Artists Pay Homage to Histories Preserved and Forgotten
3 min read
LOS ANGELES — Maybe one of many biggest needs of artists is to make seen the invisible, to offer expression to the ineffable but deeply felt realities of existence in an infinitely layered and fluctuating world. As Yet and Still to Come, presently on view at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles, brings collectively 4 artists who tackle this problem. Working in a number of mediums and addressing a wide range of matters, the artists’ commonality lies of their refusal to make simply categorised works, as an alternative choosing a collective sense of complexity.
A classically educated oil painter from China, artist Yike Zhang not too long ago shifted her focus towards textiles. In “Wang Zhu” (2023), hanging close to the gallery entrance, the artist paid homage to her grandmother, after whom the piece is called. Zhang delicately weaves a number of layers of cloth right into a kind that seems nearly scroll-like, combining Chinese language textual content with several types of imagery, together with a sewn-in model of a household portrait. One other artist working with reminiscence, Maddy Inez Leeser additionally takes a cue from her grandmother. The artist based mostly her superbly glazed vessels, “Reminiscence Jug #5” and “Reminiscence Jug #7” (each 2022), on her grandmother’s spirit jars, which she collects as a solution to symbolically maintain house for the household’s historical past.
Household comes up once more within the work of Liz Hernández, who usually attracts upon her Mexican heritage in her apply. For the exhibition, curator Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle selected items from the artist’s Tálisman sequence, through which Hernández created a legendary archive of her household’s religious and cultural practices. In “Luz y progreso en tu camino” (2020), which interprets loosely to “gentle and progress alongside your path,” the artist emblazoned the titular phrase on prime of a distorted mirror — showcasing the methods through which a household’s practices and philosophies each stick with members of the family and alter all through the course of their lives.
On walks round their Oakland neighborhood, artist Tracy Ren took pictures of outside altars they encountered, which grew to become the start line for “Threshold #3” and “Threshold #2” (each 2022). Ren encased these pictures of altars in meticulously crafted clay frames and added their very own drawings to create the works, primarily creating shrines of shrines. Whereas in a roundabout way tied to the artist’s private historical past, like lots of the exhibition’s different works, these items make seen the methods cultural custom and religious practices that may be transmitted inside communities exterior of the household unit.
As a complete, As But and Nonetheless to Come factors to the precariousness and relentlessness of time — the best way it each preserves and forgets. The varied nods to diasporic life and household histories and traditions handed down via generations congeal into an set up that means the fragmentation inherent in an archive: between the assorted moments captured in a household’s picture album lay 1000’s of unrecorded occasions. The exhibition’s power lies not within the artists capturing specific histories, which the objects don’t do, however in honoring the all-too-human need to symbolize them within the first place.
As Yet and Still to Come continues at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles (The Bendix Constructing,
1206 Maple Avenue, fifth ground, #523, Trend District, Los Angeles) via June 25. The exhibition was curated by Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle.
