Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. Biennial Names 39 Artists for Upcoming Edition in October, Including Joey Terrill, Melissa Cody, Guadalupe Rosales

The Hammer Museum has named the 39 artists, collectives, and organizations that will take part in the upcoming sixth edition of its acclaimed Made in L.A. biennial, scheduled to run October 1–December 31. Organized by independent curators Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez, with curatorial fellow Ashton Cooper, the exhibition takes “Acts of Living” as its title.

Since its launch in 2012, Made in L.A. has become one of the country’s most closely watched recurring exhibitions, launching artists to greater mainstream recognition and helping to cement Los Angeles’s place as an art capital. The inaugural edition featured 60 artists, while the most recent one in 2021 (delayed from 2020 by the pandemic) included 30 artists.

The upcoming edition takes its title from a quote by the beloved late artist Noah Purifoy, which is now inscribed on a plaque at Watts Towers, the arts education hub in South Los Angeles: “One does not have to be a visual artist to utilize creative potential. Creativity can be an act of living, a way of life, and a formula for doing the right thing.” In a statement, Nawi described the Watts Towers as “an example for the way in which creative work can be intimately tied to one’s everyday life and to individual practice, hold space for community, and ultimately resonate far beyond itself.”

The 39 artists on the list represent a broad swath of artists working in South California of varying ages, which a press release says highlights “a wide-ranging network of artistic affinities, legacies, and dialogues through intergenerational constellations formed through shared visual and material languages.”

About a quarter of the artists were born in the 1990s, with the youngest artist on the list being LA native Vincent Enrique Hernandez, who was born in 1998. On the opposite end of the spectrum, five artists are in their 70s or 80s, with the oldest artist on the list being Jessie Homer French, who was born in New York in 1940. French was included in the 2022 Venice Biennale’s main exhibition.

The exhibition includes only one deceased artist, ceramicist Luis Bermudez, who died in 2021. Bermudez will likely be one of the exhibition’s biggest reappraisals, as his last solo exhibition opened in 2010 at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts in Ojai and his last group show was in 2012, according to his website.

In a statement, Ramírez said, “Made in L.A. 2023 takes its cues from the ethos of Los Angeles, a place where a multiplicity of cultures coexist and where, as an artist said to us, ‘one is always a visitor.’ The artists and collectives we included in this biennial represent a wide range of art being made in the city but also a diversity of stakes of making art.”

The exhibition also includes major figures of the city’s Chicanx community, including Joey Terrill, Victor Estrada, and Guadalupe Rosales. Terrill is best-known for his expansive painting practice that documented the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s and how it impacted L.A.’s Chicanx creative community.

After a powerful showing in the major exhibition “Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A.,” curated by David Evans Frantz and C. Ondine Chavoya as part of PST: LA/LA in 2017, he has had a resurgence of interest, with recent solo outings at Park View / Paul Soto in Los Angeles and Ortuzar Projects in New York. With a practice spanning three decades, Estrada first came to prominence in the 1990s with the inclusion of a piece in the landmark 1992 show “Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Rosales is best-known for her two archival projects, “Veteranas and Rucas” and “Map Pointz,” which collect found and sourced images on Instagram that aim to preserve the histories of Latinx communities across Southern California from their own points of view. But her own practice has also been taking off recently, with her photographs being included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial and a major mural commission that year at the Dallas Museum of Art. Later this year, she will show new work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in a three-person show with rafa esparza and Mario Ayala.

The artist list also includes closely watched L.A.-based artists like Melissa Cody (Navajo/Diné), Young Joon Kwak, Kang Seung Lee, and Dominique Moody, as well as rising ones like Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), Emmanuel Louisnord Desir, Dan Herschlein, Esteban Ramón Pérez, Ryan Preciado, and Chiffon Thomas. The show will also include three collectives or organizations: AMBOS: Art Made Between Opposite Sides (established 2016), Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (2013), and Mas Exitos (2010). 

In a statement, Hammer director Ann Philbin said the upcoming biennial “emphasizes that art is inseparable from everyday life and community, informed by a wide range of cultural histories. Diana and Pablo have selected 39 artists and collectives whose inspiring work we are thrilled to present in nearly every gallery and space in our newly renovated museum.” 

The full artist list follows below.

•    Marcel Alcalá b. 1990, Santa Ana, California
•    Michael Alvarez b. 1983, Los Angeles, California
•    AMBOS: Art Made Between Opposite Sides est. 2016, Tijuana, Mexico/San Diego, California
•    Jackie Amézquita b. 1985, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
•    Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa) b. 1985, Watford City, North Dakota
•    Luis Bermudez b. 1953, d. 2021, Los Angeles, California
•    Sula Bermúdez-Silverman b. 1993, New York, New York
•    Jibz Cameron b. 1975, California
•    Melissa Cody (Navajo/Diné) b. 1983, No Water Mesa, Arizona 
•    Emmanuel Louisnord Desir b. 1997, New York, New York
•    Victor Estrada b. 1956, Burbank, California
•    Nancy Evans b. 1949, Los Angeles, California
•    Pippa Garner b. 1943, Evanston, Illinois
•    Ishi Glinsky (Tohono O’odham) b. 1982, Tucson, Arizona
•    Vincent Enrique Hernandez b. 1998, Los Angeles, California
•    Dan Herschlein b. 1989, Bayville, New York
•    Jessie Homer French b. 1940, New York, New York 
•    Akinsanya Kambon b. 1946, Sacramento, California
•    Kyle Kilty b. 1976, South Lake Tahoe, California
•    Young Joon Kwak b. 1984, New York, New York
•    Kang Seung Lee b. 1978, Seoul, South Korea
•    Tidawhitney Lek b. 1992, Long Beach, California
•    Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA) est. 2013
•    Maria Maea b. 1988, Long Beach, California
•    Erica Mahinay b. 1986, Santa Fe, New Mexico
•    Mas Exitos est. 2010
•    Dominique Moody b. 1956, Augsburg, Germany
•    Paige Jiyoung Moon b. 1984, Seoul, South Korea
•    Esteban Ramón Pérez b. 1989, Los Angeles, California
•    Page Person b. 1972, Atlanta, Georgia
•    Roksana Pirouzmand b. 1990, Yazd, Iran
•    Ryan Preciado b. 1989, El Monte, California
•    Devin Reynolds b. 1991, Venice Beach, California
•    Miller Robinson (Karuk/Yurok) b. 1992, Lodi, California
•    Guadalupe Rosales b. 1980, Redwood City, California
•    Christopher Suarez b. 1994, Long Beach, California
•    Joey Terrill b. 1955, Los Angeles, California
•    Chiffon Thomas b. 1991, Chicago, Illinois
•    Teresa Tolliver b. 1945, Los Angeles, California