Probably Gallery in Los Angeles presents Language Has No Weather, an exhibition of work from the first cohort of residents from Unseen California, an interdisciplinary arts research initiative. Founded by CalArts Photo and Media alum Karolina Karlic (Art MFA 10), the initiative was developed for women with photography at the center of their art practice and asks artists to engage with research themes relevant to California’s future, using the University of California’s Natural Reserve System (UCNRS).
Language Has No Weather, which opens on Sunday, Nov. 17, includes works by Mercedes Dorame (Photo and Media faculty), Tarrah Krajnak, Dionne Lee, Aspen Mays, and Karlic. A book of works connected to this project will be available at the reception and is also currently available for purchase online.
Through their work developed at the UCNRS, which has 42 sites in total, the artists sought to reframe California’s cultural histories and ecological landscapes.
Additional information from the gallery:
Each Artist Researcher’s approach is unique and open-ended, thus creating a place for personal projects that freely diverge while challenging overarching concepts, such as “nature” and “landscape,” and address urgent discourse around California land. This long-term research initiative gives these cultural producers opportunities to carve out novel conceptual and interdisciplinary approaches to propose new understandings of the pressing issues that face California’s terrain, its ecological economies, and its bio-cultural diversities.
The artists of Unseen California aim to “see” (by means of visualization and acknowledgement) the multivalent histories that compose the California landscape. This includes indigenous stewardship and regenerative practices – on ceded and unceded land – and the role of settler colonialism and imperialism in construction of these histories. Unseen California invites artists to engage in new types of creative ecology not yet considered/addressed in full within institutional spaces and the photographic canon of Western photography.
Language Has No Weather—which takes its name from Jennifer Moxley’s Fragments of a Broken Poetics (“Language has no weather, and therefore is not, strictly speaking, an environment”)—opens on Sunday, Nov. 17 with an opening reception and book signing from 2 to 5 pm.
The exhibition will remain on view through Jan. 11, 2025, by appointment only.
