LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes presents Linda Vallejo: Brown BELONGINGS

LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes presents Linda Vallejo: Brown Belongings, an exhibition of new and recent work from the Los Angeles-based, Chicana artist whose career spans more than forty years. For nearly a decade, Vallejo has explored the vast and varied meanings of the color brown. LA Plaza will exhibit new works by Vallejo alongside selections from several recent series and subseries of artworks, including Make 'Em All Mexican, The Brown Oscars, The Brown Dot Project, Datos Sagrados, and Cultural Enigma. The exhibition will be on view June 1, 2019 through January 6, 2020.

LA Plaza's first solo exhibition dedicated to the work of a Latina and staged simultaneously in all of its temporary exhibition galleries, the exhibition consists of more than 100 of Vallejo's paintings, drawings, and sculptures, and will examine how race and color, as expressed through images and data, affect our perception and experience of culture. At the same time, it asks how embracing brownness can allow us to creatively question, deflect, and resist stereotypes of and assumptions about Latinx people.

Works from different series will be combined in thematic groupings throughout LA Plaza's galleries, allowing the visitor to see ideas that resonate across Vallejo's body of work. Interactive elements will invite visitors to reflect on and share aspects of their own identities. A series of public programs, including artist talks, documentary screenings, and a chocolate tasting, will invite visitors to engage directly with the exhibition themes.

"In a career that spans more than 40 years, Linda Vallejo has distinguished herself as one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking Latinx artists of our time," said John Echeveste, LA Plaza CEO. "This large presentation of her work will delight and amuse some while confusing and challenging others. This dichotomy makes her work so interesting and important, and we are presenting it at LA Plaza to spark dialogue about the past, present, and future of the Latinx community."

"Linda Vallejo is highly concerned with data and images, two key sources through which we make sense of the world around us," notes Erin M. Curtis, Ph.D., Senior Curator at LA Plaza. "Imagery and data are often presented as neutral, but in truth they are culturally determined-and often used to assert authority. By reframing imagery and data in empowering ways, Vallejo encourages us to consider and question the 'facts' we've encountered throughout our lives. This can lead to a heightened understanding of ourselves and our communities."

"Approaching difficult subjects with humor, playfulness, and curiosity, Linda invites us to share stories about the divisions caused by our differences and reflect on the possibility of unity through our similarities," says Mariah Shevchuk, Associate Curator at LA Plaza. "The questions Linda asks and the conversations we encourage around the themes in this show take on added weight and urgency given the precarious political climate in which we conceived of this exhibition."

During her more than forty-year career, Vallejo has worked across a variety of media-including screen printing, painting, drawing, and sculpture-and has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the East Los Angeles College Vincent Price Museum, Los Angeles; the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago; the Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the University of California, Santa Barbara California Multicultural and Ethnic Archives; and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

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LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, 501 North Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012

Hours: M, W, & Th, 12-5 pm, Fri-Sun 12-6 pm

Admission: FREE

Website: www.lapca.org

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