Curated by Claudia Pretelin, PhD
Includes work by Dana Funaro, B. Neimeth, Aneesa Shami and Patricia Yossen
B. Neimeth, Beverly Hills, FL 6, 2018. Photo courtesy of the artist.
February 26 - April 30, 2022*
Gallery Hours: Thurs - Sat, 1pm - 4pm (by appointment only)
As we construct collective historical narratives from individual experiences we are also connecting place, memory, and self. Memories and their manifestations involve personal and collective experiences, sometimes becoming a form of resistance against omitted stories and historical moments. What are our instruments of memory? How do we use those instruments to memorialize our experiences? Which experiences do we memorialize? This exhibition features the work of four artists based in Los Angeles, CA whose practice explores history, memory, and placemaking in ways that are tied to the diasporic nature of their own personal identity.
*Opening Reception TBD
About Claudia Pretelin
Claudia Pretelin is a Mexican art historian, independent curator, and arts administrator based in Los Angeles, California. She holds a B.A. in communications and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her academic work has specialized in the fields of photo history and contemporary art. She has lectured in Mexico, Argentina, and the United States and her work has been published in magazines such as Alquimia, Revista de Arte y Diseño, La Palabra y El Hombre, and Terremoto. For more than ten years she worked for the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide and has also assisted & coordinated research and exhibitions in photo collections, museums, and art galleries, including Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo) and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). She currently works in the studio of renowned artist Gary Baseman. Pretelin is the Founder & Content Curator of Instruments of Memory, a site that documents conversations with women in the arts published as interviews and oral history.
WEB: www.instrumentsofmemory.com
IG: @instrumentsofmemory
About Dana Funaro
Dana Funaro is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. Her work is a meditation on the human experience and an attempt to understand our relationships to one another within the cosmos. In search of a balance between control and chance, she uses materials as metaphors to explore themes of time, memory, grief, acceptance, and healing. Loss, growth, and transformation all leave behind memories that are powerfully symbolic. Materials with these inherent qualities are intrinsic in her work.
WEB: www.danafunaro.com
IG: @dana_funaro
About B. Neimeth
B. Neimeth is a Los Angeles-based visual artist and teacher whose research examines familial and intimate relationships. Through archives, photographs, video, writing, and sound, she explores the flexibility of memory and its connection to space. She has shown internationally at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Singapore, Human Resources in Los Angeles, the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco, and ROSEGALLERY in Los Angeles. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal and reviewed in What’s on LA, Fabrik, and Lenscratch. Her work is part of the collections in the California Institute of the Arts and Yale University Libraries.
WEB: www.bneimeth.com
IG: @bneimeth
About Aneesa Shami
Aneesa Shami is an artist and researcher based in Los Angeles using recycled materials to create fiber art. Her work references the sublime and world mythologies to evoke a sense of the collective unconscious within her imagery. Shami holds Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in both Fiber and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute. She was the Textile Arts | Los Angeles AIR at Helms Design Center in 2018, and was a Fellow for the Mildred’s Lane Attention Labs: Order of the Third Bird in 2015. Shami’s work has been exhibited nationally in galleries and museums. She recently created costumes for Planet City (2020), directed by Liam Young, which was commissioned for the NGV Triennial 2020 in Melbourne, Australia. Aneesa Shami is also the co-owner and director of Studio 203, an artist-run space in Los Angeles that collaborates with artists to create exhibitions and host workshops and performances.
WEB: www.aneesashami.com
IG: @aneesashami
About Patricia Yossen
Patricia Yossen was born in the rural town of Santa Fe, Argentina. She studied education and sculpture and her life in the countryside has a profound influence on her artwork and pedagogy as an art educator. In 1996 she moved to Mexico City, where she studied techniques in stone carving and ceramics. In 2005, she moved to New York, where she worked in the education department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museo del Barrio. Yossen received an MFA in sculpture at Pratt Institute and subsequently relocated to Los Angeles, where she currently works as an art educator at Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and is a Professor at Occidental College where she leads the ColLABorate workshop. Her work as an artist has been shown at numerous galleries in Argentina, Mexico, Spain, New York, and Los Angeles.
WEB: www.patriciayossen.com
IG: @pyossen