Frieze Los Angeles’s Focus section explores the notion of ‘ecologies’

Essence Harden—an artist, curator and author—is deeply rooted within the artwork scene of Los Angeles, the place she lives and works as a visible arts curator on the California African American Museum. After taking up that position, she mentioned that she seemed ahead to “highlighting the work of collectors and collectives, and cultivating scholarship, on Black visible tradition and the West”. This yr, Harden is the curator of the Focus part at Frieze Los Angeles, bringing collectively 12 galleries which have all opened previously dozen years. Many of the artists within the part, organised across the theme of “ecology”, are represented by Californian galleries, they usually all make work with which Harden says she has a “deep relationship”. Harden walked us via a few of her highlights within the part.

Muzae Sesay, Kamara Fountain (2024), Diamond Dock (2024)pt.2 Gallery (pictured at high of web page)

Muzae Sesay, who was born in Lengthy Seaside and now lives in Oakland, presents a collection of work that reference his Sierra Leonean heritage. His heat tones and idealised architectural varieties create a dreamlike imaginative and prescient of a “non-colonised Sierra Leone”, Harden says, and the sense of an “equitable area”, including, “I like his color palette and the way in which he extracts geography.”

Widline Cadet, Sòti nan gran lanmou (2023), Nazarian / Curcio

The photographer Widline Cadet, who was born in Haiti and relies in Los Angeles, presents a collection of works that reinterpret her household’s archive. On this picture, she depicts her mom’s marriage ceremony costume—the wearer turned away—highlighting a way of “safety and care” from the gaze of the viewer. “The way in which that Los Angeles turns into blurred with Haiti on this work is de facto attention-grabbing when excited about diaspora,” Harden says. “We don’t actually take into consideration the 2 locations being related, however right here, Los Angeles seems to be like house and seems like house.”

Akea Brionne, Valley of Goals (2024), Lyles & King

To create her vibrant photographs, Akea Brionne feeds images from her household archive into a personal server, including synthetic intelligence prompts to create new scenes that “reinvent the historic language round figuration and Blackness”, Harden says. The photographs reference the historic motion of Black communities between Louisiana and California—with the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico in between—whereas retaining a surreal, futuristic edge.

Harry Fonseca, Coyote Koshare with Melon (1994), Babst Gallery

The Nisenan painter Harry Fonseca, who died nearly 20 years in the past, used the coyote as a “versatile queer” motif, Harden says, and a means of “assessing American historical past, in addition to hierarchies, genres and limits”. Fonseca was under-appreciated throughout his lifetime, however right here is introduced into the “modern second”. Certainly, the stand is a part of a unfastened collaboration with the Autry Museum of the American West, which goals to doc the placement of Fonseca’s works and produce them to the fore ultimately.

Ser Serpas, Partly Obscura (2023), Untitled (2024) Quinn Harrelson

“Once I consider Twenty first-century assemblage, I consider her,” Harden says of Serpas, who grew up in Boyle Heights. The Quinn Harrelson stand as a complete options work and sculptural works supposed to be understood in unison; one of many two work, for instance, depicts a lady’s torso, whereas the opposite merely options brushstrokes, evoking the instrument the artist used to make the figurative work. “I like her work, and assemblage usually, as a result of it offers with the imbuing of vitality and spirit inside objects,” Harden says. “The works are at all times tethered collectively.”

Mustafa Ali Clayton, Tasha (2023-24), Dominique Gallery

Mustafa Ali Clayton’s large-scale ceramic busts are constructed by hand, with out moulds, that means that they’re “imperfect” and visible embodiments of the artistic act. Displayed on makeshift plinths that evoke their materiality, they’re, nonetheless, sturdy—designed to be displayed both indoors or outdoors. Their power is a reference to the concept of “Black girls as a resilient and strong group”, Harden says, including that they provide a means of “reimagining figuration” and the historic custom of bust-making.

Yeni Mao, set up view, Make Room

The Chinese language American artist Yeni Mao’s sculptures are references to tunnels beneath the US-Mexico border at Mexicali, providing “abstractions” and “blueprints” of those areas, Harden says. The combined supplies—together with metal, volcanic rock, ceramics and leather-based—evoke a way of geology but in addition the human-made nature of borders, she provides. Mao, who has a background in metal fabrication, additionally sought to discover the connection between ornamentation and construction.