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You are here: Home / LACE / 2015-2019 / Hollow Point/Strange Laugh

Hollow Point/Strange Laugh

Hollow Point/Strange Laugh
Nancy Baker Cahill
Tuesday, April 17, 7-10 PM

Hollow Point/Strange Laugh is a one-night event at LACE featuring four original Virtual Reality (VR) drawings by Nancy Baker Cahill, a site-specific and interactive Augmented Reality (AR) experience using Baker Cahill’s free app 4th Wall, and her analog works on paper and canvas. Inspired by our current and precarious moment, the Hollow Point drawings in VR, AR, and on paper augment and expand upon Baker Cahill’s abiding obsession: the body as an unknowable abstraction and site of struggle and resistance. Strange Laugh, Baker Cahill’s newest VR drawing, springs directly from a conversation between the artist and Ciara Scanlan, co-curator of Activating Pangea: Acts to Objects, currently on view at LACE, about governmental and cultural policing of women’s bodies.

In the immersive void of VR and the altered reality of AR, Baker Cahill literally puts viewers inside her drawings, and encourages them to walk or teleport through at their own pace, led by their own curiosity. In doing so, she attempts to provoke an empathic response on the part of the viewer—to experience self-reflection as one considers one’s own body and the bodies of others as engaged in an ongoing, unsettled contest— filled with vulnerability, strength, discomfort, and defiance. Viewers have the freedom to activate the AR artworks and create new user-driven content through participation with Baker Cahill’s work.

Inspired to innovate beyond current VR drawing apps and in an effort to integrate her established drawing techniques on paper, Baker Cahill developed her own signature brush strokes to create the works in VR, and by extension, AR. Each VR drawing is animated and two include original sound design. Her 2D works reflect the neuroanatomical influence of her work in VR. In each analog drawing, Baker Cahill suspends shattered forms in isolated moments of frozen velocity. At this event, Baker Cahill will challenge viewers’ understanding of embodied space, blend the most ancient artistic practice with the most futuristic, and underscore her commitment to innovating tools in the inchoate realm of VR and AR fine art. Equally, the artist encourages attendees to participate in reimagining “public art” and harnessing their own creativity by using 4th Wall to engage existing works of art in the gallery, their own bodies and the architecture of LACE itself. Photos and videos created on site with the app will be archived as part of the event and featured on the artist and LACE’s social media platforms afterward.

We encourage attendees to download the free, 4th Wall app in advance of the event. App requires iOS11 and an iPhone 6s or above. Click here to download the app from the iTunes store.

Click the link to see the review at The Art Newspaper: Nancy Baker VR Review

Filed Under: 2015-2019, Exhibition, LACE Tagged With: Hollow Point/Strange Laugh, LACE, Nancy Baker

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PRESS RELEASE: Announcing LACE’s Next Emerging Curators

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On Saturday, August 2 from 2–7pm, join LACE for On Saturday, August 2 from 2–7pm, join LACE for this year's Artists’ Film International (AFI'25) at the Philosophical Research Society (@philosophical_research_society).

This touring film program is collectively curated and presented by 16 international arts organizations and convened by Forma (@formaartsmedia). AFI’25 introduces the work of talented moving image artists to worldwide audiences, and will be live over 300 days, with exhibitions, screenings and public programs hosted across 4 continents.

LACE’s selection for AFI’25 is "Leymusoom Garden: New Sun" (2024) by Heesoo Kwon (@leymusoom). Kwon’s oneiric visual language and unique animation style allow her to create memoryscapes of personal and community liberation. The film rewrites mythical matrilineal histories through utopian and whimsical abstractions of time, space, and memory to ultimately bring forth healing and transformation. 

Admission is free! RSVP at the link in our bio.

Image caption:
Still from Heesoo Kwon, Leymusoom Garden: New Sun, 2024. Courtesy the artist
Join LACE for “Obsidian Reflections” happening Join LACE for “Obsidian Reflections” happening Saturday, July 19, 2–5 PM at the Philosophical Research Society (@philosophical_research_society).

Curated by Selene Preciado and Andrea Acuña, this film program presents a selection of video works that integrate ancestral knowledge and indigenous storytelling, imagining futures where the past and present connect through the power of ruins and resilience. Followed by a musical performance with multimedia NeoCumbia artist El Keamo (@el_keamo).

Learn more and RSVP at the link in our bio!
We are excited to announce LACE's 11th Emerging Cu We are excited to announce LACE's 11th Emerging Curator! Meet Semaj Peltier (@horsebreath87) and pom*pom (@__pom____pom__), collaborators in a curatorial collective and experimental film archive organizing community-based events since 2022. For the Emerging Curator Program, Semaj Peltier and Pom Pom curate "No Loneliness Like This," a film and food event showcasing experimental films that traverse the many manifestations of state-sanctioned isolation.

Peltier, a projectionist, archivist and filmmaker, brings a praxis shaped by her studies at the University of Amsterdam’s Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image Masters program, specializing in ephemeral histories shaped by coloniality and otherness. pom*pom, developed by Russell Hartling and Crystal Dawana, is an experimental food collective whose sensory-driven dining experiences intersect with film programming to evoke memory, storytelling, and connection. Together, they build worlds where film and food become tools of resistance—rituals that evoke memory, incite dialogue, and nurture solidarity through shared sensation and subversion. 

This year’s panel included Jheanelle Brown (@jheaneeeeeelle), faculty member at CalArts and Curator of Film at REDCAT; Carrie Chen (@carriechen01), artist, curator, and educator; and Heber Rodriguez (@hebereatschips), Coordinator for the City of Lancaster’s Parks, Recreation and Arts Department in the Arts and Museums Division. 

Read the full press release in our bio!
If you missed “ENDURANCE” or want to relive th If you missed “ENDURANCE” or want to relive the experience, head over to the LACE website to watch a selection of the performances with more to come soon!

“ENDURANCE” presented performance art and interdisciplinary work by elder artists. These artists use their practices to share wisdom, knowledge, and experiences that they have gained throughout their lives. This series is a companion program to LACE’s 2024 performance series, “ABUNDANCE”, both featuring often invisibilized bodies.

This program was held at L.A. Dance Project (@ladanceproject) from May 16–17, 2025.

The online presentation of “ENDURANCE” is supported by the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles (@culture_la). 

Photos by Angel Origgi (@angeloriggi).

Image captions in order:
Barbara T. Smith, OWB, 2025
Ulysses Jenkins and his band “Who Dat!,” Ethnic Cleansing, 2022/2025
Hirokazu Kosaka, Shoot Yourself, 2025
The Dark Bob, Beirut, 1982/2025
Kamau Daáood, Griot notes: Poem in Invisible Ink
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