The Collective Arts Incubator
1200 North Avenue 54
Los Angeles CA 90042
presents
Duty of Care
Political and social abuses of power dehumanize and efface disenfranchised people through avarice actions, thereby robbing them of hope and ultimately pacifying their resistance. Despite the odds, some soldier on. There are organizations that fight for social justice, authors who dare to dissent, and artists who create works that affirm humanity and rouse our burdened spirit. It is at this juncture where the artworks in Duty of Care exist, querying rather than resolving prevailing practices.
Max King Cap (USA), Edgar Endress (Chile) and Nuttaphol Ma (Thailand/USA) in Duty of Care document, enact, and embody our responsibilities and failings. Their activism-inspired works in this exhibition continue our ongoing conversation on the role art should play in society.
In his “Tyrants” series, Cap inhabits megalomania through a series of self-portraits as dictators, asking the viewer, “What would you do with unlimited power?” He asked himself this question and become ashamed of the answer. What lies underneath Endress’s series of portraits in The Mask of the Shoeshiner were once young Bolivian professionals who, after a financial collapse due to international speculation, took any sort of job to make ends meet. One of those jobs was that of a shoeshiner wearing masks so that the shame of their social diminishment might remain hidden. With an ascetic’s devotion, Ma’s durational performance of a sweatshop of one entitled “The China Outpost” embodies the struggles of the unknown laborers which he draws from his own experiences at his retail day job of thirteen years. Within his outpost, Ma embeds an ecological coda as he transforms plastic bags into threads, amassing them to one day use to reconstruct his ancestral house. Relics from The China Outpost (2010-present) provides a chronicle of objects, text and images that has resulted from Ma’s self-imposed sweatshop.
This exhibition is curated by Ciara Ennis and Jennifer Vanderpool.
Time: Sat 14 Oct 2017 – Friday 24 Nov 2017
Opening Reception / Artist Talk: Sat 14 Oct . 6-8p
Gallery Hours: by appointment only
Contact: Max King Cap
Phone: 323.314.9856
Link: Collective Arts Incubator – Duty of Care
Advertisements
La Maison du Bonheur