On Saturday, May 18, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery will unveil COLA 2024, an exhibition showcasing the work of this year’s recipients of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Independent Master Artist Project (COLA IMAP) grants. The exhibition, which runs through Saturday, July 20, features dynamic installations of ceramic, sculpture, photography, video, painting, and drawing, including new work by CalArts alum Mariah Garnett (Film/Video MFA 11) and Bari Ziperstein (Art MFA 04).
Founded in 1997, COLA IMAP is an annual grant program that honors exemplary mid-career artists from Los Angeles, supporting the creation of new works. COLA 2024 celebrates the dynamic relationship between Los Angeles, its artists, its rich history, and its stature as an international arts capital.
For COLA 2024, Garnett’s work in the exhibition delves into her family history in her latest film, Songbook. The 55-minute piece focuses on her great-great Aunt Ruth’s diary entries and a lost opera she wrote while living in Egypt in 1935. By using her family archive as a framework, Songbook explores the intersections of spirituality, mental illness, art-making, colonialism, and her family’s involvement in these complex systems.
Garnett’s work in film and installation critically engages with and challenges the traditional hierarchies between filmmaker and subject, areas historically dominated by individuals with economic, racial, and gender privilege. Her recent list of solo exhibitions include the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Commonwealth + Council, and a comprehensive 10-year survey of her work featured at the LA Municipal Art Gallery and Sundance Film Festival. Garnett is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Film/Video, and has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, and Bomb. In addition to her artistic pursuits, Garnett serves as an assistant professor of media at the University of California San Diego.
Ziperstein’s installation, Variations on a Sample, is a vibrant exploration of the intersections between historical design movements and modern art practices. This exhibit features Ziperstein’s latest ceramic works that are not only rich in color, but also brimming with texture and depth. Critic Jori Finkel notes in the catalog essay: “While conceptual artists at one extreme tend to make artworks that are anemic – rich on ideas but deliberately thin from a material or sensorial standpoint, Ziperstein’s research interests and archival work yield visually seductive, defiantly colorful objects.”
A Los Angeles-based artist, Ziperstein is renowned for her mixed media sculptures with a primary focus on ceramics. Her multifaceted approach encompasses discrete objects, expansive installations, public sculptures, and her line of functional ceramics under the brand BZIPPY. Her works are materially experimental yet deeply conceptual, exploring themes such as consumerism, propaganda, and the built environment. Her solo exhibitions include the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design in Santa Barbara and the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art in Rancho Cucamonga, among others. Additionally, her works have been featured in thematic exhibitions such as Transformations: Living Room -> Flea Market -> Museum -> Art at the Wende Museum and The Body, The Object, The Other at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles.
On Sunday, June 23, Ziperstein will lead a free, hands-on mosaic workshop in collaboration with the Barnsdall Junior Arts Center. Following the workshop, attendees will have the unique opportunity to join Ziperstein for a walkthrough of her COLA 2024 installation.
Related: Mariah Garnett Receives COLA’s Independent Master Artist Project Grant
