Los Angeles native Huntrezz Janos has been working with virtual graphics since she was a kid. She has presented work across a spectrum of mediums: installation, painting, performance, rhyme writing, and most extensively, 3D graphics and animation. We spoke with Janos about the social justice movement, and the unexpected positive consequences of the pandemic on her work and self-expression.
Shelley Holcomb (Curate LA): So starting off, could you please tell us where you’re from and how your art career began?
Huntrezz Janos: I’m from Los Angeles. I’m half Hungarian, half African-American. I actually spent some time living in Hungary, but…
Interviewed by Devany Harden
Brianna Mims is an artist, abolitionist, and facilitator based in Los Angeles, CA. Mims is a graduate of the University of Southern California where she studied Dance and NGOs and Social Change. She currently works for Californians United for a Responsible Budget and is a Toulmin Fellow.
Some of her recent projects include Jail Bed Drop, an interactive installation and performance series exploring the intricacies of the prison system, and Letters from the Etui, a multimedia platform that hosts visual letters from incarcerated folks and workshops supporting abolitionist frameworks.
We spoke with Mims about her work…
Through paintings, installations, and performances, artist Jonah Elijah offers his audience a representational view of what it’s like to be Black today. His work explores rituals of leaving the house, fighting for freedom, and what it means to leave your mark as an artist. We sat down with the Claremont Graduate University alumni to talk about how he gives himself the freedom to play in his work, and how his practice immerses viewers into his personal experiences.
Shelley Holcomb (Curate LA): Tell me about your background, your origin story, where you’re from, how you started doing art, all of that.
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Storm Ascher is an artist and curator who founded Superposition Gallery in August 2018. Storm started her curatorial projects with a mission to subvert gentrification tactics used in urban development through art galleries. By starting a nomadic gallery model without a brick and mortar space, the gallery has continued to grow their community outreach and has drawn in exhibition participation from over 70 artists of different cultural backgrounds and multidisciplinary practices.
Ascher recently curated Celebrate Longevity, a traveling series of rotating exhibitions at Reform Club Amagansett in The Hamptons, NY and at Allbright West Hollywood, CA, to celebrate Superposition Gallery’s…
In support of the global movement towards equity and justice — as unionization movements proliferate around the world, and after a nationwide summer of unrest for Black lives and social justice — Curate LA looked to its hometown arts institutions to assess the power and influence at the very top of their operations.
UNMASK THE TOP is a report on the directive makeup of 12 Los Angeles organizations: The Broad, Craft Contemporary, J. Paul Getty Trust, Hammer Museum, Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)…
Our media landscape is inundated with alerts, graphic manifestoes and calls to action; the act of vying for our attention is arguably an art form in itself. In the sixties, when Los Angeles was ablaze with rebellion against social injustice and a rising counterculture, a former nun responded to the endemic racism and police brutality of the time with striking artworks that possessed profound resonation. Corita Kent (1918–1986) captured L.A.’s socio-political history as well as global issues about war and poverty through a prolific practice of bold, vibrant serigraphs that danced between advertising and Pop Art.
Artist Brittany Tucker grew up with a respect for portraits instilled by her mother, an artist herself. Drawing on history and her training as a studio artist, Tucker creates paintings that combine her fully-rendered self-portraits with a cartoonish, generic figure of a white man. The misrepresentation of the white figure and the realistic image of the artist make Tucker the main subject and focus of the work, while the white man is relegated to the background, almost a joke.
We spoke with Tucker about using art as a tool for personal healing, historical reflection, and saying what needs to be…
During what would have been the final days of Cross Colours: Black Fashion in the 20th Century at the California African American Museum (CAAM) - an exhibition celebrating three decades of the unapologetic Black aesthetic created by Los Angeles-based streetwear label, Cross Colors - we asked the museum’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Cameron Shaw to contribute to our latest Book Club.
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