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Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Past
  • Calendar
  • Learning
    • Artist Residency
    • Bookshelf Residency
    • Digital Projects
    • Public Programs
    • Schools & Community
    • Special Projects
  • Visit
  • About
    • Staff
    • Governance
    • Press
    • Partnerships
    • Opportunities
    • Annual Report
  • Shop
  • Get Involved
    • Spring Benefit
    • Join
    • Institutional Support
    • Artist Edition Series
    • Sustainability
    • Corporate
  • Donate
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Carmen Argote: I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe

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Carmen Argote, Protector: Open, 2022. Figs, acrylic, gesso, gel medium, crayon, and iron powder on paper; Courtesy the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles / Mexico City. Photo by Ian Byers-Gamber

The work of Los Angeles-based artist Carmen Argote (b. 1981, Guadalajara, Mexico) is distinguished by her commitment to process and her characteristic use of organic and biological materials—from bananas and palm fronds to chicken excrement and human urine. Often collected on her daily walks, these materials are reconstituted into artworks through the ritual actions of braiding, rubbing, and consuming, which speak in significant ways to the artist’s relationship to body and place. Argote’s most recent series, titled Mother, brings these site-specific investigations inward.

Including drawings, sculptures, and works in process, this exhibition maps Argote’s journey toward a deeper understanding of her interior self and the binaries that it holds—adult and child, man and woman, resident and exile, individual and collective. In this featured body of work, patterns of power and control are traced across cultures and generations to explore patriarchy as a learned behavior. Bringing together her interests in architecture, personal history, and psychology, this series engages with the scaffoldings of the mind, body, and spirit to consider the role that art, like therapy, can play in disrupting these recurring habits.

In the Mother series, figures emerge in states of submission, protection, restlessness, and desire, pointing to the postures that Argote assumes as she engages with her mother self and child self. Works made from thrown papier-mâché, evocative of spitballs on a classroom ceiling, reveal the artist’s attempts to nurture her ripe child within—rebellious, messy, and full of cosmic wonder. Encircling the galleries is a group of braided and bound sculptures. Intended to be held and hugged, these are the comforting objects to which Argote continuously returns, the documents of her practices of re-mothering and rebirth. Guiding words of affirmation appear throughout the installation, including the exhibition’s title, which is drawn from the phrases that Argote speaks over her inner child, “I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe.”

Moving from the individual to the collective, this presentation also signals a new chapter for the Mother works. On the gallery floor, a circular canvas marks a space of play where Argote and invited collaborators including her mother, Carmen Vargas, as well as Young Chung, Daniela Lieja Quintanar, Mary McGuire, and Cedric Tai, will participate in collective actions that allow the exhibition, like Argote’s work, to evolve over time.

Operating at the threshold between the physical and psychological, I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe gives material form to the inhabitants of the interior architectures of the self—those we project, those we neglect, those we desire, those we defend, and those we have yet to discover.

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June 10, 2023, 3 PM - 6 PM
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June 14, 2023, 12 PM - 2 PM
June 15, 2023, 5 PM - 7 PM
July 12, 2023, 12 PM - 2 PM
July 13, 2023, 5 PM - 7 PM
August 16, 2023, 12 PM - 2 PM
August 17, 2023, 5 PM - 7 PM
IN PROCESS: Carmen Argote with Carmen Vargas
Exhibition Programs
Argote

Carmen Argote: I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe is organized by Amanda Sroka, Senior Curator, with Caroline Ellen Liou, Curatorial Assistant.

Support for the exhibition is provided by Kristin Rey and Michael Rubel, and Ann Soh Woods and Mel Woods. Special thanks to Commonwealth and Council.

ICA LA is supported by the Curator’s Council and Fieldwork Council.

Carmen Argote (b. 1981, Guadalajara, Mexico; lives and works in Los Angeles) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work often points to the body, class, and economic structures in relation to architecture and personal history. She received her MFA in 2007 from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she also received her BFA in 2004. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2022); Primary, Nottingham (2021); Clockshop, Los Angeles (2020); New Museum, New York (2019); and PAOS GDL, Guadalajara (2019). Argote has been featured in group exhibitions at MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2021); SculptureCenter, New York (2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2017); and Ballroom Marfa (2017). She is the recipient of the Fellows of Contemporary Art Award (2020); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2019); Artadia Los Angeles award (2019); an Artist Community Engagement Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation (2015); and a California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2013). Argote’s work is in the collections of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Argote is represented by Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, and is co-chair of the Artist Advisory Council at Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

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STATUS ID Title Start date End date Featured image Last updated
Active Published
132 Barbara T. Smith 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
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5:19pm May 16, 2023 Page
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129 Trương Công Tùng 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
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130 Carmen Argote: I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
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5:56pm Jun 02, 2023 Page
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131 Alberta Whittle: between a whisper and a cry 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
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126 Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
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10:40am May 09, 2023 Page
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127 Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
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128 Christine Sun Kim: Bounce Back 2023-02-11 2023-09-10
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91 Rebecca Morris: 2001–2022 2022-10-01 2023-01-15
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92 My Barbarian 2022-10-01 2023-01-15
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4:57pm Nov 08, 2022 Page
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90 The Condition of Being Addressable 2022-06-18 2022-09-04
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125 Aquelarre no binario / Non-binary coven 2022-06-08 2023-01-15
View of ICA LA courtyard mural by Ad Minoliti featuring four vertical panels, each filled with abstracted representations of figures in vivid reds, yellows, oranges, purples, and pinks.
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87 Jamal Cyrus: The End of My Beginning 2022-02-05 2022-05-29
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88 Sara Cwynar: Apple Red/Grass Green/Sky Blue 2022-02-05 2022-05-29
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83 Witch Hunt 2021-10-10 2022-01-09
Installation view of Witch Hunt, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, October 10–January 9, 2022.
11:51am Apr 01, 2022 Page
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89 Minerva Cuevas: Female Earth 2021-10-10 2022-06-02
Icala witchhunt 2021 10 12 077 (1)
10:47am May 24, 2022 Page
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81 Queer Communion:
Ron Athey
2021-06-19 2021-09-05
Icala 2021 07 02 009
10:15pm Sep 01, 2021 Page
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82 Kenneth Tam:
Silent Spikes
2021-06-19 2021-09-05
Icala 2021 07 02 002
11:12am Aug 03, 2021 Page
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80 The Inconstant World 2021-03-06 2021-05-30
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79 Online Screening: Stanya Kahn’s No Go Backs and Earlier Works 2020-12-09 2021-01-10
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77 Harold Mendez:
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2020-09-26 2021-01-10
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3:17pm Feb 07, 2022 Page
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78 Stanya Kahn:
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2020-09-26 2021-01-10
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6:46pm Dec 04, 2020 Page
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69 Ree Morton:
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2020-02-16 2020-07-19
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1:06pm Jan 18, 2022 Page
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74 Ann Greene Kelly 2020-02-16 2020-07-19
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75 Agency of Assets x El Clasificado 2019-12-06 2020-01-26
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4:32pm Dec 02, 2021 Page
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73 CURRENT:LA FOOD Public Art Triennial 2019 2019-10-05 2019-11-03
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11:04am Oct 07, 2019 Page
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