Featured Artist

Rosalind Nashashibi’s Electrical Gaza includes  footage of Gaza the artist shot with her film crew, drivers, and translator, along with animated scenes. Gaza is shown in the quiet moments before the Israeli bombardment in the summer of 2014.

Nashashibi’s mediation eschews images of extreme violence and suffering global audiences have come to associate with Gaza, as well as sentimentalized imagery. Instead, the artist films daily life. Scenes of boys and horses cooling down in the Mediterranean, of vibrant streets filmed from the back of a moving car, and of a young man spreading falafel over bread are interspersed with animations of the alleys, the border crossing, and the coast. The film indicates both the richness of Gazan life and its hostile enclosure.

In her reflections on the history and the making of the film, Nashashibi compares the state of existence in Gaza to enchantment, as in, “under a spell; because it exists, it existed, isolated by the world and on a different plane of reality to everything that surrounded it.” Enchantment, as the film suggests, accounts for the particular marking of time, experience, and memory in Gaza. These cultivations also emerge as the enchanted object of settler-colonial violence. The film, however, does not end with the image of an animated and ever-expanding black hole, but cuts to an image of children swimming in the sea. The abrupt shift upsets the death-driven narrative of erasure so many viewers will have come to expect. Throughout the viewing experience, we struggle as we confront those deep-seated narratives and reconsider our roles as watchers and witnesses. You can view the film here (password: 31£C74!CV16V%V-40$1£).

Rosalind Nashashibi (b. 1973 in Croydon, UK) received her BA in Painting from Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield (UK) in 1995, after which she attended the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow (UK) where she received her MFA in 2000. As part of her Master’s degree, Nashashibi participated in a three-month exchange program in Valencia, California (US) at CalArts in 2000. Nashashibi became the first artist in residence at the National Gallery in London (UK), after the program was re-established in 2020. She was a Turner Prize nominee in 2017, and represented Scotland in the 52nd Venice Biennale. Her work has been included in Documenta 14, Manifesta 7, the Nordic Triennial, and Sharjah 10. She was the first woman to win the Beck’s Futures prize in 2003. 

Nashashibi has had solo exhibitions at venues including, Nottingham Contemporary (UK); Musée Art Contemporain Carré d’Art, Nîmes (FR); Radvila Palace Museum of Art, Vilnius (LT); S.M.A.K., Ghent (BE); The High Line, New York, NY (US); Tate Britain, London (UK); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (UK); The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (US); Imperial War Museum, London (UK); and ICA, London (UK). Nashashibi has participated in group exhibitions at, Centre Georges Pompidou and Forum des Images, Paris (FR); Tate, London (UK); Sculpture Center, New York, NY (US); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (MX); Whitechapel, London (UK); Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (DE); UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (US), among others. 

The first book by artist, filmmaker, and writer RaMell Ross, Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body (published by MACK) brings together Ross’s large-format photographs, sculptures, conceptual works, and selected films. The book presents a historical and imaginative narrative of the American South and includes texts by RaMell Ross, Tracy K. Smith, Richard McCabe, and Scott Matthews.

RaMell Ross (b. 1982) is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and liberated documentarian. His work has appeared in places like Aperture, Hammer Museum, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, MoMA, Georgia Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, and Walker Art Center. His feature experimental documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening won a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and 2020 Peabody Award. It was nominated for an Oscar at the 91st Academy Awards and an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film. RaMell holds degrees in Sociology and English from Georgetown University and is an associate professor in Brown University’s Visual Art Department.

Francesc Tosquelles (Reus, 1912 – Granges-sur-Lot, 1994) is known as one of the major founders of the practice of institutional psychotherapy. His practice was deeply contextualized with the humanitarian emergency during the Spanish Civil War and World War II

Disciple of Emili Mira and attentive to the theories of Hermann Simon, Strauss and Jacques Lacan, Tosquelles articulated psychoanalysis and Marxism to establish the foundations of institutional psychotherapy. This was most realized during his work at the hospital in Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole between 1940 and 1962, after staying at the internment camp of Septfonds. Images from the Tosquelles family archive of daily life at Saint Alban and other archival ephemera are featured in the art portfolio of the “Air” issue of the Quarterly Journal with an introduction by scholar Joana Masó.

Berlin-based artist Yalda Afsah’s new and recent work is currently showing at JOAN. The artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles presents two films from an ongoing series documenting different ritualized encounters between humans and animals. 

Curro (2023), Afsah’s most recent film, documents a centuries-old Galician tradition known as Rapas das Bestas, in which wild horses are corralled into an arena to be tamed. The second film, SSRC (2022) focuses on the Los Angeles-based Secret Society Roller Club, a group of amateur roller pigeon enthusiasts, as they gather to watch the aerial choreography of the birds they have trained and cared for, sometimes for generations.

German Iranian artist and filmmaker, Yalda Afsah (b. 1983, Berlin, lives in Berlin) has had recent solo exhibitions at Between Bridges Foundation, Berlin, Kunstverein München, and HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, and has presented her work at numerous other exhibitions and festivals including Manifesta 13; Locarno Film Festival; New York Film Festival; Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur; Institute of Contemporary Arts London; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. She attended CalArts in 2011/2012 for an exchange as part of the MFA Film/Video program. In 2018, she received the Karl Schmidt-Rottluff scholarship and from 2019–2021 she was a fellow at the Berlin University of the Arts’ Graduate School. She is currently a mentor for the Berlin program for artists (BPA).

This project is organized by Hannah Spears, Associate Curator.

Mind’s Eye is an exhibition of new work by Deana Lawson on view at David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles.

In a collection of artist notes on select works in the exhibition, the artist writes of knowledge production, chance occurrences, dreams, and the cosmic and otherworldly. From memories impressed upon landscapes and immediate environments to polished obsidian as the earliest mirrors, Lawson writes of materiality and the metaphysical, perception and bearing witness both in photography qua experience and experience grounded beyond Western epistemologies.

In 2022, Deana Lawson was awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and she is the first artist working in photography to be awarded the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize by the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions including Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2020); Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (2019); The Underground Museum, Los Angeles (2018); and more. Lawson lives and works in Los Angeles.

CLOSE, not too close is an exhibition of new work by British artist Rose Wylie at David Zwirner in Los Angeles. Marking the artist’s debut solo exhibition in Los Angeles, the show features a group of large-scale paintings as well as related drawings, the presentation includes works that variously feature Wylie’s home and garden, media she’s consumed, and other elements drawn from her daily life and surroundings.

Wylie has become known for her uniquely recognizable, colorful, and exuberant compositions that at first glance appear aesthetically simplistic, not seeming to align with any discernible style or movement, but on closer inspection are revealed to be wittily observed and subtly sophisticated meditations on the nature of visual representation itself. The artist has long been interested in exploring perspectival and compositional strategies other than—and along with—traditional Renaissance perspective, frequently making numerous iterations of a given motif as a means of advancing her formal investigation. Working in both single- and multi-panel formats, she regularly juxtaposes apparently disparate imagery, creating visual rhymes and resonances that coalesce into a unified composition.

Rose Wylie (b. 1934) studied at Folkestone and Dover School of Art, Kent, England, and the Royal College of Art, London, from which she graduated in 1981. The artist’s first solo exhibition took place in 1985 at the Trinity Arts Centre, in Kent. In recent years, she has had solo presentations at venues including the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia (2012); Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, England (2012); Tate Britain, London (2013); Haugar kunstmuseum, Tønsberg, Norway (2013); Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Germany (2014); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2015); Space K, Seoul (2016); Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales (2016); Turner Contemporary, Margate, England (2016); Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (2017); Plymouth Arts Centre and The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art, England (an exhibition that traveled to Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange in Cornwall, England); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2018); and The Gallery at Windsor, Vero Beach, Florida (2020).

Cinema of Sensations: The Never-Ending Screen of Val del Omar presents the work of Spanish mid-20th-century artist, filmmaker, and inventor José Val del Omar (1904–1982) at the Museum of Moving Image in New York. The show is the first major U.S. exhibition devoted to the artist’s multisensory work and runs until October 1, 2023.

Disrupting the conventional relationship between the viewer and the screen, the works in this exhibition foreground historical and contemporary experimental technologies, creating aesthetically rich environments that engage the body and mind. Cinema of Sensations is organized by guest curator Almudena Escobar López with curatorial advisor and Director of the Val del Omar Archive Piluca Baquero, and Gonzalo Sáenz de Buruaga, President of the Val del Omar Archive as consultant.

Noguchi Subscapes is a survey of Isamu Noguchi’s particular interest in the unseen and hidden: invisible forces, subterranean structures and their makers, spatial metaphors for the unknown, and the inner recesses of the self. This series of installations of around forty sculptures and designs, mostly drawn from the Museum’s collection and incorporating photographs from the artist’s archive, occupies nearly the entire second floor.

One section of the exhibition is dedicated to archival images and objects from Noguchi’s set design for George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky’s Orpheus. The set design, like the exhibition, offers Noguchi’s exploration of unseen surfaces, but more focused on life and death and the artists’ conceptualization of the Greek hero Orpheus’s artistic vision as a form of blindness. In his notes on Orpheus, Noguchi writes of a silk curtain presenting a passage of life whereas death is seen when the artist’s mask (of blindness) is taken off.

The 12th edition of BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia features a global selection of films and robust accompanying programming. The 2023 film festival features a total of 93 films, many of which engage with climate justice, queer stories and narratives on migration and displacement. A few of the selections from the festival are included below.

Accidental Athlete (2023) is a short film directed by Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold. The film includes a monologue by Paulette Jones Morant on being one of the first Black woman scholastic athletes at the University of Virginia. The film was most recently shown at BlackStar Film Festival 2023 in Philadelphia.

Kevin Jerome Everson (b.1965, Mansfield, Ohio) Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Everson is the recipient of the Guggenheim; Berlin Prize; Heinz Award in Art and Humanities; Alpert Award for Film/Video and the Rome Prize. His art practice encompasses printmaking, photography, sculpture and film – 12 features and over 200 shorts to date – including 11 Black Fire collaborations with UVA colleague Claudrena N. Harold. His work has been the subject of mid-career retrospectives and solo exhibitions at Tate Modern/Film, Halle fur Kunst Steiermark,  Harvard Film Archive, Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou, Andrew Kreps Gallery, Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul and featured at the 2008, 2012 and 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 2013 Sharjah Biennial and the 2018 Carnegie International.

Claudrena N. Harold is Professor of African American and African Studies and History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip-Hop Eras (University of Illinois Press, 2020); New Negro Politics in the Jim Crow South (2016); The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement in the Urban South, 1918-1942 (2007). Her collaboration with UVA colleague Kevin Jerome Everson on a series of Black Fire films includes 11 shorts that reflect a “deep interest in the interiority of Black life, particularly those formal and informal spaces where African Americans communed, hobnobbed, prayed, loved, quarreled, reconciled, and moved on.”

Foragers (2022) is directed by Jumana Manna. The film moves between documentary and fiction to depict the dramas between the Israeli Nature Protection Authority and Palestinian foragers. With a wry sense of humor, the film captures the inherited love, resilience and knowledge of these traditions, over an eminently political backdrop.

Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.

Daydreaming pressed against a fence is a group exhibition on view at Harkawik in Los Angeles. The show features artworks that have been created out of existing works. Many of these works center translation, reconstitution and/or reimagination as it relates to the creative process. The show includes works each of the gallery’s represented artists, alongside others. The exhibition runs until September 11, 2023.

Sirkhane Darkroom, a non-profit mobile darkroom project, aims to empower talented, underprivileged children from Syria, Turkey, and Iraq, with a current focus on supporting those affected by earthquakes.

The traveling darkroom teaches children how to shoot, develop, and print their own photographs. They have launched a fundraising campaign here to host workshops for displaced children in affected areas.

Sirkhane Darkoom was featured in the  “Do you love me?” issue of the Quarterly Journal.

On view at Sprüth Magers is Loser Back Home in Los Angeles. The show debuts both Martine Syms’s representation and exhibition with the gallery.

The exhibition includes Syms’s latest works in video, sculpture, painting and photography surrounding themes of loss, belonging, destruction, power, and more. Her textile paintings consist of garments stretched over metal frames, while her large wall-based photocollage and laser-cut sculptures qua boxes are reminiscent of commercial packaging and origami. Both series of works draw on Syms’s own ephemera and photo library.

Martine Syms (*1988, Los Angeles) lives and works in Los Angeles. Syms obtained an MFA from Bard College in Annandale-On-Hudson, New York (2017) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2007). Selected solo exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Philadelphia Museum of Art (both 2022), Fridericianum, Kassel (2021), Secession, Vienna (2019) and Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017). Group exhibitions include Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022), MUDAM, Luxembourg (2021), MMK – Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2020), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019) and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018). Syms’ work has been recognized through multiple awards, including Herb Alpert Award (2022), Creative Capital Award (2021), United States Artists Fellowship and Future Fields Art Prize (both 2020). Syms is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow.

Syms has written and directed three feature films, The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto, Incense Sweaters & Ice and The African Desperate (Mubi), which was the closing night film of New Directors/New Films 2022 and nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 2023.

On view at Karma is Reggie Burrows Hodges’s first solo exhibition, The Reckoning, in Los Angeles. The series of new paintings primarily concerns reflection in the material sense and in terms of thought.

The show runs until July 7, 2023.

Reggie Burrows Hodges (b. 1965, Compton, CA) is a Los Angeles–born painter based in Maine. In 2020, Hodges received the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation’s fellowship in the visual arts and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. His work is held in numerous museum public collections, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; the Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Curtis Cuffie (published by Blank Forms Editions) is the first book on artist Curtis Cuffie known for his sculptures on the streets of New York’s East Village. The book is edited by Scott Portnoy, Robert Snowden, and Ciarán Finlayson includes photographs by Katy Able, Carol Thompson, Michael Galinsky, Margaret Morton, Tom Warren, and the artist himself.

Cuffie’s work and the book is featured in the upcoming “Fire” issue of the The LA RB Quarterly.

Carmen Herrera, The 1970s: Part 2 is Lisson Gallery’s debut exhibition in Los Angeles.

The exhibition features Herrera’s Days of the Week series and is the second part of a presentation focused on her work from the 1970s, following Part 1 that was on view in New York in May 2022. Herrera participated in the planning of the two-part exhibition before she passed away at the age of 106 in February 2022.

The exhibition runs until June 10, 2023.

Carmen Herrera was born in Havana, Cuba in 1915. She moved frequently between France and Cuba throughout the 1930s and 1940s; having started studying architecture at the Universidad de La Habana, Havana, Cuba (1938–39), she trained at the Art Students League, New York, NY, USA (1942–43), before exhibiting five times at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (1949–53). She settled in New York in 1954, where she lived and worked until her death in 2022. Herrera’s work was the subject of a large-scale survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2017), which traveled to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio (2017) and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (K20) in Düsseldorf, Germany (2017–2018). A selection of Herrera’s recent paintings and Estructuras inaugurated Lisson Gallery New York’s 24th Street exhibition space in May 2016. The last two years were marked by two major mural commissions for the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX and the Publicolor Community Museum for the Manhattan East School of Arts in Harlem, NY.

Jamel Shabazz: Albums is a newly released book that features the celebrated photographer’s albums from the 1970s through the 1990s. The book exhibits much of the previously unseen work as it exists in Shabazz’s own archives.

Jamel Shabazz: Albums is co-published with Steidl and The Gordon Parks Foundation. The photographer was the 2022 recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation / Steidl Book Prize. The book offers an intimate look into Shabazz’s portraiture and archives alongside essays by Nelson George, Deborah Willis, Peter W. Kunhardt, JR., Michal Raz-Russo and Leslie Wilson.