Ammo Bunker (2009) is a multipart installation that includes large-scale wall prints and an architectural model. The work takes as its departure point the history of Wilmington, Ybarra’s native hometown in southern Los Angeles. The piece refers to a Civil War era ammunition store that Ybarra found at the heart of the harbor close to Long Beach. The facility was later used as a temporary prison to hold different people coming from Mexico to Los Angeles during the Civil War. The building’s walls are covered with different marks and inscriptions from that time—what Ybarra likes to call L. A.’s earliest graffiti and which today coexist with recent gang tags. By pointing out the presence of these two kinds of inscriptions in the same historical place, Ybarra furthers his investigation into the intertwining of Mexican-American and Anglo-American social and cultural histories in Southern California.
Mario Ybarra Jr. belongs to a generation of Mexican-American artists who embrace their double heritage and use it in order to create critical and compelling artistic work. Ybarra is based in Los Angeles, where he grew up, and a large part of his artistic practice has grown out of issues related to his upbringing in the Chicano community of Wilmington. He consistently explores the culture and politics of the West Coast to produce, as he says, contemporary art that is filtered through a Mexican-American experience. Ybarra is not only a multifaceted artist, but also works as an educator, gallerist, activist, and social anthropologist.
The collector is developing projects that allow her to support artists in her own unique way....
5 Singapore poems not to quote out of context | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Elliot Wong October 13, 2019 By Nabilah Said (2,500 words, 7-minute read) In 1968, Lee Kuan Yew uttered the words “Poetry is a luxury we cannot afford” to a roomful of University of Singapore students...
Visit a new exhibition shedding light on man of mystery, Martin Margiela | Dazed â¬…ï¸ Left Arrow *ï¸âƒ£ Asterisk â Star Option Sliders âœ‰ï¸ Mail Exit Fashion Round-up …plus all the other fashion news you missed this week, from a new Balenciaga video game to Robyn Lynch’s London exhibition, and Entire Studios’ Selfridges pop-up 15 December 2023 Text Dominic Cadogan Margiela: In the Void 12 Martin Margiela is as much of an enigma today as he was while at the helm of the brand – which he stepped away from in 2009...
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Satirizing an airport security checkpoint, The Ecdysiast – Molt (Body Inspection) by Yao Qingmei offers a comedic and critical inquiry into the logics underpinning collective control and surveillance culture...