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You are here: Home / LACE / 2015-2019 / Black TED: Independent Research Perspectives in the Field

Black TED: Independent Research Perspectives in the Field


Black TED: Independent Research Perspectives in the Field
 organized by Mutant Salon members Sarah Gail Armstrong and Dove Ayinde

August 11, 2018, 7 :30PM

Black TED is a collaborative think tank erected in 2017 by Dove Ayinde and Sarah Gail Armstrong. Black TED focuses on Black consciousness, thought, and the exploration of such in a satirical manner in order to encourage greater accountability and action from an ever increasing apathetic and withdrawn society.

Featuring talks by Sarah Gail Armstrong, Dove Ayinde, Brandon Drew Holmes, Micah James, and Elliot Reed.

This event is in conjunction with the CAVERNOUS: Young Joon Kwak & Mutant Salon exhibition and coincides with the performances by Adee Roberson and Anna Luisa Petrisko.

“Multifaceted in every sense of the word, Sarah Gail speaks to her current state of being and desires and ambitions through her work. Be it in written form, painting, performance or an installation, we the audience are able to tell how she is coping with existing as a Black femme within a white patriarchal supremacist world. Her work is sincere in ways that most artists will never be able to create and blunt in a manner that many do not know how to create without victimizing.” – Brandon Drew Holmes
Watch video here:

BIOS

Dove Ayinde is a musician/artist in the Los Angeles,CA.
Themes of Black consciousness, social justice, and identity can be found throughout her work in zines, live performances, and in her collage art. Amongst various projects, she currently performs in post-garage band, Hausa.
Brandon Drew Holmes makes work about white people for Black people. Whether working as a writer, artist or curator BDH speaks directly upon the realities of and against white supremacy, and it’s inherently antiBlackness.
Micah James is an LA artist with enthusiasms in music, chopped up video and performance. He has presented at the Denver MCA, Wadsworth Atheneum, Echo Park Film Center and Nevada Museum of Art. He’ll be releasing several music projects in the fall, including a debut album entitled Heaven & Coin. His work deals with love (Venus), depravity and personal management. The lens is Black and queer.
Elliot Reed is an LA based performance artist. His work explores aspects of digital citizenship, sexuality, and self-hood. Teetering between epiphany and total collapse, Elliot constructs and bends narratives utilizing objects, voice, humor, and music. Shows in LA include The Hammer Museum, The LA Public Art Biennial, The Broad, Human Resources, PØST, The Box, UCLA, Commonwealth & Council, The Getty Center, and OUE Skyspace. Additional shows include VFD London, MOOI Collective Mexico City, The Gene Siskel Film Center, and venues in Paris, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, and Osaka. As of 2018 he has given artist presentations at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Macalester College, University of Minnesota, and won the inaugural Bar-fund artist grant.

Filed Under: 2015-2019, LACE, Performance

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LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)

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The works selected for “A Tender Excavation” d The works selected for “A Tender Excavation” depart from personal, familial, or historical photographic archives which ultimately are recontextualized through installation, collage, painting, film, video, sculpture, or mixed media, reimagining and reconnecting lost fragments to speak about personal and collective resilience, constructing new possibilities for an interconnected futurity.

LACE is thrilled to introduce three of the artists featured in the exhibition...

✷ Mercedes Dorame (@mercedes.dorame)  is a multi-disciplinary artist who calls on her Tongva ancestry to engage the problematics of (in)visibility and ideas of cultural construction and ancestral connection to land and sky.

✷ Leah King (@leahkinglive) is a multimedia artist working in collage, sound, film, and performance. Her intricately layered visual and sonic works explore race, gender, and power through a futurist lens.

✷ Ann Le (@annsgood) is a LA based artist and Senior Lecturer of Photography and Fine Arts at Loyola Marymount University. Her photomontages explore identity, family history, the diaspora, and the space in between becoming Vietnamese-American.

Join us at the opening reception on Saturday, November 1, 2025 from 2–5 PM at CSULA’s Luckman Gallery. Light refreshments will be provided. RSVP at the link in our bio.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the Teiger Foundation.
⭒ We are excited to welcome Jason Villegas to th ⭒ We are excited to welcome Jason Villegas to the LACE team as our 2025 Hisako Terasaki Intern! ⭒

Jason is currently a student at Los Angeles City College studying animation. He is a Mexican American artist making work about queer identity and bear subculture, inspired by indigenous art, pop culture, and consumerism. Jason makes ceramic sculptures, paintings, comics, and enjoys swimming, sci-fi, collecting toys, and his cats.

Join us in welcoming Jason to the team!
“A Tender Excavation” centers identities that “A Tender Excavation” centers identities that have been systematically excluded from mainstream narratives and representations of not only American art but of representing an “American” identity.

LACE is thrilled to introduce 3 of the artists featured in the exhibition...

⋆ Star Montana (@starmontana) is a photo-based artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She was born and raised in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles, which is predominantly Mexican American and serves as the backdrop to much of her work.

⋆ Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai (@prima_jalichndrsakntbhai) is a transdisciplinary artist, working across performance, video and installation, based in Los Angeles. Born in Thailand in 1989, they grew up in Europe before moving to the US in 2011.

⋆ Arlene Mejorado (@ari.mejorado) is an artist from Los Angeles who works through analog and digital image-making processes to contemplate ideas around memory, landscape, and placemaking. Often working intuitively, Mejorado’s practice ranges from traditional documenting to staging scenes that merge elements of installation, performance, and studio photography.

Join us at the opening reception on Saturday, November 1, 2025 from 2–5 PM at CSULA’s Luckman Gallery. Light refreshments will be provided. RSVP at the link in our bio.

Support for this exhibition is provided by the Teiger Foundation.
LACE’s new group exhibition “A Tender Excavati LACE’s new group exhibition “A Tender Excavation” curated by Selene Preciado opens at the Luckman Gallery at CSULA on Saturday, November 1! Join us for the opening reception from 2–5 PM. Light refreshments will be provided. RSVP at the link in our bio.

“A Tender Excavation” approaches research-based artistic practices through propositions of alternative histories, bringing together a group of artists that work with historical and familial photographic archives as a point of departure to construct new narratives and elicit transformation. Artists featured in the exhibition include Zeynep Abes, Susu Attar, Jamil Baldwin, Mely Barragán, Artemisa Clark, Arleene Correa Valencia, Mercedes Dorame, Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, Leah King, Tarrah Krajnak, Heesoo Kwon, Ann Le, Arlene Mejorado, Star Montana, and Camille Wong. “A Tender Excavation” is on view from November 1, 2025–February 21, 2026.

“A Tender Excavation” is made possible thanks to our friends at The Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State LA. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Teiger Foundation.
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