February 23 – May 18, 2025
On view at various locations, see schedule below for details

About the Project

2024 Mohn LAND grantee Carlos Agredano’s Fume is a nomadic sculpture that monitors and collects ambient air quality data as it roams, creating hyper-local information about environmental impact to freeway-adjacent communities in Los Angeles.

The sculpture, mounted to a trailer and attached to the artist’s truck, will visit thirteen freeway-adjacent public sites throughout a three-month period to collect air quality samples. The sculpture will be open to the public during one-day long installations at public parks and open areas that border these freeways, during which Agredano will organize conversations and activations with other artists who have a personal relationship to the nearby communities.

Fume furthers Agredano’s ongoing interest in air quality relative to the communities it affects the most, and in the ramifications of urban planning that has unequally distributed environmental pollution across the region. The artist offers a blueprint in imagining a future that centers scientific methods, and environmentally focused creating and thinking. His investigations point out the irony of urban planning initiatives, which are often steeped in utopian ideals yet ultimately destructive in their results. Loosely inspired by Senga Nengudi’s 1978 performance Ceremony for Freeway Fets, Agredano’s project similarly adopts Nengudi’s community-building ethos and desire to draw attention to the ubiquitous but under-considered aspects of the urban landscape.

The sculpture’s form draws from the motifs of Googie architecture, as well as the industrial design of the freeways themselves. Specifically, Agredano’s sculpture references the Theme Building at LAX, designed by Pereira & Luckman in 1959. Three air quality monitors will reside within an aluminum enclosure that mimics the design of the breeze blocks that circle the Theme Building. Agredano has also invited the artists participating in the project to contribute to the sculpture throughout its run by adding their own work to the bed of the truck and atop the trailer platform.

In addition to the air sensing equipment powered by solar array, the sculpture will incorporate an EPA air quality flag, the color of which will correspond to the air quality of each site (Agredano installs these flags at every site where his work is exhibited as part of an ongoing project).

Schedule

On Mondays during the run of the project, Fume will be collecting air samples in neighborhoods that border freeways. At these sites, Agredano will organize informal conversations and activations with other artists who have a personal relationship to the nearby communities.

In addition, every Tuesday through Saturday from 11am-6pm, Fume will be located in the parking lot of gallery François Ghebaly, located at 2276 E. 16th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021.

Monday, March 3, 2025
12-3PM
Joined by Hunter Baoengstrum
2 Freeway
Map coordinates: 34.0805460, -118.2919098

Monday, March 10, 2025
12-3PM
Joined by Daid Roy
10 Freeway
Map coordinates: 34.037294, -118.272668

Monday, March 17, 2025
12-3PM
Joined by Angela Nguyen
91 Freeway
Map coordinates: 33.869575, -118.055837

Monday, March 31, 2025
12-3pm
Joined by Chris Suarez
710 Freeway
Map coordinates: 33.768081, -118.210297

Additional dates forthcoming.

Events

Fume is organized by Bryan Barcena and Irina Gusin, LAND Curators-at-Large.

This project is funded through the Mohn LAND Grants established by Pamela and Jarl Mohn. The initiative provides Los Angeles-based artists resources and support to present site-responsive, transdisciplinary work across Los Angeles County.

LAND’s 2025 projects are made possible with lead annual support from the Offield Family Foundation, the Jerry and Terri Kohl Family Foundation, and The Perenchio Foundation, with generous annual funding by the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation, Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation, Ben Weyerhaeuser, and LAND’s Nomadic Council. Additional support provided by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture, Karen Hillenburg, Liana Krupp, Brenda Potter, and Berry Stein.

LAND is a member of and supported by the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition.

LAND is a member-supported organization. Keep LAND’s projects and programs free for all by becoming a member today.

December 22, 2024 – April 6, 2025
Every Sunday from 2-4 PM

Albion Riverside Park
1739 Albion St
Los Angeles, CA 90031

About the Project

Field Permits by artist Vincent Enrique Hernandez, organized and presented by Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), is a work of civic institutional critique taking place over sixteen successive Sundays on a soccer field at Albion Riverside Park in Lincoln Heights. 

Every Sunday between December 22, 2024 through April 6, 2025, and from 2 to 4 pm, Hernandez will invite the public to access a soccer field, and engage with it as they see fit. Hernandez, born and raised in Los Angeles, and an avid amateur soccer player, has a deep interest in the ways that public space is mediated by city organizations, which often create unnecessary burdens and hurdles that prevent communities from accessing, and utilizing recreational third spaces in their own neighborhoods.

Ordinarily, the “public” soccer fields operated by the city of Los Angeles are only available for use through a permitting system and require the payment of a fee and the obtainment of liability insurance to be booked for play. As such, these spaces are kept under lock and key unless the permit is obtained. Hernandez’s is a quiet but consequential gesture–one that literally opens the gates to any community members who might otherwise not be able to use these facilities.

In conceiving Field Permits, Hernandez reflected on how communities navigate the bureaucracy associated with public spaces. For the artist, a locked gate sends a message about usage, access, and permission, whereas the opportunity for play is a catalyst for connection, and growth, and a type of collaboration with strangers. In addition, Hernandez will inform the community of the availability of the soccer field for free play through posters and other materials that showcase his training as a sign painter, and which will respond to the architectural and design elements of the area. 

Throughout his practice, Hernandez focuses on the intersections between daily life and art and the ways that art may function outside of conventional art spaces, specifically as it relates to community, narrative, tradition, and local history. For the past several years, the artist has been working on a collection of artworks related to the San Fernando Valley and the region’s relationship to Los Angeles narrative, including an artwork that is a five-hour tour of the Valley, and was featured in the Hammer Museum’s 2023 “Made in LA” exhibition. Hernandez is particularly interested in the performative potential for artworks to be encountered in non-traditional art spaces and considers the instance in which the public encounters and engages with his works as the moment of the artwork’s completion.

Field Permits is funded through the Mohn LAND Grants, which were introduced in 2023 as a new and ambitious initiative to invest in emerging Los Angeles artists by providing them with a platform to present site-responsive, transdisciplinary work across Los Angeles County. The program was developed in collaboration with art collectors and philanthropists Pamela and Jarl Mohn.

Events

Vincent Enrique Hernandez (b. 1998, Los Angeles) is an artist working in Los Angeles whose practice engages with history, monuments, localism, and community by appropriating narratives related to regional culture. Hernandez’s work is grounded in numerous research processes: deep internet dives, picking apart articles, archives, advertisements, visiting libraries, and casual conversation. He is drawn to stories and storytelling as a method and subject, and feels that maintaining oral traditions is a central tenet to his practice, and specifically focuses on these as the catalyst for the construction of local mythologies.

Field Permits is organized by Bryan Barcena and Irina Gusin, LAND curators-at-large.

This project is funded through the Mohn LAND Grants established by Pamela and Jarl Mohn. The initiative provides Los Angeles-based artists resources and support to present site-responsive, transdisciplinary work across Los Angeles County.

LAND’s 2024 exhibitions are made possible with lead support from the Offield Family Foundation, the Jerry and Terri Kohl Family Foundation, and The Perenchio Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation, Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture, the LA Arts Recovery Fund, Brenda Potter, and LAND’s Nomadic Council. Special thanks to Artist Sponsors: Karen Hillenburg, Liana Krupp, and Ben Weyerhaeuser.

LAND is a member of and supported by the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition.

LAND is a member-supported organization. Keep LAND programs free for all by becoming a member today.

Ongoing

Los Angeles County Hall of Records
320 W Temple St
Los Angeles, CA 90012

About the Project

Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa) creates sculptural paintings suggestive of maps or landscapes by utilizing natural and industrial materials, such as sinew, bark, AstroTurf, and acrylic paint. Wenot means the LA River in the Kizh language. Her artwork for the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning loosely resembles a map of the county. Baker highlights natural features—the LA River, San Gabriel Mountains, and the Pacific Ocean—and blends them with materials, colors, and forms that reflect the First Peoples of this region, whose descendants are still here and who protect and preserve these lands and waters.

Under the guidance of ethnobotanist Matt Teutimez (Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians – Kizh Nation), Baker incorporated plants traditionally used for food and medicine by local Indigenous Peoples, including acorns, mulefat, elderberry, and willow twigs from the San Joaquin Marsh. She wove them into AstroTurf to create a composition that embodies the First Peoples without directly depicting them. The artist prompts viewers to contemplate how identities and histories can be represented directly and indirectly.

Commissioned by the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture and installed at the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning offices at the Los Angeles County Hall of Records in Downtown Los Angeles, the artwork is on permanent view. The offices located on the 13th floor are open to the public. Also on view on the same floor is a commission by  Felix Quintana produced by LAND.

About the Artist

Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa, b. 1985) currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Through a mixed media practice combining artificial and natural materials, Teresa Baker creates abstracted landscapes that explore vast space, and how we move, see, and explore within them. The materials, texture, shapes, and color relationships are guided by Baker’s Mandan/Hidatsa culture to explore how identity can relate to innate objects.

She has had recent solo exhibitions at Broadway Gallery, NY; The Arts Club of Chicago, IL; de boer, Los Angeles, CA; The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ; Halsey McKay, East Hampton, NY; and Pied-à-terre, San Francisco, CA. Recent group exhibitions include Prospect. 6 Triennial, New Orleans, LA,; The Wattis Institute, San Francisco, CA; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Nerman Museum, Overland Park, KS; and Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX. Baker is a 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellow, and was an artist-in-residence at Fogo Island Arts in Newfoundland in 2022. She was the 2020 Native American fellow at the Ucross Foundation in Ucross, WY, and was a Tournesol Award artist-in-residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA. Baker received a BA from Fordham University in 2008 and an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2013.

Ongoing

Los Angeles County Hall of Records
320 W Temple St
Los Angeles, CA 90012

About the Project

Felix Quintana’s artworks are densely layered collages that depict the people and urban landscapes of Los Angeles County. Having grown up in Lynwood, he draws inspiration from locations connected to his personal history, looking to East, Southeast, and Central Los Angeles to celebrate the County’s diverse communities.

This artwork is a combination of over fifty layers of photos from the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning archives, personal documentation, and portraits of community members who attended workshops held by Quintana across the County. The artist printed each element onto cyanotype-treated paper—which gives the final image its signature blue coloring and grainy texture—and then scanned each handmade print to create a digital collage. La sal de la tierra (The Salt of the Earth) is a representation of the people and places of Los Angeles, both past and present. Through the signs, maps, aerial views, city streets, graffiti, and architecture juxtaposed with the faces of Angelenos, Quintana has created a portrait of Los Angeles County.

Commissioned by the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture and installed at the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning offices at the Los Angeles County Hall of Records in Downtown Los Angeles, the artwork is on permanent view. The offices located on the 13th floor are open to the public. Also on view on the same floor is a commission by Teresa Baker produced by LAND.

About the Artist

Felix Quintana (b. 1991, Lynwood, CA)  is a Salvadoran-American visual artist and educator. Quintana’s art practice spans photography, digital media, collage, and installation. Quintana received his MFA in Photography from San Jose State University and BA from California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt. Solo exhibitions include Donde Nace El Agua at Wende Museum, Fantasma Paraiso presented by Los Angeles Nomadic Division, and Cruising Below Sunset at Residency Art.

Select group exhibitions include Vincent Price Art Museum, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Chinese Culture Center San Francisco, and Center for Photography Woodstock, among others. Awards include California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Arts, Lucas Artist Fellowship at Montalvo Art Center, Mohn LAND Grant by Los Angeles Nomadic Division, and LACE Lightning Fund Grant. His work is included in the public collections of Oakland Museum of California, Altamed Art Collection, and Los Angeles Civic Art Collection.

Quintana lives, works, and teaches in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Nomadic Division is pleased to announce the four artists selected to receive 2024 Mohn Land Grants: Carlos Agredano, Lizette Hernandez, Vincent Enrique Hernandez and Daid Roy. 

Mohn LAND Grants were introduced in 2023 as a new and ambitious initiative to invest in emerging Los Angeles artists by providing them with a platform to present site-responsive, transdisciplinary work across Los Angeles County. The program was developed in collaboration with art collectors and philanthropists Pamela and Jarl Mohn. For its second year, the Mohn family has increased their support to realize new work at sites across Los Angeles.

Artists were selected by a curatorial committee at LAND—comprised of director Laura Hyatt, and curators-at-large Bryan Barcena and Irina Gusin—and based on a criteria of artistic excellence, a depth of community engagement, and the potential of the support to elevate each artist’s career and overall practice. 

According to the curatorial team “this year’s cohort of Mohn LAND Grantees were selected because their methodologies represent new ways of working through conceptual and aesthetic concerns, while also creating profound connections to the city around them.

There is a hopeful aspect to these proposals, a radical grafting of artistic consideration onto existing habits and routines, and one that suggests an expanded conception of what defines the role of the artist. This will be reflected in the siting of these works, as these projects look to locations already familiar to these artists, such as soccer fields, public parks and freeway underpasses for intervention. Moreover, the proposed projects engage with LAND’s mission, one that facilitates the creation of site-responsive artworks available free of charge and open to the public.”

2024 Mohn LAND Grant Recipients

Carlos Agredano (b. 1998, Los Angeles, CA) uses readymade and process-based artworks to address the inequalities produced by discriminatory urban planning and environmental racism. In his research practice, Agredano interrogates how policies like redlining and private racially restrictive covenants enabled freeway construction and manufactured air pollution disparities in racially diverse, low-income neighborhoods. His artworks visually reveal the often-subtle effects of urban disparity across Los Angeles. These take the form of paintings that record the cumulative buildup of pollutants and smog on their surfaces, or as found objects such as dust-caked window air conditioners, and sun-faded umbrellas used by street vendors.

Lizette Hernandez (b. 1992 in Los Angeles, California) is a first-generation Mexican-American artist primarily working in sculpture. Through a collaboration with clay, she is led by listening to the landscape and investigates expressions of inheritance and regeneration. Hernández explores concepts around “the sacred” and the ideology of deep ecology by highlighting the intersections of floral anatomies, religious iconography and ritual practices of remembrance. Her process welcomes experimentation by use of plant matter with Raku firing and fusing other elements such as recycled glass.

Vincent Enrique Hernandez (b. 1998, Los Angeles) is an artist working in Los Angeles whose practice engages with history, monuments, localism, and community by appropriating narratives related to regional culture. Hernandez’s work is grounded in numerous research processes: deep internet dives, picking apart articles, archives, advertisements, visiting libraries, and casual conversation. He is drawn to stories and storytelling as a method and subject, and feels that maintaining oral traditions is a central tenet to his practice, and specifically focuses on these as the catalyst for the construction of local mythologies.

Daid Roy a.k.a. Daid Puppypaws (b. 1986, Los Angeles, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator working in sculpture, photography, video, music, technology, and performance. Roy is guided by the belief that art is a practice of freedom that should never be estranged from everyday life. Indeed, their practice is often difficult to distinguish from the kinds of labor we associate with that of a scientist, researcher, hobbyist, or even auto mechanic. The form of Roy’s sculpture are functional, high-powered model rockets, which the artist constructs, presents as artworks, and launches. In 2016, Roy began their BLACKNASA project, that aims to “reclaim the power of technology as a tool for good – rockets for peaceful purposes only.” BLACKNASA’s mission statement is as follows: “To conduct rocket science, both technical and social; To promote the Seven Noble Ideals of Human Space Exploration: Creativity, Challenge, Courage, Ingenuity, Perseverance, Unity, and Discovery”. This multidisciplinary project reorients the education and dissemination of information regarding space exploration, rocketry, and technology towards peaceful aims. Under the aegis of BLACKNASA, Roy also composes experimental music, and holds educational workshops.

LAND presents a citywide installation of Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS®​, a conceptual news program taking the form of a two-channel installation connected to a newscast that blurs the lines between art, reporting, entrepreneurship, and cultural critique. ​BLKNWS®​ is currently broadcast at sites across Los Angeles, with a focus on South Los Angeles and black-owned businesses. This iteration of ​BLKNWS® ​aims to bring the work to its largest audience yet, reaching people in their everyday environments.

Participating Sites: Patria Coffee Roasters,  Hank’s Mini Market,  Bloom & Plume Coffee,  Natraliart Jamaican Restaurant, Total Luxury Spa, UNION,  Go Get Em Tiger, and Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen (View Park Location).

Previous sites included: Sole Folks, St. John’s Well Child & Family Center Clinic, Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Touched By An Angel / SON., Hollywood Bureau, Underground Museum, and the Hammer Museum.

See Google Map below for sites. We recommend checking the site’s website before visiting for most current hours and visiting instructions.

This citywide presentation was originally commissioned as part of the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA 2020: a version, curated by Myriam Ben-Salah and Lauren Mackler.

ABOUT BLKNWS

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Kahlil Joseph was born in 1981 in Seattle. Early on, he earned his spurs working for the photographer Melodie McDaniel and the movie director Terrence Malick. Joseph creates films and video installations that disrupt linear narratives with a particular treatment of music, used both as a material and as a model of lyricism and complexity. Joseph’s practice scrambles the conventional approach to and understanding of video: his films quote the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky and Chris Marker and feature pop culture icons and underground heroes alike. Joseph’s current focus is the ongoing project BLKNWS®, an artwork and functioning business established as a way to redefine how Black culture is experienced, viewed, and communicated. BLKNWS® starts from the postulate that anything can be “news” that is new to someone. Originally conceived as a television program, it presents an uninterrupted—though highly edited—stream of images focusing on African American life, including YouTube videos, amateur film footage, internet memes, Instagram stories, and actual news clips. The work operates through a network of highly skilled editors and fugitive journalists—constantly updating the stream—whom Joseph hires and supports, forming a sort of BLKNWS® academy that reflects his interest in community-driven process. Joseph’s work with BLKNWS® was included in May You Live in Interesting Times at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019) and in the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, Geneva (2018). His short film Fly Paper debuted as part of his 2017 solo exhibition at the New Museum, New York. Other exhibitions include those at Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, Netherlands (2017); Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2016); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2015). Joseph currently serves as the creative director of the Underground Museum alongside his family, carrying out the vision of his brother, the late Noah Davis.

Los Angeles State Historic Park
1245 N Spring St
Los Angeles, CA 90012

LAND commissioned Los Angeles-based artist Anna Sew Hoy to create the large-scale, bronze public sculpture Psychic Body Grotto at the 32 acre Los Angeles State Historic Park. Drawing on the artist’s previous explorations of materiality, spirituality and the relationships we forge with everyday objects, this is Sew Hoy’s most ambitious sculpture to date.

Psychic Body Grotto is a room-sized bronze sculpture or “figurative gazebo” for meetings and rituals that have yet to be invented. The sculpture evokes the illusion of being organically generated from the earth, creating a locus for contemplation and relaxation amidst the buzzing city-scape of Los Angeles.

Working in conjunction with the efforts of California State Parks to revitalize and create new spaces for cultural and civic dialogue, activity, leisure, and engagement, Psychic Body Grotto functions as an interactive work of public art, landscape design, and gathering spot for local residents and visitors of the park.

Previous Programming

Opening Reception
Sunday, May 21, 2017
4pm – 7pm

Anna Sew Hoy and LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) celebrated the opening of Psychic Body Grotto on Sunday. The free public opening event included artist activations by Ethernet (Benjamin Boatright and Dylan Mira), Cirilo Domine & Tala Mateo, Corey Fogel, and LA Fog at the sculpture. Corey Fogel turned Psychic Body Grotto into an instrument with an array of other percussive units. Cirilo Domine & Tala Mateo live wrote a text at their desk relocated near the sculpture. LA Fog presented a traditional acoustic performance of their music.

John Tain and Carol Cheh from KCHUNG radio broadcast live during the performances, recording the music, sounds and interviews with the artists.

SIGNIFICANT SUPPORT FOR THIS EXHIBITION IS PROVIDED BY:

CREATIVE CAPITAL

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR THIS EXHIBITION IS PROVIDED BY:

BLOOMBERG PHILANTHROPIES
LAND NOMADIC COUNCIL
LOS ANGELES COUNTY ARTS COMMISSION
LOS ANGELES STATE HISTORIC PARK