of his migration path, and “Dream Backpacks” made from volcanic rock, which merge precolonial sculptural precedents with contemporary narratives of diasporic dislocation. REDCAT will host a screening and conversation between the artist, the Dean of the School of Art at California Institute of the Arts Steven Lam, and its own Chief Curator Daniela Lieja Quintanar on September 13 at 6pm.