Artists Pay Homage to Histories Preserved and Forgotten

LOS ANGELES — Maybe one of many best needs of artists is to make seen the invisible, to present expression to the ineffable but deeply felt realities of existence in an infinitely layered and fluctuating world. As Yet and Still to Come, at the moment on view at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles, brings collectively 4 artists who tackle this problem. Working in a number of mediums and addressing a wide range of subjects, the artists’ commonality lies of their refusal to make simply categorized works, as a substitute choosing a collective sense of complexity.

A classically skilled oil painter from China, artist Yike Zhang not too long ago shifted her focus towards textiles. In “Wang Zhu” (2023), hanging close to the gallery entrance, the artist paid homage to her grandmother, after whom the piece is called. Zhang delicately weaves a number of layers of material right into a kind that seems nearly scroll-like, combining Chinese language textual content with several types of imagery, together with a sewn-in model of a household portrait. One other artist working with reminiscence, Maddy Inez Leeser additionally takes a cue from her grandmother. The artist based mostly her fantastically glazed vessels, “Reminiscence Jug #5” and “Reminiscence Jug #7” (each 2022), on her grandmother’s spirit jars, which she collects as a method to symbolically maintain area for the household’s historical past.

Household comes up once more within the work of Liz Hernández, who usually attracts upon her Mexican heritage in her apply. For the exhibition, curator Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle selected items from the artist’s Tálisman sequence, through which Hernández created a legendary archive of her household’s religious and cultural practices. In “Luz y progreso en tu camino” (2020), which interprets loosely to “gentle and progress alongside your path,” the artist emblazoned the titular phrase on prime of a distorted mirror — showcasing the methods through which a household’s practices and philosophies each stick with members of the family and alter all through the course of their lives.

On walks round their Oakland neighborhood, artist Tracy Ren took pictures of outside altars they encountered, which turned the place to begin for “Threshold #3” and “Threshold #2” (each 2022). Ren encased these photographs of altars in meticulously crafted clay frames and added their very own drawings to create the works, basically creating shrines of shrines. Whereas in a roundabout way tied to the artist’s private historical past, like most of the exhibition’s different works, these items make seen the methods cultural custom and religious practices that may be transmitted inside communities outdoors of the household unit.

As a complete, As But and Nonetheless to Come factors to the precariousness and relentlessness of time — the best way it each preserves and forgets. The assorted nods to diasporic life and household histories and traditions handed down by way of generations congeal into an set up that means the fragmentation inherent in an archive: between the varied moments captured in a household’s photograph album lay hundreds of unrecorded occasions. The exhibition’s energy lies not within the artists capturing explicit histories, which the objects don’t do, however in honoring the all-too-human need to characterize them within the first place.

As Yet and Still to Come continues at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles (The Bendix Constructing,
1206 Maple Avenue, fifth ground, #523, Vogue District, Los Angeles) by way of June 25. The exhibition was curated by Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle.