PERSIA and DADDIE$ PLA$TIK, “Google Google Apps Apps” (2013), three minutes, video on monitor
What goes West must always return East because New York is still the center of the American art market. California has gone on a cross-country road trip to New York City with the exhibition Left Coast: California Political Art. On view through May 30 at the City University of New York (CUNY) Grad Center’s James Gallery, a space across from the Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, the show speaks to a range of contemporary political realities in the Golden State. Curated by Nadiah Fellah, who began her career in the painting and sculpture department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) before heading back to get a PhD in Art History from CUNY, tellsHyperallergic that she wanted to “take up where past exhibitions that historicized the legacies of radicalism in California had left off.”
The exhibition responds to contemporary political movements and policies from the last 10 years, many of which are known for originating in California. “I was thinking [about the] immigration rights movement, Prop 8/ the anti-gay marriage bill, Occupy, education reform, and the school-to-prison pipeline,” says Fellah. The group exhibition includes work by Andrew Schoultz, the Bay Area-based mural collective Precita Eyes Mural Collective, international artist collective Futurefarmers (which was founded by San Francisco artist Amy Franceschini), Evan Bissell, Jennifer Moon, PERSIA and DADDIE$ PLA$TIK, Lari Pittman, to name just a few.
Since I did not have a chance to see the show in person from where I live in Los Angeles, I got in touch with Fellah to learn more about the California political concepts that she has been investigating in New York.
Read the full interview on Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/209043/california-artists-address-coast-to-coast-political-struggles/
