Exquisite L.A.: Volume 3

Photos by Joe Pugliese

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Drawing on the history of exquisite corpse, the surrealist parlour game, Exquisite L.A. began with a desire for connection—a wish for a blueprint of a collective body, a communal portrait of the current Los Angeles art world. We started photographing Volume 3 of the project toward the end of 2019, and since then, we’ve had to bend inward, physically retracting from one another. As we slowly welcome a return to physical connection, it’s impossible not to think of this project more vitally: in the ways our bodies need and relate to one another—how art is never created in a vacuum. Within the experience of a global pandemic, we must articulate new shapes—draw and redraw. 

Consisting of photographic portraits, and spanning a year of consecutive Carla issues, each artist featured introduces the next, outlining their connection or interest in the artist that will follow them in the series. Rooted in classical portraiture, the photographs presented capture the artists in a neutral space, isolated from their work or studio. Their individual gaze, pose, or gesture becomes a continuous visual marker for the exquisite corpse that is Los Angeles. Pervasive in these portraits is a connective tissue of words— invisible, floating over the artists’ bodies and united by a thread of inspiration. 

Due to Carla’s pivot to digital publishing over the last year, we put this project on hold until it could resume in print. It has been a year since the last print issue presented Friedrich Kunath, Tristan Unrau, and Nevine Mahmoud. We resume Volume 3 with Lila de Magalhaes. 

Issue 19: 

Friedrich Kunath→Tristan Unrau→Nevine Mahmoud→ 

Issue 24: 

Lila de Magalhaes→Young Joon Kwak→Beatriz Cortez→

Nevine Mahmoud on Lila de Magalhaes

Photo: Joe Pugliese.

Lila is my sister. The devil on my shoulder. A guardian angel. The worm in my apple. My partner in crime. The siren to my ship. Another species, but strangely familiar. The phrase “oil and water” comes to mind, but more like those toys that churn colored oil through water in kaleidoscopic patterns and shapes, all vigorously turning together. Dancing holiday souvenirs. That’s us. Together we are everything; the life and soul of the party. Lila makes me softer, she makes me sharper, she makes me touch and feel and slow down. The first time I took mushrooms, with Lila, it became clear that she was my queen. The most beautiful natural being I could have imagined. But Lila is very real. She’s taught me to accept things I couldn’t even see before I met her. That girl’s brain is wild and her hands are nimble and fluid, like tumbling string. The world has more color to me because she’s in it.

Lila de Magalhaes on Young Joon Kwak

Photo: Joe Pugliese.

One of the first times I experienced Young’s work was in the form of a video. In a red-and-white striped dress, blonde curls, and white heels, they attacked a suburban field with a hammer until the earth bled. Young is not subtle. Young is extremely smart in a cerebral sense as well as in an intuitive, impulsive, and sensual way. They do not shy away from darkness, pain, and the grotesque, I think simply because those things are a real part of being a living, ever-changing being. Their laugh can be heard for miles. Collaborating with people in their community and giving other voices the opportunity to come together and be heard seems integral to their work.

Young Joon Kwak on Beatriz Cortez

Photo: Joe Pugliese.

Beatriz Cortez lives and creates work with all of her heart. I love how her work draws from such a personal experience of migration and displacement, while also leading me to think of different experiences of time and space outside of our selves. But don’t get it twisted—this is a critical evacuation of the harmful realities of our bodies and selves as predetermined by colonialism, biopolitics, and capitalism. Her work is both pedagogical and open-ended. You may not think it at first when looking at our work, but I think our ideas align with each other in terms of rethinking queerness through the material realm to imagine new futures; or at least that’s one way by which her work inspires and tickles my imagination. She is also a fiercely loving and supportive sister, with the warmest smile, who I am so grateful for.

This photo essay was originally published in Carla issue 24.

Claressinka Anderson’s poetry and essays have appeared in Autre Magazine, Chiron Review, Artillery Magazine, and elsewhere, as well as in the anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion. Through her ongoing collaborations with artists, her work engages the interstitial spaces of contemporary art and literature. Born and raised in London, she lives in Los Angeles where she is at work on her first libretto. 

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