ON PROCESS: A Conversation About Collaboration
Over the course of the exhibition, I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe, ICA LA presented IN PROCESS—a series of collaborative actions realized by artist Carmen Argote with invited collaborators that allowed the exhibition, much like Argote’s own work, to evolve over time. Featured collaborators included Young Chung, director of Commonwealth and Council; Daniela Lieja Quintanar, curator and researcher; Mary McGuire, art historian; Cēdric Tai, artist and educator; and Carmen Vargas, the artist’s mother.
Join us in the last days of the exhibition for a final program and conversation reflecting on process and collaboration. The discussion will touch upon how collaboration informed the creation of, and care for, the exhibition over the last four months and speak to ideas of mothering, maintenance, intimacy, and learning as they relate to the collaborative process.
Carmen Argote (b. 1981, Guadalajara, Mexico; lives and works in Los Angeles) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work often points to the body, class, and economic structures in relation to architecture and personal history. She received her MFA in 2007 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she also received her BFA in 2004. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2022); Primary, Nottingham (2021); Clockshop, Los Angeles (2020); New Museum, New York (2019); and PAOS GDL, Guadalajara (2019). Argote has been featured in group exhibitions at MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2021); SculptureCenter, New York (2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2017); and Ballroom Marfa (2017). She is the recipient of the Fellows of Contemporary Art Award (2020); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2019); Artadia Los Angeles award (2019); an Artist Community Engagement Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation (2015); and a California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2013). Argote’s work is in the collections of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Argote is represented by Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, and is co-chair of the Artist Advisory Council at Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Daniela Lieja Quintanar is a curator and researcher originally from Mexico City. Her curatorial practice takes inspiration from everyday life, spaces of political struggle, and communal forms of knowledge production. She is the Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Programs at REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater. Recently, she curated Lisa Alvarado: Pulse Meridian Foliation for REDCAT. From 2016-2022, Lieja Quintanar served as the Chief Curator and Director of Programming at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Some of her exhibitions at LACE included Intergalactix: against isolation/contra el aislamiento (2021), CAVERNOUS: Young Joon Kwak & Mutant Salon (2018) and Emory Douglas: Bold Visual Language (2018, co-curated with Essence Harden). In 2016, she coordinated Teresa Margolles’s La Sombra project for the Public Art Biennial CURRENT: LA Water. Lieja Quintanar was part of the curatorial team of the MexiCali Biennial (2018-19) and curatorial contributor to the PST: LA/LA exhibition, Below the Underground: Renegade Art and Action in 1990s Mexico at the Armory Center for the Arts (2017-18). In 2018, she was awarded the Andy Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Grant. Lieja Quintanar has been part of the Los Angeles Tenants Union since its foundation, collaborating with the East Side local/Union de Vecinos.
Cēdric Tai (Un-disciplinary Artist, Educator, Friend, Neuroqueer, ADHD/Autistic, Filipino/HongKongChinese-American) thinks through sculpture, talking, writing, performance and experimental exhibitions. They’ve partnered with neuroscientists, academics from critical psychiatry, artist collectives, disability justice influencers, and somatic therapists to co-create art and accessible resources where mental health meets anti-capitalist solidarity.
Young Chung is an artist as well as the founder and director of Commonwealth and Council, a gallery in Koreatown, Los Angeles. Through Commonwealth and Council, Young Chung continues to learn and grow together with Carmen Argote.
Mary McGuire is Professor of Art History at Mt. San Antonio College where she teaches courses in modern and contemporary art. She has written articles, curated exhibitions, and given talks on subjects including modern dance, feminist performance, and queer spiritualities. Her current manuscript project, Social and Spiritual Movement in Art: The Judson Arts Program and the Long 1960s, situates New York City’s Judson Church as a nexus of art, religion, and social movements. She recently began hosting a series of salons with Los Angeles-based artists, the first of which featured an action by Carmen Argote.
Carmen Vargas (b. 1953 Guadalajara Jalisco, Mexico; lives and works in the Los Angeles area) is a mixed media artist currently based in the Los Angeles area, with over 25 years of experience in fashion, arts administration, and arts education working at institutions such as Plaza de la Raza, Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Ontario Museum of History and Art, and the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach.