Re-Homing Instincts Curated by Frida Cano
Olympic Campus
1639 18th St
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Homing: An animal’s inherent ability to find its way home.
Living in a place. Occupying an environment that coexists with the rest of us, which eventually becomes ourselves. How do we inhabit this place that we call home? Planet Earth is the mother of everything and everyone, but we humans have a unique way of relating to it. Repeated stories of forced displacement between tribes and animals, and the migration of birds and people from the south to north and east to west, are some of the ways how life occurs cyclically in the here and now.
The exhibition Re-Homing Instincts explores how artists become not only participants in modes of living in this place but also storytellers. Through a selection of contemporary immigrant and first-generation women artists who have strong roots in LA, the exhibition addresses how they traditionally heal their bodies by eating the geosphere itself, the emotional scars that are left after leaving one’s land of origin (Diaspora), and the mode in which immigrants find a new home when connecting with new people in these new places.
Participating Artists:
Labkhand Olfatmanesh (Iran) and Gazelle Samizay (Afghanistan)
María Adela Díaz (Guatemala)
Galia Linn (Israel) and Amanda Maciel Antunes (Brazil)
Iman Person (Jamaican-American)
Curator’s Statement
As an immigrant myself in the US, I have encountered on multiple occasions the mistreatment and misunderstanding of my own culture and the systemic powerlessness that such actions inflict. How might one heal from such pain and build empathy between cultures? I take the example of brave women who, through art, inspire generations of immigrants in the US to remain strong and to tell their stories regarding any previous misinformation prevailing in this new context. Either through shared experiences of such frailty, through the re-enacting of the crosspaths between cultures, or through the expressed and honest invitation for contributing to continue writing a new “us in here,” a portion of this web of shared wisdom will be highlighted in the exhibition entitled Re-Homing Instincts. The show will be featuring six artists from various places around the world who, in the same way as me, have chosen Los Angeles as a place to settle, making it a second home after leaving behind the land that gave us birth. Intertwined stories of displacement and re-homing will be shared and written as a way to sensitize historic misunderstandings that set people apart.—Frida Cano