Publication Launch | Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics
In partnership with Skylight Books
Saturday, October 5, 2024, 1–3 PM
Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
4800 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90027
About the Event
Join LACE at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery for the launch of the exhibition publication for Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics, a long-overdue look at the artistic investigations of the late artist Beatriz da Costa that reveals the depth and prescience of her work.
This event features a conversation with exhibition curator and publication editor Daniela Lieja Quintanar, curatorial assistant and associate editor Ana Briz, and curatorial advisor Andrew McNeely. They will share their collaborative and (un)disciplinary creative processes for the research and development of the publication along with the exhibition. The conversation is moderated by LACE Curator and Director of Programs Selene Preciado.
Guests are invited to view the exhibition Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics before or after the publication launch. Gallery hours are 11 AM–4 PM, Thursdays–Sundays.
Photos by Ray Barrera
About the Publication
Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics is published by LACE and MIT Press. The publication will be available for purchase ($39.95) on site from Sklylight Books the day of the event and also available for online order through MIT Press. The publication is designed by Sid M. Duenas.
Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics is the most comprehensive documentation and analysis to date of the late artist Beatriz da Costa’s (1974–2012) groundbreaking work. Surveying her short trajectory and vast work from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, this publication renders a social portrait of da Costa’s collaborative practice and extends the artist’s sociopolitical concerns to the present. Edited by Daniela Lieja Quintanar, it features a collection of essays by curators, artists, and researchers from a variety of fields including technoscience, tactical media, cancer research, environmental justice, performance, and participatory art. Also included are reflections written by former collaborators and close friends.
Beginning with da Costa’s early projects as a student of the arts and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, the publication surveys her collaborative work with collectives Critical Art Ensemble and Preemptive Media, as well as her research-based and large-scale installations. The publication is a faithful record of da Costa’s entire oeuvre, including information about artworks she left incomplete due to financial, health, or time limitations. Also included is da Costa’s own critical writing on art and politics, as well as self-authored descriptions of her work and an unflinching interview with cancer researcher Robert Schneider, a fundamental figure for da Costa at the end of her young life.
The publication accompanies a survey exhibition presented by LACE at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery as part of the Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative. LACE is the longest-running incubator for contemporary artists, curators, and cultural workers in Los Angeles.
About the Panelists
Ana Briz is a researcher, writer, and curator in Los Angeles, the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Tongva peoples. In 2021, she joined the LACE team as curatorial assistant to (un)disciplinary tactics. Her research is situated in the field of performance, art, and visual culture in the United States with an emphasis on queer, feminist, and anti-racist work by BIPOC in California. She is broadly interested in issues of displacement, gentrification, mourning, and resistance in contemporary art and culture. The abolitionist imaginary informs her curatorial practice and research interests. Briz is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and holds an M.A. in Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere from the University of Southern California and a B.A. in Art History from Florida International University.
Daniela Lieja Quintanar is Chief Curator and Director of Programming at REDCAT Gallery and the former Chief Curator and Director of Programming at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions). She works between Los Angeles and Mexico, emphasizing contemporary art and curatorial practices that explore the politics and social issues of everyday life. In 2018, Lieja Quintanar was awarded the Warhol Foundation Curatorial Research Fellowship. She was part of the curatorial team of MexiCali Biennial 2018-19. She served as Project Coordinator and Contributing Curatorial Advisor for Below the Underground: Renegade Art and Action in the 1990s Mexico at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, Getty PST:LA/LA initiative. In 2016, she worked with artist Teresa Margolles for her contribution La Sombra to the Public Art Biennial CURRENT: LA Water. She organized with LACE La Pista de Baile by Colectivo am, as part of the Getty/REDCAT PST: Live Art LA/LA Performance Festival. Lieja Quintanar curated Intergalactix: against isolation/contra el aislamiento (2021), Unraveling Collective Forms (2019); CAVERNOUS: Young Joon Kwak & Mutant Salon (2018) and Emory Douglas: Bold Visual Language (2018 co-curated with Essence Harden); home away from by Jimena Sarno (2017), El Teatro Campesino (1965-1975), (2017 co-curated with Samantha Gregg) at LACE. Lieja Quintanar holds a BA in Ciencias de la Cultura from the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, Mexico City, and an MA in Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere from the University of Southern California.
Andrew McNeely is a writer, editor, curator, and a curatorial advisor to Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics. Andrew’s curating focuses on aesthetics, the philosophy of race, and spatial and environmental politics. His recent exhibition at LACE, A NonHuman Horizon (2019), investigates the articulation of racial identity in the work of three generations of environmentalist artists. He also curated Restless Debris (2016) at UCI’s UAG, which highlights the collective attachments to superfund sites often found in communities of color. Since 2018, Andrew has stewarded the Community Reading Group (CRG), a collective that is dedicated to verbalizing the limits of community and the duties of common life. CRG is organized by Olivia Leiter, Michael Berlin, Joy / Jade, Hailey Loman, and Zach Whitworth.
