Issue 37 August 2024

Issue 36 May 2024

Issue 35 February 2024

Issue 34 November 2023

Issue 33 August 2023

Issue 32 June 2023

Issue 31 February 2023

Issue 30 November 2022

Issue 29 August 2022

Issue 28 May 2022

Issue 27 February 2022

Issue 26 November 2021

Issue 25 August 2021

Issue 24 May 2021

Issue 23 February 2021

Issue 22 November 2020

Issue 21 August 2020

Issue 20 May 2020

Issue 19 February 2020

Letter from the Editor –Lindsay Preston Zappas
Parasites in Love –Travis Diehl
To Crush Absolute On Patrick Staff and
Destroying the Institution
–Jonathan Griffin
Victoria Fu:
Camera Obscured
–Cat Kron
Resurgence of Resistance How Pattern & Decoration's Popularity
Can Help Reshape the Canon
–Catherine Wagley
Trace, Place, Politics Julie Mehretu's Coded Abstractions
–Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.: Featuring: Friedrich Kunath,
Tristan Unrau, and Nevine Mahmoud
–Claressinka Anderson & Joe Pugliese
Reviews April Street
at Vielmetter Los Angeles
–Aaron Horst

Chiraag Bhakta
at Human Resources
–Julie Weitz

Don’t Think: Tom, Joe
and Rick Potts

at POTTS
–Matt Stromberg

Sarah McMenimen
at Garden
–Michael Wright

The Medea Insurrection
at the Wende Museum
–Jennifer Remenchik

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Mike Kelley
at Hauser & Wirth
–Angella d’Avignon
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Issue 18 November 2019

Letter from the Editor –Lindsay Preston Zappas
The Briar and the Tar Nayland Blake at the ICA LA
and Matthew Marks Gallery
–Travis Diehl
Putting Aesthetics
to Hope
Tracking Photography’s Role
in Feminist Communities
– Catherine Wagley
Instagram STARtists
and Bad Painting
– Anna Elise Johnson
Interview with Jamillah James – Lindsay Preston Zappas
Working Artists Featuring Catherine Fairbanks,
Paul Pescador, and Rachel Mason
Text: Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Children of the Sun
at LADIES’ ROOM
– Jessica Simmons

Derek Paul Jack Boyle
at SMART OBJECTS
–Aaron Horst

Karl Holmqvist
at House of Gaga, Los Angeles
–Lee Purvey

Katja Seib
at Château Shatto
–Ashton Cooper

Jeanette Mundt
at Overduin & Co.
–Matt Stromberg
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Issue 17 August 2019

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Green Chip David Hammons
at Hauser & Wirth
–Travis Diehl
Whatever Gets You
Through the Night
The Artists of Dilexi
and Wartime Trauma
–Jonathan Griffin
Generous Collectors How the Grinsteins
Supported Artists
–Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Donna Huanca
–Lindsy Preston Zappas
Working Artist Featuring Ragen Moss, Justen LeRoy,
and Bari Ziperstein
Text: Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Sarah Lucas
at the Hammer Museum
–Yxta Maya Murray

George Herms and Terence Koh
at Morán Morán
–Matt Stromberg

Hannah Hur
at Bel Ami
–Michael Wright

Sebastian Hernandez
at NAVEL
–Julie Weitz

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Alex Israel
at Greene Naftali
–Rosa Tyhurst

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Issue 16 May 2019

Trulee Hall's Untamed Magic Catherine Wagley
Ingredients for a Braver Art Scene Ceci Moss
I Shit on Your Graves Travis Diehl
Interview with Ruby Neri Jonathan Griffin
Carolee Schneemann and the Art of Saying Yes! Chelsea Beck
Exquisite L.A. Claressinka Anderson
Joe Pugliese
Reviews Ry Rocklen
at Honor Fraser
–Cat Kron

Rob Thom
at M+B
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age
of Black Power, 1963-1983
at The Broad
–Matt Stromberg

Anna Sew Hoy & Diedrick Brackens
at Various Small Fires
–Aaron Horst

Julia Haft-Candell & Suzan Frecon
at Parrasch Heijnen
–Jessica Simmons

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Shahryar Nashat
at Swiss Institute
–Christie Hayden
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Issue 15 February 2019

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Letter to the Editor
Men on Women
Geena Brown
Eyes Without a Voice
Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto
Christina Catherine Martinez
Seven Minute Dream Machine
Jordan Wolfson's (Female figure)
Travis Diehl
Laughing in Private
Vanessa Place's Rape Jokes
Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Rosha Yaghmai
Laura Brown
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Patrick Martinez,
Ramiro Gomez, and John Valadez
Claressinka Anderson
Joe Pugliese
Reviews Outliers and American
Vanguard Art at LACMA
–Jonathan Griffin

Sperm Cult
at LAXART
–Matt Stromberg

Kahlil Joseph
at MOCA PDC
–Jessica Simmons

Ingrid Luche
at Ghebaly Gallery
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

Matt Paweski
at Park View / Paul Soto
–John Zane Zappas

Trenton Doyle Hancock
at Shulamit Nazarian
–Colony Little

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Catherine Opie
at Lehmann Maupin
–Angella d'Avignon
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Issue 14 November 2018

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Celeste Dupuy-Spencer and Figurative Religion Catherine Wagley
Lynch in Traffic Travis Diehl
The Remixed Symbology of Nina Chanel Abney Lindsay Preston Zappas
Interview with Kulapat Yantrasast Christie Hayden
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Sandra de la Loza, Gloria Galvez, and Steve Wong
Claressinka Anderson
Photos: Joe Pugliese
Reviews Raúl de Nieves
at Freedman Fitzpatrick
-Aaron Horst

Gertrud Parker
at Parker Gallery
-Ashton Cooper

Robert Yarber
at Nicodim Gallery
-Jonathan Griffin

Nikita Gale
at Commonwealth & Council
-Simone Krug

Lari Pittman
at Regen Projects
-Matt Stromberg

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Eckhaus Latta
at the Whitney Museum
of American Art
-Angella d'Avignon
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Issue 13 August 2018

Letter From the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Letter to the Editor Julie Weitz with Angella d'Avignon
Don't Make
Everything Boring
Catherine Wagley
The Collaborative Art
World of Norm Laich
Matt Stromberg
Oddly Satisfying Art Travis Diehl
Made in L.A. 2018 Reviews Claire de Dobay Rifelj
Jennifer Remenchik
Aaron Horst
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Anna Sew Hoy, Guadalupe Rosales, and Shizu Saldamando
Claressinka Anderson
Photos: Joe Pugliese
Reviews It's Snowing in LA
at AA|LA
–Matthew Lax

Fiona Conner
at the MAK Center
–Thomas Duncan

Show 2
at The Gallery @ Michael's
–Simone Krug

Deborah Roberts
at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
–Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi

Mimi Lauter
at Blum & Poe
–Jessica Simmons

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Math Bass
at Mary Boone
–Ashton Cooper

(L.A. in N.Y.)
Condo New York
–Laura Brown
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Issue 12 May 2018

Poetic Energies and
Radical Celebrations:
Senga Nengudi and Maren Hassinger
Simone Krug
Interior States of the Art Travis Diehl
Perennial Bloom:
Florals in Feminism
and Across L.A.
Angella d'Avignon
The Mess We're In Catherine Wagley
Interview with Christina Quarles Ashton Cooper
Object Project
Featuring Suné Woods, Michelle Dizon,
and Yong Soon Min
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos: Jeff McLane
Reviews Meleko Mokgosi
at The Fowler Museum at UCLA
-Jessica Simmons

Chris Kraus
at Chateau Shatto
- Aaron Horst

Ben Sanders
at Ochi Projects
- Matt Stromberg

iris yirei hsu
at the Women's Center
for Creative Work
- Hana Cohn

Harald Szeemann
at the Getty Research Institute
- Olivian Cha

Ali Prosch
at Bed and Breakfast
- Jennifer Remenchik

Reena Spaulings
at Matthew Marks
- Thomas Duncan
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Issue 11 February 2018

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Museum as Selfie Station Matt Stromberg
Accessible as Humanly as Possible Catherine Wagley
On Laura Owens on Laura Owens Travis Diehl
Interview with Puppies Puppies Jonathan Griffin
Object Project Lindsay Preston Zappas, Jeff McLane
Reviews Dulce Dientes
at Rainbow in Spanish
- Aaron Horst

Adrián Villas Rojas
at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
- Lindsay Preston Zappas

Nevine Mahmoud
at M+B
- Angella D'Avignon

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960- 1985
at the Hammer Museum
- Thomas Duncan

Hannah Greely and William T. Wiley
at Parker Gallery
- Keith J. Varadi

David Hockney
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (L.A. in N.Y.)
- Ashton Cooper

Edgar Arceneaux
at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (L.A. in S.F.)
- Hana Cohn
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Issue 10 November 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Barely Living with Art:
The Labor of Domestic
Spaces in Los Angeles
Eli Diner
She Wanted Adventure:
Dwan, Butler, Mizuno, Copley
Catherine Wagley
The Languages of
All-Women Exhibitions
Lindsay Preston Zappas
L.A. Povera Travis Diehl
On Eclipses:
When Language
and Photography Fail
Jessica Simmons
Interview with
Hamza Walker
Julie Wietz
Object Project
Featuring: Rosha Yaghmai,
Dianna Molzan, and Patrick Jackson
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos by Jeff McLane
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
Reviews
Regen Projects
Ibid Gallery
One National Gay & Lesbian Archives and MOCA PDC
The Mistake Room
Luis De Jesus Gallery
the University Art Gallery at CSULB
the Autry Museum
Reviews Cheyenne Julien
at Smart Objects

Paul Mpagi Sepuya
at team bungalow

Ravi Jackson
at Richard Telles

Tactility of Line
at Elevator Mondays

Trigger: Gender as a Tool as a Weapon
at the New Museum
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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Issue 9 August 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Women on the Plinth Catherine Wagley
Us & Them, Now & Then:
Reconstituting Group Material
Travis Diehl
The Offerings of EJ Hill
Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi
Interview with Jenni Sorkin Carmen Winant
Object Project
Featuring: Rebecca Morris,
Linda Stark, Alex Olson
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Photos by Jeff McClane
Reviews Mark Bradford
at the Venice Biennale

Broken Language
at Shulamit Nazarian

Artists of Color
at the Underground Museum

Anthony Lepore & Michael Henry Hayden
at Del Vaz Projects

Home
at LACMA

Analia Saban at
Sprueth Magers
Letter to the Editor Lady Parts, Lady Arts
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Issue 8 May 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Kanye Westworld Travis Diehl
@richardhawkins01 Thomas Duncan
Support Structures:
Alice Könitz and LAMOA
Catherine Wagley
Interview with
Penny Slinger
Eliza Swann
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
taisha paggett
Ashley Hunt
Young Chung
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Alessandro Pessoli
at Marc Foxx

Jennie Jieun Lee
at The Pit

Trisha Baga
at 356 Mission

Jimmie Durham
at The Hammer

Parallel City
at Ms. Barbers

Jason Rhodes
at Hauser & Wirth
Letter to the Editor
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Issue 7 February 2017

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Generous
Structures
Catherine Wagley
Put on a Happy Face:
On Dynasty Handbag
Travis Diehl
The Limits of Animality:
Simone Forti at ISCP
(L.A. in N.Y.)
Ikechukwu Casmir Onyewuenyi
More Wound Than Ruin:
Evaluating the
"Human Condition"
Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Brenna Youngblood
Todd Gray
Rafa Esparza
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Creature
at The Broad

Sam Pulitzer & Peter Wachtler
at House of Gaga // Reena Spaulings Fine Art

Karl Haendel
at Susanne Vielmetter

Wolfgang Tillmans
at Regen Projects

Ma
at Chateau Shatto

The Rat Bastard Protective Association
at the Landing
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Issue 6 November 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Kenneth Tam
's Basement
Travis Diehl
The Female
Cool School
Catherine Wagley
The Rise
of the L.A.
Art Witch
Amanda Yates Garcia
Interview with
Mernet Larsen
Julie Weitz
Agnes Martin
at LACMA
Jessica Simmons
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Analia Saban
Ry Rocklen
Sarah Cain
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews
Made in L.A. 2016
at The Hammer Museum

Doug Aitken
at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

Mertzbau
at Tif Sigfrids

Jean-Pascal Flavian and Mika Tajima
at Kayne Griffin Corcoran

Mark A. Rodruigez
at Park View

The Weeping Line
Organized by Alter Space
at Four Six One Nine
(S.F. in L.A.)
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Issue 5 August 2016

Letter form the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Non-Fiction
at The Underground Museum
Catherine Wagley
The Art of Birth Carmen Winant
Escape from Bunker Hill
John Knight
at REDCAT
Travis Diehl
Ed Boreal Speaks Benjamin Lord
Art Advice (from Men) Sarah Weber
Routine Pleasures
at the MAK Center
Jonathan Griffin
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring:
Fay Ray
John Baldessari
Claire Kennedy
Intro by Claressinka Anderson
Portraits by Joe Pugliese
Reviews Revolution in the Making
at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel

Carl Cheng
at Cherry and Martin

Joan Snyder
at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery

Elanor Antin
at Diane Rosenstein

Performing the Grid
at Ben Maltz Gallery
at Otis College of Art & Design

Laura Owens
at The Wattis Institute
(L.A. in S.F.)
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Issue 4 May 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Moon, laub, and Love Catherine Wagley
Walk Artisanal Jonathan Griffin
Reconsidering
Marva Marrow's
Inside the L.A. Artist
Anthony Pearson
Mystery Science Thater:
Diana Thater
at LACMA
Aaron Horst
Informal Feminisms Federica Bueti and Jan Verwoert
Marva Marrow Photographs
Lita Albuquerque
Interiors and Interiority:
Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Char Jansen
Reviews L.A. Art Fairs

Material Art Fair, Mexico City

Rain Room
at LACMA

Evan Holloway
at David Kordansky Gallery

Histories of a Vanishing Present: A Prologue
at The Mistake Room

Carter Mull
at fused space
(L.A. in S.F.)

Awol Erizku
at FLAG Art Foundation
(L.A. in N.Y.)
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Issue 3 February 2016

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Le Louvre, Las Vegas Evan Moffitt
iPhones, Flesh,
and the Word:
F.B.I.
at Arturo Bandini
Lindsay Preston Zappas
Women Talking About Barney Catherine Wagley
Lingua Ignota:
Faith Wilding
at The Armory Center
for the Arts
and LOUDHAILER
Benjamin Lord
A Conversation
with Amalia Ulman
Char Jansen
How We Practice Carmen Winant
Share Your Piece
of the Puzzle
Federica Bueti
Amanda Ross-Ho Photographs
Erik Frydenborg
Reviews Honeydew
at Michael Thibault

Fred Tomaselli
at California State University, Fullerton

Trisha Donnelly
at Matthew Marks Gallery

Bradford Kessler
at ASHES/ASHES
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Issue 2 November 2015

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
Hot Tears Carmen Winant
Slow View:
Molly Larkey
Anna Breininger and Kate Whitlock
Americanicity's Paintings:
Orion Martin
at Favorite Goods
Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal
Layers of Leimert Park Catherine Wagley
Junkspace Junk Food:
Parker Ito
at Kaldi, Smart Objects,
White Cube, and
Château Shatto
Evan Moffitt
Melrose Hustle Keith Vaughn
Max Maslansky Photographs
Monica Majoli
at the Tom of Finland Foundation
White Lee, Black Lee:
William Pope.L’s "Reenactor"
Travis Diehl
Dora Budor Interview Char Jensen
Reviews Mary Ried Kelley
at The Hammer Museum

Tongues Untied
at MOCA Pacific Design Center

No Joke
at Tanya Leighton
(L.A. in Berlin)
Snap Reviews Martin Basher at Anat Ebgi
Body Parts I-V at ASHES ASHES
Eve Fowler at Mier Gallery
Matt Siegle at Park View
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Issue 1 August 2015

Letter from the Editor Lindsay Preston Zappas
MEAT PHYSICS/
Metaphysical L.A.
Travis Diehl
Art for Art’s Sake:
L.A. in the 1990s
Anthony Pearson
A Dialogue in Two
Synchronous Atmospheres
Erik Morse
with Alexandra Grant
SOGTFO
at François Ghebaly
Jonathan Griffin
#studio #visit
with #devin #kenny
@barnettcohen
Mateo Tannatt
Photographs
Jibade-Khalil Huffman
Slow View:
Discussion on One Work
Anna Breininger
with Julian Rogers
Reviews Pierre Huyghe
at LACMA

Mernet Larsen
at Various Small Fires

John Currin
at Gagosian, Beverly Hills

Pat O'Niell
at Cherry and Martin

A New Rhythm
at Park View

Unwatchable Scenes and
Other Unreliable Images...
at Public Fiction

Charles Gaines
at The Hammer Museum

Henry Taylor
at Blum & Poe/ Untitled
(L.A. in N.Y.)
Buy the Issue In Our Online Shop
Distribution
Central
1301 PE
Anat Ebgi (La Cienega)
Anat Ebgi (Wilshire)
Arcana Books
Artbook @ Hauser & Wirth
as-is.la
Babst Gallery
Baert Gallery
Bel Ami
Billis Williams Gallery
BLUM
Canary Test
Charlie James Gallery
Château Shatto
Chris Sharp Gallery
Cirrus Gallery
Clay ca
Commonwealth & Council
Craft Contemporary
D2 Art (Inglewood)
D2 Art (Westwood)
David Kordansky Gallery
David Zwirner
Diane Rosenstein
dublab
FOYER-LA
François Ghebaly
Gana Art Los Angeles
GAVLAK
Giovanni's Room
Hannah Hoffman Gallery
Harkawik
Harper's Gallery
Hashimoto Contemporary
Heavy Manners Library
Helen J Gallery
Human Resources
ICA LA
JOAN
Karma
LACA
LaPau Gallery
Lisson Gallery
Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
Louis Stern Fine Arts
Lowell Ryan Projects
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
M+B
MAK Center for Art and Architecture
Make Room Los Angeles
Matter Studio Gallery
Matthew Brown Los Angeles
Michael Werner Gallery
MOCA Grand Avenue
Monte Vista Projects
Morán Morán
Moskowitz Bayse
Murmurs
Nazarian / Curcio
Night Gallery
Nonaka-Hill
NOON Projects
O-Town House
OCHI
One Trick Pony
Pace
Paradise Framing
Park View / Paul Soto
Patricia Sweetow Gallery
Praz-Delavallade
Regen Projects
Reparations Club
REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater)
Roberts Projects
Royale Projects
Sean Kelly
Sebastian Gladstone
Shoshana Wayne Gallery
SHRINE
Smart Objects
SOLDES
SPRÜTH MAGERS
Steve Turner
Stroll Garden
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
The Box
The Fulcrum
The Hole
The Landing
The LODGE
The Poetic Research Bureau
The Wende Museum
Thinkspace Projects
Tierra del Sol Gallery
Tiger Strikes Astroid
Tomorrow Today
TORUS
Track 16
Tyler Park Presents
USC Fisher Museum of Art
UTA Artist Space
Various Small Fires
Village Well Books & Coffee
Webber
Wönzimer
Outside L.A.
Libraries/ Collections
Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD)
Bard College, CCS Library (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY)
Charlotte Street Foundation (Kansas City, MO)
Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI)
Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles, CA)
Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (Los Angeles, CA)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA)
Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD)
Midway Contemporary Art (Minneapolis, MN)
Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, CA)
NYS College of Ceramics at Alfred University (Alfred, NY)
Pepperdine University (Malibu, CA)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA)
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY)
University of California Irvine, Langston IMCA (Irvine, CA)
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
University of Washington (Seattle, WA)
Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN)
Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY)
Yale University Library (New Haven, CT)

Interview with Sofía Córdova

Photo: Matthew Gonzalez Kirkland.

Sofía and I met on the first day of grad school. I was sitting alone in a dark auditorium amidst a sea of other first-day students, and then, suddenly, she was next to me. There, one of my life’s great love stories began. Along with a third member of our cohort, Rebecca, we found the kind of closeness that comes when each member of a group is inventing a new self at the same time. In a photography program that was dense with students and sparse with mentors, we became one another’s teachers and comrades. When our truly great teacher, Larry Sultan, was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2009, between our first and second years of the program, and died within several months, we drew even closer to one another, holding his words and presence between us like a shared trust.How is it that we have stayed so close in the decade and a half since, living in different states, managing our work lives and our small children? One reason is Sofía’s laugh, which is wonderful. Another is that I love listening to her speak on the phone, her Puerto Rican Spanish so fast and rhythmic that it sounds like a single word, the “s” dropped from the end of each syllable. A final rationale, I think, is an affinity in our political commitments, and the way those commitments have spilled over into our creative practices. Our methods and outcomes are different—Sofía is braver when it comes to material exploration, and willing to venture further from photography—but we share a foundational belief that a different, more liberated world is possible. Somehow, it was not until this conversation that I realized just how much our curiosities overlap: in decentralized movement leadership, in the mundane moments that constitute political organizing, in centering the role of imagination as a force of both artmaking and worldbuilding. Perhaps our friendship holds not only because of our shared desires but as a form of solidarity in itself.

Sofía’s recent exhibition at JOAN—her first solo, institutional project in Los Angeles—was materially dynamic. She engaged a variety of forms: painting, drawing, video, text, ceramics, taxidermy, and light. She included two video installations from her ambitious GUILLOTINÆ WannaCry series (2019–present) along with a newly commissioned installation. At its heart, the show contended with Indigenous resistance to colonial exploitation and erasure of both people and land. But its sense of imagination was so much bigger than that neat, historiographic sentence allows. Drawing from strategies of speculative fiction, Sofía insisted upon alternate readings of both the past and the future, braiding together recorded fragments (of the Sandinistas, the Black Panthers, and the Russian Revolution) with invented scenes: dancers speak without moving their mouths, actors embody leaves and seeds. In The Wreck and Not the Story of the Wreck, as across Sofía’s work, it all felt vivid and wild and a little dangerous, as if to ask over and over, what if things were different? What if that feeling of wildness was the beginning of making them so?

Carmen Winant: Because I’m also deeply into her work, I am aware that the title of your show at JOAN is from Adrienne Rich’s 1973 poem “Diving into the Wreck”: “the thing I came for:/ the wreck and not the story of the wreck/ the thing itself and not the myth.”1 Why did you choose this specific part of this poem?

Sofía Córdova: What has always attracted me to Rich’s work is the way that she can hold the weight of political situations while holding the intricate emotional ways those same situations sit in the body. That is something that I’m always trying to do with my work. I was spending a lot of time with that book in general—Diving into the Wreck—but that phrase in that poem particularly jumped out at me because on the most basic level, on the sort of foundational seedling level of it all, it felt like it quickly elucidated what it felt like to grow up in a colony.

CW: Will you elaborate on that? You grew up in Puerto Rico and moved to the States when you were 15. So much of your practice, and life, are grounded in that experience and trajectory—not only growing up in a colony but observing how your colonial status is narrated from the perspective of the mainland.

SC: Exactly. The media-scape presents a tidy story of a colony and its collapse, most recently with the hurricane [Maria, 2017]. But that isn’t the reality of the wreckage, right? Something that I love about that poem is the idea of actually diving. There’s this idea of a diver going into a wreck underwater—I imagine darkness and a flashlight illuminating things in pieces. You never have the whole picture. I think that there’s something about my upbringing in this colony and then the [island’s] colonial status that felt like that image really resonated. The idea that we’re always getting a little bit of a picture, but that if you’re underwater living in that wreck, you know it really well, even without having to see it all. It’s more of a felt experience. From there, it became a phrase and kind of a mantra through which to look at how that foundational experience of growing up in Puerto Rico has colored how I look at everything.

CW: One of the major subjects of your work is Indigenous organizing and resistance to colonial order, with a particular focus on Cimarrónes’ resistance.2

SC: In Puerto Rico, we all grow up with this narrative of the three races—that we’re all “trigueño,” the product of Spanish, Taíno (Arawak), and African blood existing in harmony within each of us and the culture. As I came up within political circles that were actively fighting the U.S. Navy’s interventions in Vieques, for example, a sharpness started to emerge for me around that fiction. That led me to start to look at Puerto Rico and the Caribbean at large as this kind of unstable place that this narrative of colony has actually created.

So, [I began] not seeing [these histories] as a very tidy, linear, one- dimensional story, but rather an extremely complex and in some ways unknowable kind of network of positions. [It] taught me a way of being with history and politics and storytelling that is about a lack of linearity, or a lack of singular understanding. And I think that it’s important to [acknowledge that] as the door through which I enter the United States.

CW: It is so interesting how you answered that question about the impact of growing up within a colony —your response was ultimately to say that it taught something larger than a theme or a politic, something about how to read history and the uprisings that make it go.

SC: I think the moment we say we know how revolutionary struggle works is the moment we know it the least. What I’ve learned most about these processes is that, again, the way they’re historicized and taught to us is extremely simplistic. That’s why I am very invested in the future as being conversant with the past…looking at past revolution and past struggle as something that is indeterminate, as something that is messy. I’m looking at all of these positions as being part of the soup… [They offer the potential] to actually have true and kind of horizontal conversations. Otherwise we become too adherent to an idea of hierarchy.

Sofía Córdova, GUILLOTINÆ WannaCry, Yellow: Break Room (video still) (2019–21). Three-channel video with color and sound, TV stands, and ceramics, 25 minutes. Performances by Kevin Lo, alex cruse, Stephanie Hewett, and Sofía Córdova. Image courtesy of the artist and JOAN.

CW: Let’s talk more specifically about your show at JOAN. It is hard to describe neatly as it’s so materially diverse. There are multiple videos, some projected on makeshift screens and others appearing on monitors. The video work in the show contains text, audio, and dance. There are ceramics, there’s gel lighting, there are taxidermied birds, there’s graphite on canvas. You always joke with me about this, like, “I am a ceramic artist now! I am a light artist now!” But there is some truth to it, how open-ended your approaches can be.

SC: I think because photography is such an inherently technical medium, by the time I started walking away from it, I had become a very technically good photographer, right? So it was formulaic, it was mathematical. [But] I am interested in, within the art-making project, being surprised. And that surprise is really important because I think that’s where I learned the most about my own interest.

Even when I was making pictures, my research was never linear. I make [up] historical voices. I force them to talk to poetry. I needed a material engagement that could reflect that [process], which is how I started to work in video and performance. I was messing up constantly. But in every one of those errors, I was finding something new and exciting. They weren’t frustrating dead ends, but rather new openings. Maybe my medium is like…trying something new, you know?

[My practice] is never fixed. It’s in and of itself unstable. And that causes me stress sometimes, but instability is a really great place for me to work out of because again, the ideas that I’m working with do want to avoid fixity. The moment they become stuck into something, I think they become dangerous, because in the things that I’m talking about—which ultimately are liberation—I never wanna have a singular, authorial voice.

CW: Let’s talk about the two works in the show from the GUILLOTINÆ WannaCry series, Yellow: Break Room (2019–21) and Green: Savage Sauvage Salvaje (2022). Can you describe how they function? They have a deep emotional resonance, but I think it would be useful to set the stage first.

SC: These are a series of color-coded videos. Each color addresses a separate arm of this larger proposition: What are the gestational necessities for revolution? The reason that they’re color coded is because, once the series is complete, I want them to have an intuitive, synesthetic relationship to one another, rather than a chronological or linear relationship. This goes back to the idea of thinking through these processes as having organizational moments that don’t often make the annals of history—these organizational moments belong to women time, queer time, Black time, Brown time. These are the moments of meeting and struggle and discussion that again, don’t make the movie version of revolution.

CW: Color is so profound in the show. It really seeps everywhere, materially and immaterially. It is so interesting to think about it as another organizational system, and one related to how our bodies remember.

SC: I hope to open sensorial and relational pathways, to demonstrate that they are more available than we think…As Che [Guevara] famously said: “The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”3 Color is a way for me to coax emotion as a tool of collective struggle.

CW: The definition of feminism that I live by centers the role of imagination, insisting that our imperative is to believe that another world is possible, makeable. There is some element of fantasy that is necessary to world build. How do you think about the relationship of fiction to groundwork in your film Green?

SC: Green has a more straightforward relationship to color. Green as a color really speaks to the land. The colonial lens we look through is inherently tied to land, right? Particularly in relation to the Caribbean, which was a laboratory for the plantation system in the southern United States. The colonial project conflates our bodies with the land to render us extractable—a “free” resource. Green looks at the conflation of Black and Indigenous peoples as one with these other natural resources. While Yellow was extremely constructed and hermetic—a closed set—in Green, we move into the land itself. We’re so anthropocentric, so divorced from understanding the land, its methods, its seasons; Green manifests a struggle to re-tether.

CW: Can you talk a bit about building the script for Green? I am aware that it is rooted not only in the forest and the jungle, but also in the history of Indigenous and Black fugitive uprisings that happen there, in the United States and beyond.

SC: When I started working on the script, I was reading Luis M. Díaz Soler’s Historia De La Esclavitud Negra En Puerto Rico [History of Black Slavery in Puerto Rico] (1953). Again, these histories and legacies are complex and various. Our story is still narrated by European superpowers—in some sense, they still have us in a mental bind—which I think prevents organizing on a basic level.

The characters in the work are debating this position. In writing the script, I was thinking about everything from the Haitian Revolution to Captain Jack’s stronghold here in California—places where Indigenous and Black runaway fugitives were organizing against white colonial violence from within the land. The work moves forwards and backwards in time. Its references are historical and poetic; for example at one point the characters read from Alice Walker’s “Karamojans” (1968), which is the poem she wrote about a fictional African tribe as narrated by a white colonial-like framework.4 In this way, it interrogates the way that otherness is narrated by colonial powers.

CW: As we talk about the wilderness, I wonder if you could elaborate on the botanical and zoological elements in the show.

SC: Green is video that is split into three acts. In the first act, the characters each exist as non-human forms: One is a seed, one is a leaf, one is a rock. Climate change and anthropocentrism are part of this story. I consider climate change to be the direct legacy of racial capitalism, of its extractive colonial practices… I had become kind of fed up with human stories, and I was thinking about the ways that part of our problem [with] the climate crisis comes from us always seeing things through the anthropocentric vision of events.

We humans have main character syndrome; we think only of climate collapse for how it will affect us. I started thinking: What about viewing it through the lens of how it will affect anything else? A tree, a bird, a mountain? What followed were somewhat sci-fi ideas of mutation. I started thinking of mutation as another place where we can imagine liberation.

Sofía Córdova lives between Puerto Rico and Oakland and makes work that considers sci-fi as alternative history, dance music’s liberatory dimensions, and revolution. She works in performance, video, sound, and installation. Her work has been exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Tufts University Galleries, and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, among others. She is a recent recipient of an Artadia and Creative Capital Award.

This interview was originally published in Carla issue 37.

Sofía Córdova, GUILLOTINÆ WannaCry, Green: Savage Sauvage Salvaje (installation view) (2022). Video, color and black-and-white; 34 minutes and 35 seconds. Original sound composition with Matthew Gonzalez Kirkland; performances by Rashaun Mitchell, Meg Jala, and Sofía Córdova; narration by Imani Mason Jordan. JOAN, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist and JOAN. Photo: Evan Walsh.

Sofía Córdova, Green is A Solace, A Promise of Peace (where small birds hide and dodge and lift their plaintive rallying cries) (detail) (2022). Taxidermied birds (doves, parakeets, and canaries); hair dye; brass; and birch wood; dimensions variable. JOAN, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist and JOAN. Photo: Evan Walsh.

  1. Adrienne Rich, “Diving into the Wreck,” in Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), https://poets.org/poem/diving-wreck.
  2. Cimarrónes were enslaved Africans and/or African descendants who escaped the colonial empire to form free settlements, often in rugged places. See: Anthony McFarlane, “Cimarrones and Palenques: Runaways and Resistance in Colonial Colombia,” Slavery & Abolition, vol. 6, no. 3 (June 2008), 131–51, https://www.tandfonline. com/doi/abs/10.1080/01440398508574897.
  3. Che Guevara, “Socialism and man in Cuba,” in The Che Reader (Ocean Press, 2005), https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm. Originally published as “From Algiers, for Marcha. The Cuban Revolution Today, ” Marcha, March 12, 1965.
  4. Alice Walker, “Karamojans,” in Once: Poems, 1st ed. (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), https://alicewalkersgarden.com/2010/09/book-poetry-once-1968/.

Carmen Winant is an artist and the Roy Lichtenstein Chair of Studio Art at the Ohio State University. Her work utilizes installation and collage strategies to center modes of feminist exchange and social movement building, with particular emphasis on intergenerational and multiracial solidarity. She is a mother to her two sons, Carlo and Rafa, shared with her partner, Luke Stettner.

More by Carmen Winant