The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego will open two solo exhibitions examining transitions — personal, political and architectural — at its downtown location on Thursday.
“Yve Laris Cohen: Meeting Ground” and “Sadie Barnette: Dear 1968″ will open during the Museum’s popular monthly program, Downtown at Sundown, and remain on view through Sept. 2.
Laris Cohen’s work often considers the architecture and latent histories of theatrical spaces through installations and performances that highlight states of transition. For his first solo museum presentation on the West Coast, Laris Cohen takes as his starting point the museum’s expansion in La Jolla, which will transform the Sherwood Auditorium into a gallery.
The San Diego-born artist, who now lives in New York, explores the social and political meaning behind architecture, and his exhibition represents the culmination of over a year of research in the MCASD archives.
Barnette, who was born in Oakland and now lives and works there and in Compton, mined personal and political histories using family photographs, recent drawings, and selections from the file that the FBI amassed after her father joined the Black Panther Party in 1968. She approaches that year with a mixture of sentimental devotion and critical distance. Barnette reveals that the injustices of 1968 have not yet been relegated to the pages of history, but live on in new forms today.
She is the recipient of Art Matters and Artadia awards and was named one of the “Black Artists: 30 Contemporary Art Makers Under 40 You Should Know” by the Huffington Post.
The museum in the historic Santa Fe terminal downtown is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Wednesday. It’s free on the third Thursday of every month from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
