MPA

Los Angeles–based artist MPA activates the work of artists Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz in conjunction with the exhibition Witch Hunt. Limited capacity.

In this series of in-gallery performances, MPA engages with her recorded performance in the pair’s video installation Telepathic Improvisation (2017) and with the audience in unexpected moments of encounter. The performances serve as a moment of celebration and reflection on Telepathic Improvisation and highlight the work’s new soundscape, which the artists created in collaboration with composer Rashad Becker for its presentation at the Hammer Museum.

MPA (b. 1980) has explored a range of meditative, durational, theatrical, and actionist modes of performance to engage "the energetic" as a potential material in live work. Enriched with ritual and theatricality, her performances and installations critically examine behaviors of power. She has posed questions about the global arms race, patriarchy as governance, life on another planet, and the dysfunctional union of art with capitalist commodity. MPA's work has been widely exhibited, including the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Whitney Museum of American Art, Hammer Museum, Stedelijk Museum, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca. A frequent collaborator, MPA is a visible muse for many contemporary photographers, painters, and filmmakers. She has been a visiting professor at the California Institute of the Arts and UCLA.