Illuminate graphics designed by David Hernandez, Taller Para Nosotros.
Illuminate LA is a new Department of Arts and Culture initiative that sheds light on the collective and complex history and memory of LA County by exploring the County’s Civic Art Collection and public artworks across the region. With panel discussions, events, and artist engagements, Illuminate LA will uplift promising practices and examples of civic art in Los Angeles and beyond that support greater cultural equity and inclusion, and expand opportunities for diverse artists underrepresented in public art.
This Fall, Arts and Culture will launch the initiative with a three-part series of panels and arts-based civic engagements focused on Grand Park’s civic artworks, and the histories and cultural memories that are sited in and around the park campus. The events, designed and produced by cultural organizer Anuradha Vikram of Curative Projects, will examine how Grand Park’s 20th century monuments relate to 21st century Angelenos, what histories and cultural memories are not included in the physical spaces and objects of downtown Los Angeles, and create opportunities to acknowledge, honor, and recover those missing memories through site-based and artist-led projects.
Collective Memory Installation
The Collective Memory Installation was a digital exhibition of artworks reflecting on the collective history of Los Angeles County, presented by the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture in partnership with Grand Park powered by The Music Center.
Artist Reflections on Monuments and Public Space - Audio Tours
Alan Nakagawa is an interdisciplinary artist with archiving tendencies, primarily working with sound, often incorporating various media and working with communities and their histories.
Sebastian Hernandez is an LA based multi-disciplinary trans femme artist working through feminist, queer, indigenous, and gender theoretical frameworks as well as notions of collectivity to generate works that shift and complicate Mexican and Chicano narratives.
Carmen's practice is characterized by site-informed actions of forage, salvage, and spatial exploration, refracted in relation to her own body.
Isaac Michael is a descendant of the Tongva, Chumash, and Chicano nation. He describes his work as poetry from the full spectrum of artistic mediums, with the affliction to engage all five senses from his audience. He commits to telling the stories of indigenous peoples from an accurate and traditional perspective/pedagogy.
Maryam has spent her whole life getting to know Los Angeles. She is interested in the layered sites, memories, places, and histories of all people in the every day, the micro to macro, the links connections locations, the built environment, and spaces in-between.
Virtual Panel recordings
View a recording of this panel on Youtube.
View a recording of this panel on Youtube.