Five 18th Street Arts Center Artists Included in Hammer Museum’s 2018 Made in L.A.

Santa Monica, CA – 18th Street Arts Center, Southern California’s largest artist residency program, is thrilled to announce that 5 of its recent commissioned Artist Lab artists have been included in the 2018 Made in L.A. biennial exhibition at the Hammer Museum, curated by Anne Ellegood and Erin Christovale. The exhibition runs from June 3 through September 2, 2018.

Each of the 5 artists included in the prestigious biennial have been separately commissioned by 18th Street Arts Center to develop major bodies of new work for solo exhibitions in our main gallery space over the course of multi-month residencies. The exhibitions were curated and organized by two visionary curators at the organization; current Artistic Director Anuradha Vikram, and past Director of Residency Programs Pilar Tompkins Rivas (now Director of the Vincent Price Art Museum).

Current and future commissions:

• Carmen Argote – Argote participated in an Artist Lab residency through the end of March following her ambitious Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA performance in January, in which she examined risk-taking, artistic flow, and family relationships in the process of learning to ride a motorcycle. 
• Neha Choksi – The Bombay and Los Angeles-based artist is currently developing an Artist Lab residency with 18th Street Arts Center for Fall of 2018.

Past commissions:

• Candice Lin – Her Artist Lab residency and exhibition in summer 2015, Sycorax’s Garden, was an investigation into medicinal, healing plants, folklore, feminine myth, and witchcraft.
  
• Carolina Caycedo – As part of her Artist Lab residency and exhibition in fall 2013, Caycedo created a powerful installation and performance work titled Be Dammed about the environmental and social violence surrounding the Magdalena Dam in Colombia.
  
• Eamon Ore Giron – The sound artist and painter developed a new body of work as part of his Artist Lab residency and exhibition in fall 2012, focused around the alternate guitar tuning scale E-D-G-B-D-G unique to the Central Andes.

The presence of so many recent 18th Street Arts Center Artist Lab artists included in Made in L.A. 2018 reflects the deep engagement of our residency artists who are intimately concerned with the world around them. As the Hammer Museum’s announcement describes, what binds the artists involved is that they are “deeply engaged with vital aspects of our culture today and believe in art’s capacity to engage social discourse.” These values have been embedded in 18th Street Arts Center’s residency programs throughout its 30 year history.

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More about 18th Street Arts Center:

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2018-19, 18th Street Arts Center is the largest artist residency program in Southern California. Conceived as a think tank in the shape of an artist community, 18th Street Arts Center invites artists from around the globe to imagine, research, and develop significant, meaningful new artworks and share them with the public. They provide artists with space and time to take risks, fostering an ideal environment for artists and the public to directly engage in experiences and partnerships that foster positive social change.

Image from top left, clockwise: Carmen Argote, Candice Lin, Carolina Caycedo, Neha Choksi, and Eamon Ore-Giron