Gala Porras-Kim, Precipitation for an Arid Landscape
Precipitation for an Arid Landscape is the first solo presentation on the East Coast of the work of Colombian-born Los Angeles-based artist Gala Porras-Kim. Grounded in specific archeological points of reference, the works consider the creation, acquisition, conservation, study, display, description, and circulation of art and cultural artifacts. Porras-Kim shows how these processes displace an object’s original functions and instead shape a different sense of history, identity, and social relations. Aware of these constructs, Gala Porras-Kim considers the lives and stories of the artifacts, raising questions about how objects speak, for whom, and for what purposes. The exhibition centers on four recent installations, three of which are new commissions: Asymptote Towards an Ambiguous Horizon (2021), Precipitation for an Arid Landscape (2021), and Leaving the Institution Through Cremation Is Easier than as a Result of a Decision Policy (2021). Joining these is Proposal for the Reconstituting of Ritual Elements for the Sun Pyramid at Teotihuacán (2019). These projects are set in dialogue with several earlier, complementary works, which establish a deeper context of the artist’s practice. Gala Porras-Kim carried out part of her research for this exhibition while being a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University (2019–2020) and as Artist in Residence at the Getty Research Institute (2020-2022). We would like to thank the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University for providing access to the archival material showcased in this exhibition. Gala Porras-Kim was born in Bogota, Colombia, and is based in Los Angeles, where she received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and an MA in Latin American Studies from UCLA. Her research-based practice focuses on the social and cultural contexts that shape how sounds, language, and history have been represented in a variety of disciplines, from linguistics to history and museum conservation. Porras-Kim’s work has been exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions over the last decade and is included in collections world-wide. In New York, her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art as well as the Brooklyn Museum. She has been the recipient of numerous grants, was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2019) and is currently artist in residence at the Getty Research Institute (2020-22). This exhibition is organized and produced by Amant in cooperation with KADIST and is curated by Ruth Estévez and Adam Kleinman. The artwork Asymptote Towards an Ambiguous Horizon (2021) was commissioned as part of Ways of Reading , a three-year KADIST initiative comprising seminars, exhibitions, and commissions, taking place across North America, curated by Adam Kleinman.