HOBOLLYWOOD

By Thinh Nguyen

February 11–12, 2023 

6522 Hollywood Blvd

Join LACE and our artist in un-residence, Thinh Nguyen for HOBOLLYWOOD,  a special weekend program on Hollywood Boulevard. Nguyen will present an installation in front of LACE with objects collected during their un-residency. As part of the installation, there will be a tea ceremony where visitors can join the artist for a conversation about the objects in the installation and their experience as an unhoused artist. 

Since 2020, Nguyen has been living inside their car and migrating across Los Angeles county collecting artifacts found on the streets of the city. Described as talismans, found objects assembled from pendants, beads, twine, and string, ground the artist in their material conditions. Larger themes in this work touch on cultural anthropology, housing injustice, and excess consumerism.

Inspired by the success of the LACE Summer Residencies founded in 2014, LACE engaged in an experimental 6-month artistic research un-residency with artist and cultural provocateur, Thinh Nguyen. Curated by LACE’s former Chief Curator and Director of Programming, Daniela Lieja Quintanar, this un-residency program used the immediate Hollywood neighborhood and greater Los Angeles area that surrounds LACE as the research grounds to explore themes of development, displacement, houselessness, and racial justice.

In response to Hollywood’s rapidly changing environment, Nguyen was invited to use their artistic practice to explore how communities navigate constant metamorphosis and adaptation.

Thinh Nguyen (b. 1984, Bảo An, Vietnam.), a cultural provocateur and critic who works to investigate the intersections of cultural values. 

Nguyen is expanding on their current and ongoing project/s relating to the notion of social-cultural transition/ing. Their sense of belonging is located in a collection of post-consumer materials through their experience of homelessness.

Utilizing various media and post-consumer materials, they explore and expose oppressive socio-political power structures within those values. Nguyen performed and exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at Freewaves, The Mistake Room, The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and Contemporary Irish Art Center Los Angeles. Their work has been written about in Artforum, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, LA Weekly, Hyperallergic, Artillery magazine, and numerous online forums. 

Support for this project provided by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.