between two worlds, 2015 

Fine Arts Gallery, California State University Los AngelesFebruary 12 - 28, 2015

Artists: Ismael De Anda III, Young Chung, Michelle Dizon, Patricia Fernandez, Bia Gayotto, Flora Kao, Seema Kapur, Gala Porras-Kin, Maryroze mendoza, Yong Soon Min, Amitis Montevalli, Camilo Ontiveros, Evelyn Serrano and Haruko Tanaka.

 

Between Two Worlds includes fourteen artists representing the complex trans-cultural community of Los Angeles, whose work explores the relationship between artistic practice and cultural territory. Instead of focusing on one nationality or region, these artists circulate between multiple geographies and mediums, and translate their multicultural experiences into their installations, photographs, paintings, videos, sculptures and drawings. Key to this research is an exploration of the ways national and cultural identities have been constructed, invoked, imagined, critiqued and satirized in their visual works. Although hybrid traces of other cultures exist in every culture and we are all affected by globalization in one way or another, the artists in this exhibition embody this idea of hybridization and perhaps occupy a “third space.” Associated with massive international migrations, globalization is tied to hybridization as it enables intense socio-cultural and ethnic-racial mixing. Yet, another effect of migration is what Gayotto calls the “third space,” which represents a liminal space between cultures, a place where mental and material cartographies are constantly being negotiated and recreated. This is the site from where these artworks emerge.