Pseudo-Mythologies:

Nothing is True and Everything is Alive

curated by Vickie Aravindhan

January 30 - February 21, 2021

Windows at ArtCenter DTLA

Pseudo-Mythologies: Nothing Is True and Everything Is Alive weaves together objects, relics, and images that propose alternative “truths,” exploring how mythologies can potentially be “contaminants” in our individual and borrowed histories through hybridization and subjugated knowledge. Referencing an interview between Édouard Glissant and Manthia Diawara, the exhibition brings together a multidisciplinary group of artists whose practices converge through storytelling and object making derived from varying points of historical, personal and mythological narratives.

Works list:

Artist Bios

Vickie Aravindhan (b. Singapore, 1993) is an artist, and maker based in Los Angeles. She has shown internationally including exhibitions such as, Winston Oh Travel Award Show - ICA Singapore, King For A Day (solo) - Equator Arts Projects in Singapore, Art Stage - Singapore, George Town Arts Festival in Penang, Unstretched Unframed - Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, GLAMFA - CSULB, The Lands Of - The REEF Los Angeles etc. She works with sculpture, video, installation and drawing.

Beth Fiedorek is an artist who uses allegories to examine ideas about personality and values. Her projects have appeared at venues including ArtCenter DTLA, Arts Brookfield, The Mortuary, Los Angeles Road Concerts, and Crane Arts Philadelphia. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BA from Yale University. Her studio is in Chinatown, Los Angeles.

Carolina Hicks is a second-generation Colombian artist and writer born and raised in Los Angeles. What began as zine-making practice in 2011, spilled into her current nexus of illustration, design, self-publishing, painting, sculpture, video, animation, sound, performance, and engagement. The work is in response to the overwhelming, grief-stricken enmeshment between and amongst the ecological, socio-political, cultural, mental, and identity crises occurring on Earth (from deeply private to planetary in scale).

Her research background (and divergence from) social anthropology informs the consistent impulse to connect seemingly disparate fibers of Being. A hybrid of ad hoc studio experiments and pedagogical leanings, implementing DIY + punk methodologies, she slips and swims between messy pools of low and high brow, ecology, mental health, critical theory, new media, and visual culture + media studies. She has participated in residencies at Otis College of Art and Design, CalArts, Malmö University, and most recently with the Los Angeles based project Love’s Remedies through ArtCenter DTLA. She holds a BA in Anthropology from San Francisco State University and an MFA in Art from California Institute of the Arts.

Candice Lin (b. 1979, Concord, Massachusetts) works in Altadena, California. She received her BA in Visual Arts and Art Semiotics from Brown University, in 2001, and MFA in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute, in 2004. Her practice utilizes installation, drawing, video, and living materials and processes, such as mold, mushrooms, bacteria, fermentation, and stains. Lin has had recent solo exhibitions at the Pitzer Galleries, Claremont, CA; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Art Center, Canada; Ludlow 38, New York; Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles, as well as the exhibition cycle A Hard White Body at Bétonsalon, Paris; Portikus, Frankfurt; and the Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago. Lin has been included in recent group exhibitions including the 2020 Ashkal Alwan Home Works 8 Forum, 2019 Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale, 2018 Taipei Biennale; the 2018 Athens Biennale; Made in L.A. 2018, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; New Museum, New York. She is the recipient of several residencies, grants and fellowships, including the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2019), The Artists Project Award (2018), Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2017), the Davidoff Art Residency (2018) and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2009). She is Assistant Professor of Art at UCLA and lives and works in Los Angeles.

Silvi Naçi (b.1987, Albania) is an artist and writer working between Albania and Los Angeles. Naçi works with performance, video, sculpture, photography, text, and installation. Working with traumatic memories from their childhood, collective and familial, Naçi investigates gender and cultural identity as it relates to exile, migration, the idea of the illegal body, and citizenship. Their interest lies in the subtle and violent ways decolonization and migration affects and reshapes a people, language, gender identity as well as social and cultural dynamics.

Naçi holds a dual BFA in Fine Arts and Graphic Design from Suffolk University (2011), and an MFA in Photography + Media from California Institute of the Arts (2019). They have exhibited works at Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art Project Space, NYC (2019); MAK Center, LA (2019); MoCA Geffen, LA (2019); Other Places Art Fair, LA (2019); Greater LA MFA Exhibition, LA (2019); and is a recipient of the Tim Disney Excellence in Storytelling Prize (2019) and the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Travel Grant (2018). Naçi took part in Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art (Berlin, Germany) 2019, and Elsewhere Museum and Residency (Greensboro, NC) 2019, among other residencies.

Kyungmi Shin (b. 1963, Busan, South Korea) is a sculptor based in Los Angeles, US, and Aqwidaa, Ghana. She studied Medicine at Kyungbook National University in South Korea before immigrating to the US in 1983. She studied painting at San Francisco Art Institute, and received MFA in Sculpture and Installation from UC Berkeley in 1995. She works with photography, ceramics, and mixed media sculpture in her investigation into the effects of global trades, colonialism, and religious & spiritual practices. Her works have been exhibited at Berkeley Art Museum, Sonje Art Museum (Korea), Japanese American National Art Museum (Los Angeles, CA), and Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA), and have received grants including California Community Foundation Grant, Durfee Grant, Pasadena City Individual Artist Fellowship and LA Cultural Affairs Artist in Residence Grants. She has completed over 20 public artworks, and her most recent public video sculpture was installed at the Netflix headquarters in Hollywood, CA in 2017. Her solo exhibit, “Father Crosses the Ocean” was on view at the Orange County Museum of Art recently, to be re-opened in the spring 2021.

Mar Sudac (b. 1994, New York) is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. Mar’s work centers around a critical understanding of hope. Film and video give way to other non-sequiturs, including props, costumes, toys, miniatures and playful ephemera. Mar’s work has been shown at the David Winton Bell Gallery (Providence, RI), Chicago International Film Festival (Chicago, IL), Granoff Center for the Creative Arts (Providence, RI), Sharon Disney Lund Theater (Valencia, CA), Avon Cinema (Providence, RI), Lake FX Expo (Chicago, IL), Yellow Peril Gallery (Olneyville, RI), MINT Rotterdam (Rotterdam, Netherlands), and Launch Pad Gallery (Yokohama, Japan). Mar has performed at the Hermès Le Forum and works in the day as an assistant for hire.

Amia Yokoyama is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on animation, video, installation, and sculpture who lives and works in Los Angeles. She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2017 and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2017. She has participated in exhibitions at in lieu gallery (Los Angeles), Brand Art Center (Glendale, CA), Dread Lounge (Los Angeles), Drawing Center (New York), ltd (Los Angeles) and participated in screenings at Echo Park Film Center (Los Angeles), REDCAT (Los Angeles), UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), Anthology Film Archives (New York), among many others. She has been artist in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE), Flux Factory (Queens, NY), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), Kesey Farm Project (Eugene, OR),Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency (Joshua Tree, CA), and La Fragua (Belelcazar, ES).