(Los Angeles, USA)
From October 10, 2021, until January 9, 2022, The Hammer Museum presents sixteen critically acclaimed artists, including Laura Lima, that employ feminist, queer, and decolonial strategies to explore gender, power, and the global impacts of patriarchy.
Witch Hunt brings together the work of 16 midcareer women artists from 13 countries, who use feminist, queer, and decolonial strategies to investigate current and historical political events, social conditions, and overlooked or suppressed artistic legacies. The artists have demonstrated decades-long commitments to feminist creative practice as a subversive, expansive, and oftentimes collaborative methodology. Together their works provide an opportunity to examine ideas, expand awareness, and encourage dialogue about urgent contemporary issues, such as the body and its vulnerabilities; women’s rights and representation; the erasure of women’s contributions to critical movements and histories; the impact of technologies of surveillance; environmental justice; the queering of political discourse; the imperative for feminist practice to be inclusive and intersectional; and the power of collective action.
Yael Bartana: “What if Women Ruled the World?”, 2017, performance view, FIlmby Aarhus, European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017, Denmark. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Brigit Kaulfuss.
The 15 projects in Witch Hunt employ a variety of mediums—painting, sculpture, video, photography, sound, and performance—and consistently argue for the value of a critical feminist perspective within the subject matter, production, and presentation of contemporary art. Witch Hunt asks how artistic practices informed by feminist ideologies can meaningfully amplify debates within contemporary culture and politics. The projects in the exhibition constitute an art of resistance, disrupting cultural discourse and proposing new ways of thinking and enacting change at a moment of unprecedented suffering and upheaval across the globe.
Witch Hunt offers an incisive survey of complex and impactful practices by some of the most influential artists working today and includes newly commissioned works as well as major projects that have yet to be shown on the West Coast or in the United States. Witch Hunt marks the Los Angeles museum debut of Leonor Antunes, Shu Lea Cheang, Minerva Cuevas, Bouchra Khalili, Laura Lima, Otobong Nkanga, and Okwui Okpokwasili.
Laura Lima: “Alfaiataria” (Tailor Shop), 2014–2021, mixed media, variable dimensions. Installation view, Pinacoteca Octágono, São Paulo, Brazil, 2018. Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles and New York; A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro; and Luisa Strina, São Paulo. Photo: Isabelle Matheus
“Witch Hunt”, group show featuring Laura Lima
From October 10, 2021, until January 9, 2022
The Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024, United States
Visiting Hours: Monday: Closed; Tuesday–Sunday: 11 AM–6 PM