Public Walkthrough of Some Reach While Others Clap
01.18.20 / 12:00pm
The walkthrough is free and open to the public. No advanced RSVP is needed.
The interdisciplinary art collective Postcommodity functions as a shared Indigenous lens through which to examine and respond to the ongoing narrative of colonialism. It is a narrative of displacement, migration, labor, labor struggles, and gentrification. In short, it is a narrative of have and have-not that unfolds on the Southern border, the factory floor, the reservation, and the neighborhoods of our multiracial, multiethnic urban centers. Hardly a thing of the past, colonialism is a turf war that is still in effect. To address colonialism's historical sweep and morphology, Postcommodity engages culture from the ancient to the future. In this instance, their sites are set on the lowrider.
All be they mobile, lowriders are Indigenous American sovereign spaces. They are wholly customized (read self-determined) forms of expression. As engineering marvels, they represent a form of technical knowledge that is broadcast visually and sonically. At LAXART, Postcommodity will call upon this history to create a newly commissioned work titled, "Some People Reach While Others Clap." For this work, the collective will focus on the support beams of the gallery as a metaphor for acknowledging Indigenous Americans as the historical and current foundation of Los Angeles. Postcommodity collaborates with the Starlite Rod & Kustom—a custom and restoration shop that caters to pre-1970's, American-made cars, located in Torrance, CA—and its network of lowrider builders, painters, pragmatists, and visionaries to transform the gallery and its structural I-beams into an Indigenous American space. A space of artistic autonomy will be recast as one of cultural self-determination and sovereignty in which the indigenous foundations may be unearthed, its codices re-activated, and new contexts of tribal affiliation rendered legible; these contexts investigate history, cultural agency, and prophecy.
Postcommodity are the recipients of grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2010), Creative Capital (2012), Art Matters (2013), Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (2014), among others. The collective has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: Nuit Blanche, Toronto, CA; 18th Biennale of Sydney in Sydney, AUS; 2017 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; Art in General, New York, NY; documenta 14, Athens, GR and Kassel, DE.
Lead support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Major support provided by the City of West Hollywood and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.