TATYANA FAZLALIZADEH: FINDING SOFT GROUND

The California African American Museum (CAAM) and Art + Practice(A+P) will present the exhibition Tatyana Fazlalizadeh: Finding Soft Ground at A+P in Leimert Park April 6 – August 10, 2024. 

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice considers Black image making as a site of protest, contestation, affirmation, and possibility. Finding Soft Ground, Fazlalizadeh's first exhibition at A+P, considers the conditions, precarity, and imaginative determination of safety for Black women. Utilizing A+P's three galleries, Fazlalizadeh transforms each space into distinct installations examining the street, home, and natural world in relation to terror and refuge. The works in Finding Soft Ground–which include wheat-pasted prints, oil paintings, graphite drawings, a single-channel film, and site-specific materials– are rooted in Fazlalizadeh's Black feminist theory. 

Finding Soft Ground is presented in tandem with Speaking to Falling Seeds, the artist's installation in CAAM's atrium of monumental portraits of Black Los Angeles women. Both exhibitions draw upon photographs and conversations that took place in the spring of 2023 while Fazlalizadeh was living in Los Angeles. CAAM is currently closed for repairs, but once it reopens Tatyana Fazlalizadeh: Speaking to Fallen Seeds will be on view there through August 3, 2025.

CAAM Executive Director Cameron Shaw said, "I'm pleased that we will expand our presentation of work by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, whose large-scale, wheat-pasted portraits of Black Angelenos were instantly beloved by CAAM visitors when they debuted in August 2023 on our lobby walls."

Essence Harden, who curated both exhibitions, said "Finding Soft Ground gives viewers the unique opportunity to delve deeper into Tatyana Fazlalizadeh's work across a variety of media, and contemplate how safety is presumed, built, and felt for the city's Black residents."

This exhibition is curated by Essence Harden, Visual Arts Curator, CAAM, and is co-presented by CAAM and A+P, as part of CAAM at A+P, a five-year collaboration.