City Of Los Angeles Department Of Cultural Affairs Presents OFFAL

The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG), and the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation (BAPF) presents Offal, a group exhibition conceived as a subject from the culture of consuming innards. The exhibition will be on view at LAMAG, located at 4800 Hollywood Boulevard, in Barnsdall Park from August 15, 2019, through September 29, 2019, with an opening reception on August 11 from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Offal complements the City's upcoming Public Art Triennial, CURRENT: LA Food, a public art initiative that will feature temporary public art installations and interactive events across the city to generate conversation around food issues. While Offal explores the cultural interior of food, in this iteration of CURRENT: LA Food, local and International Artists will present a multiplicity of participatory food experiences throughout the month of October 2019.

Of all cultural taboos, those related to food are the most difficult to dispel. Food represents the most deeply rooted sets of ideas and beliefs, especially concerning self-identity and community. Offal is no different.

In some cultures, offal is stigmatized for its socioeconomic and racial implications, while in other traditions offal is a means of survival or delicacy. In keeping with this anatomy of offal, the exhibition seeks to expand the traditional parameters of cultural identity: raw, refigured, and, in some cases, delightfully grotesque.

The exhibition features a variety of work from 43 Los Angeles-based contemporary artists who use traditional and unconventional techniques and media in their approach to the five overlapping themes that feed into the exhibition: labor, discard and waste, transcultural idioms, cultural retention and shame, and the abject. Notable works include Jim Shaw's Dream Object (Digestive tract sculpture), a mixed media sculpture exploring their "inner" unconscious psyche; Victoria Reynolds's oil paintings and charcoal drawings that give life to disemboweled organs while simultaneously serving as a memento mori of unfamiliar culinary cuts/organs only found in specialty/"ethnic" markets; Danial Nord's Sleeper, a video-driven sculptural fountain in the form of a translucent sculpture molded from his own body that examines the individual and societal consumption and digestion of today's political rhetoric - on exhibit for the first time in Los Angeles; and a video collaboration between Gazelle Samizay and Labkhand Olfatmaneshthat explores émigrés food traditions that can often outlive language through sanctifying ceremonies and family bonds.

At its heart, the exhibition seeks to unpack and celebrate Los Angeles' relationship to diversity and food in all of its forms - ultimately speaking to the offal in all of us.

Artists participating in OFFAL were selected from an open call for entries by a jury comprising Ron Finley, proponent of urban gardening and South LA community leader; Julio César Morales, artist, educator, and curator; and Genevieve Erin O'Brien, artist, culinary adventurer and community organizer. The selected artists include: Edmund Arevalo, Phoebe Barnum, Andrea Bogdan, Johanna Breiding, SoYun Cho, Heisue Chung-Matheu, Ciriza, Debra Disman, Alexandre Dorriz, gloria galvez, Natalia Garcia Clark, Matt Hollis, Sara Hunsucker, Grace Hwang, Sarah Julig, Shannon Keller, Sydney Mills, Leo Mondor, Flavia Monteiro, Albert Natian, Alex Nazari, Jim Newberry, Dakota Noot, Avital Oehler, Labkhand Olfatmanesh, Abel Olivieri, Elisa Ortega Montilla, Abareshi Panteha, Carolie Parker, Antonia Price, Colin Roberts, Larisa Safaryan, Gazelle Samizay, Stephanie Sherwood, Emilia Ukkonen, and Reed van Brunschot.

In addition, a selection of artists were invited to participate in the exhibition, including: Bonnie Huang, Robert Karimi, Mark Mulroney, Danial Nord, Victoria Reynolds, Jim Shaw, Jeannine Shinoda, and Jeffrey Vallance.