Made in L.A. 2018

Made in L.A. 2018 is the latest iteration of the Hammer’s acclaimed biennial exhibition, showcasing artists from the greater Los Angeles area. 

The exhibition’s 32 artists range in age from 29 to 97 and have contributed works that are deeply engaged with vital aspects of our contemporary culture. While there is no overarching theme, many of the artists share common interests. Several grapple with issues of representation, marginalization, and pressures placed on the body. Some artists offer interpretations of cultural practices, proposing how ancient forms of knowledge may be reimagined in the present, or reflect on the current political climate. Others consider the landscape, climate change and its repercussions, and the relationship between the land, capitalist expansion, and violence. Through drawings, paintings, sculpture, textiles, performance, video, photography, and installations—many newly commissioned expressly for Made in L.A. 2018—these artists exemplify the diverse and creative landscape of Los Angeles today.

Funded through the generosity of Los Angeles philanthropists and art collectors Jarl and Pamela Mohn, three awards totaling $150,000 will be given to artists in the exhibition. Learn more about the awards. Voting for the Public Recognition Award closes Sunday, August 19.

Made in L.A. 2018 is organized by Anne Ellegood, senior curator, and Erin Christovale, assistant curator, with MacKenzie Stevens, curatorial associate. Performances are coordinated by Vanessa Arizmendi, curatorial assistant.

Since 2009 Anne Ellegood has been the Senior Curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles where she has organized numerous exhibitions. Prior to joining the Hammer, Ellegood was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. and from 1998-2003 she was the Associate Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. She recently organized the first North American retrospective of the work of Jimmie Durham, which opened at the Hammer in January 2017, traveled to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Remai Modern in Saskatoon. Other recent solo shows she had organized include those with Kevin Beasley, Sam Falls, Charles Gaines, John Outterbridge, Pedro Reyes, Lily van der Stokker, and Judith Hopf. In 2014 she curated Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology, which examined appropriation and institutional critique in America art, and she was part of the curatorial team for the inaugural Made in L.A. in 2012. 

Erin Christovale joined the Hammer as Assistant Curator in June 2017. Previously she was an independent curator and film programmer based in Los Angeles. She is the curator of Black Radical Imagination with Amir George, which has screened both nationally and internationally in spaces such as MoMA PS1, MOCA Los Angeles, and the Museo Taller Jose Clemente Orozco. Exhibitions include a/wake in the water: Meditations on Disaster (2014) at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Memoirs of A Watermelon Woman (2016) and A Subtle Likeness (2016) at the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, S/Election: Democracy, Citizenship, Freedom (2016) at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, where she previously served as Curator, and baby boy (2017) at Transmission gallery, Glasgow.  Her curatorial projects have been mentioned in Artforum, Hyperallergic, African Arts Journal, Artsy, and she recently co-curated, with Vivian Crockett, the twenty-eighth annual Visual AIDS Day With(Out) Art, titled ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS.

Image: Neha Choksi, The Weather Inside Me (Bombay Sunset), 2007–10 (detail). Video installation with 9 DVDs played through DVD players with time code counters on old CRT color television sets, 1 photograph. Dimensions variable. Color, silent, 39:40 min. (synced loop). Courtesy the artist and Project 88, Mumbai.