LACE is pleased to announce its selection of the next project for the Emerging Curators Program. Names Printed in Black, curated by Emily Butts, takes place in Jan 2018. As Los Angeles’ premier experimental non-profit exhibition space, LACE created this program to discover and promote curatorial talent. Butts’ proposal was selected from a pool of 48 that reflect the diversity of perspectives of the arts community. The jury comprised of Lanka Tattersall, Assistant Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Beatriz Cortez, artist and cultural critic, and Dorit Cypis, artist, educator, and activist.
Names Printed in Black explores the impact that memory has on the physical and psychological body, using loss and trauma as a framework to understand individual and collective rememberings. The body, vulnerable by nature but also a powerful tool of resistance and catharsis, moves (or disappears) through spaces defined by tension, social injustices, and unequal power relations. Both the body and memory can be obscured through a history of loss, violence, or trauma. An identity is degraded into obscurity as a name heard on or in the news, where the activity of remembering weighs more than that of the passive act of forgetting. Among the artists whose work is Included in the exhibition are Carmen Argote, Adriana Corral, Carlos Motta, Lisa Soto, and Samira Yamin.
As juror Dorit Cypis commented, “The exhibition Emily Butts proposed resonates with rich ethical and aesthetic threads that elaborate on how our collective political and human histories live within us and steer our present tense. Empathy is timely. Today, as ever, we find ourselves immersed in the question: who is remembered and who is forgotten.”
Emily Butts, who received her degree from Pitzer College in art history and English world literature, explores how history informs contemporary forms of social repression in a period of globalization and alienation. She has a particular interest in cultural dialogue, and how it is affected by restricted historical conventions, disjointed experiences, and structured forgettings.
Butts’ curatorial debut at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center focused on the work of East L.A. based artist Star Montana. She is the curatorial assistant for the exhibition Home – So Different, So Appealing set to open in June 2017 at LACMA as a part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative.
