Everything Connected: Land, Body, Cosmos
The exhibition pairs nine visual artists with nine performative artists (music, theatre, poetry) to develop a body of work around the idea that everything is connected.
Self Help Graphics & Art
Curated by our 2021 Commemorative Print Artist, Miyo Stevens-Gandara.
Curated by our 2021 Commemorative Print Artist, Miyo Stevens-Gandara. The title I chose for the 48th Self Help Graphics & Art Día de los Muertos exhibition is Everything Connected: Land, Body, Cosmos. This concept is centered on the idea that everything is connected- nothing in the world exists on its own. We are connected to one another in our existence, our community, our environment, our health and well-being, our cultural practices, our planet.
Evergreen (2021) by Miyo Stevens-GandaraSelf Help Graphics & Art
Evergreen, Commemorative Print
My print for the 48th Self Help Graphics & Art Día de los Muertos exhibition is titled "Evergreen", and depicts Evergreen Cemetery located in Boyle Heights at dusk. Dating from 1877, this cemetery is the oldest non-denominational cemetery in Los Angeles and is the location of some of the early Self Help Graphics & Art Día de los Muertos celebrations.
Made in American South (2021) by Ann JohnsonSelf Help Graphics & Art
Ann Johnson
ac·knowl·edge /əkˈnäləj/ 1: to admit the truth or existence of. 2: to make known that something has been received or noticed. 3: to recognize the rights or authority of. 4: to express thanks or appreciation for acknowledge a gift.
Xochi Flores
Consuelo says goodbye to labor, trauma, and shame! This year marked the end of my mother’s, Consuelo, paid labor trajectory; a journey that began 65 years ago in the walnut fields of Ventura County.
The Wheel of Fortune (2021) by Usen GandaraSelf Help Graphics & Art
Usen Gandara
Wheel of Fortune is ever-revolving.
My interpretation of The Wheel of Fortune tarot archetype was created with symbology derived from the natural world. Houses I have lived in, places I grew up with, people I knew, have vanished due to neglect, gentrification and violence.
Joe Galarza
This Music is a reflection of our ‘Life Force’ that starts from a thread of light that becomes your heartbeat into the pounding rhythm of the earth. Our industrial experience has became the conflicting grounding into the patterns of our existence.
Sun is a Circle (2021) by Carmen ArgoteSelf Help Graphics & Art
Carmen Argote
My art-making begins with the process of searching, digesting, and conversing with the spaces and places I inhabit. I often think of my body akin to a sponge, trusting in a corporeal processing of my surroundings.
Ben Caldwell
Los Angeles is an ensemble of villages that overlap, blur, fade, bump into one another. To remix author Gertrude Stein, there is no clear here here, cuz’ once you veer, you're already somewhere else, a different pueblo.
Coqui Xee / somos semilla (2021) by Pável AcevedoSelf Help Graphics & Art
Pavel Acevedo
This is a mural, an ofrenda, to my elders and their knowledge that was shared during their time in this world. The God Coqui Xee or 13 movement in the Zapotec culture is the creator of movement or the energy that is transformed.
Sound by Dr. George Wheeler
Texas 1015 (2021) by J. Leigh GarciaSelf Help Graphics & Art
Leigh J. Garcia
As a second-generation Mexican-American, I benefit from many privileges that my first-generation father and immigrant grandparents did not. One of these privileges includes never having had to work as an underpaid agricultural laborer.
endy trece
As many of us during this time of Covid, I have been in what feels like constant mourning and without being able to participate in traditional communal ceremonies with loved ones (here in Tongva Land and for me also back home in Wirrarika Land).
Flower, Season, Fortune (2021) by Sandra LowSelf Help Graphics & Art
Sandra Low
Flower, Season, Fortune is dedicated to my grandmother, my uncle, and others who have died since March 2020, including:
Ermelinda Ramirez
Mitzi Monica Mak
Alfred Ngaw
Edaine Leon
Chan Wong Ping
Michael Fong
My gratitude to their families who helped make this work possible.
Beaux Mingus
Dedicated to where the love starts. My mother traveled almost exclusively by foot, almost always feeling the ground through uncovered feet. Traveling by car was not her bag. In fact, to my knowledge, she never even drove a car once in her life.
200 million Hours (2021) by Elyse PignoletSelf Help Graphics & Art
Elyse Pignolet
Water is the source of life, it runs through our bodies and our planet. Water is a women's issue, it is a human rights issue, it is what connects us all, past, present and future.
Amy Shimshon-Santo
“There are more dead people than living,” my mother said. She was translating a poem written by Abraham Abulafia during a plague in the 8th century. Poetry has always helped people make sense of life and death.
Cempazuchitl at L.A. Flowermart (2021) by Luis-Genaro GarciaSelf Help Graphics & Art
Luis-Genaro Garcia
Drawing from the photographic technique of the instant polaroid, this set of artworks focuses on capturing the processes of how people in the city of Los Angeles prepare for dia de los muertos.
Dia de Los Muertos Los Angeles (2021) by Luis-Genaro GarciaSelf Help Graphics & Art
Luis-Genaro Garcia
Through their existence, photographs have instantly captured moments in time that we (the living) have often used as timeless memories. For the spirits returning to the living world, images have also become windows of going back in time.
Decorating Sugar Skulls (2021) by Luis-Genaro GarciaSelf Help Graphics & Art
Luis-Genaro Garcia
Through this set of polaroid paintings, I wanted to capture the moments in which we prepare to welcome the spirits that are returning after a full year's sleep. From buying Cempazuchitl flowers at the flower mart, the baking of pan de muerto, preparing sugar skulls.
Making Pan de Muertos (2021) by Luis-Genaro GarciaSelf Help Graphics & Art
Luis-Genaro Garcia
The ritual of Dia de Los Muertos in Los Angeles goes beyond the painting of faces, altars, and gatherings. It is a communal and engaging process between families, and the community, which is often overlooked.
Harry Gamboa Jr.
The recorded acoustic voice, mixed with ambient urban beats of metal against plastic, and transient wind-whispers were composed/transposed via synthetic digitized wavelengths into layers of sound that insinuate (rather than dictate), Vida/Muerte in the Pandemic Era.
