ONLINE: Carmen Argote's Last Light Screening and Q&A

Copresented with Clockshop

Shot during the first wave of the pandemic, the artist Carmen Argote's first film, Last Light, is a meditation on walking and memory in Los Angeles. Argote describes her walking habit as synonymous with thinking, a way of taking in and digesting the conditions of her environment. Through walking, the artist "deconstructs and reconstructs my ideas, thoughts, and self." Combining video and still images of an evacuated city with an intimate voice-over, the narrator reflects on feelings of vulnerability and betrayal, and draws on childhood memories to make sense of a city transformed. Over the course of the piece, day moves to night as the artist traces a path from demolition and sickness to envisioning a different world. (dir. Carmen Argote, 2020, color, 12 min.)

The screening is followed by a Q&A with Carmen Argote and Hammer associate curator Erin Christovale.
 

Support for this project is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Pasadena Art Alliance, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Carmen Argote (b. 1981, Guadalajara, Mexico) received her BFA and MFA from the UCLA and lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Visual Arts Center, University of Texas, Austin (2020); New Museum, New York (2019); PAOS, Guadalajara, Mexico (2019); Ballon Rouge Collective, Istanbul, Turkey (2019) and New York (2018). Argote has been featured in group exhibitions at SculptureCenter, New York (2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Ballroom Marfa (2017); and Denver Art Museum (2017). She is the recipient of the Artadia Los Angeles award (2019), Artist Community Engagement Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation (2015), and a California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2013). Argote is represented by Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles.

Clockshop believes in the power of contemporary art to connect people to the land on which they live and imagine its possible futures. It commissions new works by artists and writers, curates inclusive public programs about pressing political and environmental issues, and uses collaboration to catalyze large institutions. Clockshop brings this mission to its partnership with California State Parks on the Bowtie Project, an underused public space along the Los Angeles River that will be the next urban state park in Los Angeles.