Foreign Body
Part of Southern California’s architectural legacy lies in buildings whose form literally illustrates their function – lunch stands in the shape of hot dogs, coffee shops constructed as doughnuts, keyboard shaped piano bars. Weisz revives this tradition with a gigantic female figure. Sitting atop its structure, this monumental yet melancholy nude has been pierced by a tree. She emblematizes nature and its slow mutilation by humans.
Funding for this project was generously provided by Nordrhein-Westfalen Kunststiftung NRW.
HDTS 2022
Curated by Iwona Blazwick OBE, Director of Whitechapel Gallery, London
9 new site-specific works in Pioneertown, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree and Wonder Valley. Artists include Dineo Seshee Bopape, Alice Channer, Gerald Clarke, Erkan Ozgen, Jack Pierson, Dana Sherwood, Kate Lee Short, Paloma Varga Weisz, and Rachel Whiteread
April 9 — May 29, 2022
HDTS 2022 emerges from a heavy felt shift in both culture-at-large and our local desert communities. Its title The Searchers shines light on the “regenerative ruin,” a concept that follows 21st century human intervention in our desert region. As a historically nomadic environment, the desert has played host to waves of different existences—transitory settlements, sanctuaries, and living experiments. This particular desert, at the bottom of the dense Mojave, occupies a fringe space between the western apexes of Los Angeles and Las Vegas where these experiments flourish. Its uniqueness lies in the many ungoverned moments, layered visions, and transposed uses of space that comprise a landscape full of attempted solutions to the basic question of “How to live?”
HDTS 2022 also included ephemeral programs at our community partner sites including the Sky Village Swap Meet in Yucca Valley and The Palms in Wonder Valley. Documentation of these programs can be found here.
