I FELT LIKE I was artfairing for the very first time. Was it always this distracting, so disorienting? The return of FOMO is particularly weird. Between the Super Bowl and the Oscars, Los Angeles had its first major art week since February 2020. Though centered around the Frieze Art Fair in Beverly Hills, the pageantry also included the Felix Art Fair at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, Spring Break (an artist-directed fairish thing) in Culver City, and about a million parties and openings, dinners, launches, screenings, and talks.For some, the week began at the beloved artist Kaari Upson’s
‘There must be two Americas,’ wrote Mark Twain in 1901. ‘[O]ne that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land.’ The quote is from Twain’s essay, ‘To the Person Sitting in Darkness’, in which the writer condemns Western imperialism in southeast Asia. The artist Stephanie Syjuco borrowed Twain’s title for her 2019 work: a flag for the then-US territory of the Philippines as described by Twain, resembling the American design but with ‘white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones’. –
Ben Sakoguchi s Chinatown’ Charts a History of Anti-Asian Hate
At Bel Ami, Los Angeles, the artist’s paintings take a satirical look at the grisly history of American bigotry against US Asian populations
In 1938, the year Ben Sakoguchi was born, New Chinatown opened in Los Angeles. The old Chinatown, just a few blocks south, had been wiped clean, replaced by the rails of Union Station. A bronze plaque in Chinatown Central Plaza says as much, surrounded by burbling fountains and bauble shops, all crowned with faux-tiled roofs accented in garish colours conceived by Hollywood set designers. What no plaque will mention, though, is why Chinatown moved; why, in true LA style, the city started over.
Celebrate artists of color: Shattered Glass at Jeffrey Deitch gallery, Chinatown at Bel Ami gallery kcrw.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from kcrw.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.