
2018 SUMMER ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE: GEOGRAPHIES OF THE INVISIBLE LINE
Davis Birks / USA / Mexico, Doris Schamp / Austria, Luciana Abait / Argentina / Los Angeles
August 20 - October 1, 2018
Artist Reception September 8, 2018
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Curated by Marisa Ciachiolo
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Sponsored by The General Consulate of Austria in Los Angeles and the Institute Vallartense of Culture, Mexico. Supported by BBAX’s partnership with the Diversity Apprenticeship Program at The Broad. Special Thanks to Annamarie Léon from The Broad’s DAP Program.
Known for its vast ethnic diversity, Los Angeles is, too, a city of dichotomies and powerful contrasts where fame and poverty cohabit and compete for the same space and attention. As such, these two realities, which may appear to be mutually exclusive on paper, have become of
importance in the art field and to local and international artists in general.
That is why this year’s program encourages its three participating artists to embrace and go beyond these two concepts to explore displacement, homelessness, national borders and the refugees’ crisis across the world.
In recent years, we have witnessed powerful driving forces like globalization shape the world in which we live and trigger the reformulation of well-established concepts that include space and the geography and the size of large cities. As a result, these forces have also shaken the art world.
When we examine the idea of space from an artistic standpoint, we must raise questions about how some of today’s representations and influences make us reconsider our notions of equality, security, absence and identity. While space is a geographic and visually tangible concept that we can clearly grasp and pinpoint, concepts like ‘borders’ usually carry both a visible and an invisible layer.
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One of this summer’s artists is Doris Schamp. For the Austrian artist, becoming a witness to LA’s widespread homeless crisis is like a journey down memory line and back to Vienna, her hometown Each encounter with a homeless person in LA is an opportunity to revive and bring to life that person’s life-story in her artwork.
Another participating artist is Argentinean Luciana Abait, who presents “Off the Map,” a project that captures the essence of displacement, experienced by people who leave behind their lives, roots and hometown and struggle to find a new place they can call “home” and for a renewed sense of identity.
Though he is based in Mexico, American artist Davis Birks delves into the refugees’ crisis in “Uprooted,” an installation that represents with plants the struggle faced by innocent civilians forced to leave their homes to protect themselves and their loved ones in areas of armed conflict. The piece also speaks to how governments’ policies may limit asylum options for those afflicted.

