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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
    • Membership
    • Patron Groups
    • Institutional Support
    • Artist Edition Series
    • Sustainability
    • Corporate
  • Donate
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Back To Exhibitions
My Barbarian October 01, 2022 ➽ January 15, 2023
Back
My Barbarian October 01, 2022 ➽ January 15, 2023

My Barbarian

Project Room
Performance

For two decades, the members of My Barbarian—Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade—have used performance to theatricalize social issues, adapting narratives from modern plays, historical texts, and mass media into structures for their performances. Together, they combine theatrical storytelling with political critique, through a queer lens embracing the aesthetics of camp and kitsch as a strategy of upending fixed notions of taste or convention. Armed with this absurdist sensibility, the troupe turns to their ethos of institutional critique to defamiliarize the familiar and reveal the mythology of late-stage capitalism.

My Barbarian traces the history of the group’s work through video, performances, and documentary footage, as well as sculptures, paintings, drawings, masks, and puppets drawn from their extensive archive. Designed to be an immersive 3-channel video installation for a single gallery, the exhibition features a two-hour compilation of new edits to the trio’s years of collaborative work, featuring performances for the camera, video documentation of live performances, photographs, and previously unreleased footage drawn from the group’s extensive archive. The exhibition also includes a selection of artworks— including sculptures, paintings, drawings, masks, textiles, costumes, and puppets, which emerge and disappear from view through carefully choreographed theatrical lighting. The presentation effectively underscores the theatricality inherent to everyday life, including that of the art institution.

Originating at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in fall 2021, the presentation of My Barbarian at the Institute of Contemporary Art marks an important moment of the group’s homecoming to Los Angeles. Born in California and influenced by local figures such as performance artist Vaginal Davis and Chicano art collective ASCO, as well as the larger context of the political and social movements of the West Coast during the 1960s and 1970s, the members of My Barbarian have played a central role in contributing to the artistic community of Los Angeles. This survey presents the opportunity to celebrate twenty years of working together and recognize the landscape that they were shaped by, and in turn, shaped.

The exhibition will be accompanied by live performances, including Broke People’s Baroque Peoples’ Theater, an evening-long festival taking place at ICA LA on October 29 and coproduced by ICA LA and The Industry; and Double Future, a collaboration with the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT), which will be held at REDCAT December 8–10, 2022.

In addition, the exhibition coincides with the first in-depth monographic publication on the art collective. Titled My Barbarian, the 168-page volume, published by the Whitney Museum and Yale University Press, with contributions by Joshua Chambers-Letson and Lia Gangitano. An overview essay by curator Adrienne Edwards relates their work’s formal qualities to several historical moments over this span: the club era following September 11, 2001; postcolonial performances after the 2008 financial collapse; and political theater responding to the pressing issues of today. Other contributions read the collective’s output through a lens of queer and other critical theory and contextualize it within the twenty first-century experimental performance scene. A richly illustrated visual chronology features texts on each of My Barbarian’s past works written by the artists. Performances and video works are re-created using stills alongside photos, drawings, scripts, and personal materials drawn from the artists’ archives, many which have never previously been published.

Images
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Installation view, My Barbarian, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, October 1, 2022–January 14, 2022. Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA
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October 29, 2022, 2022, 5 PM - 9 PM
Broke People’s Baroque Peoples’ Theater
Exhibition Programs
Performance
Free
Mb brokebaroque studio

October 20, 2022, 2022, 11 AM - 1 PM
Hey Baby: Rebecca Morris & My Barbarian
Exhibition walkthrough with Hey Baby Feminist Parenting Group
Tours
Families
Free
Heybabylogo

October 01, 2022, 2022, 4 PM - 6 PM
Open House at ICA LA
Openings
All Ages
Openhouse yellow

November 18, 2022, 2022, 6 PM - 7:30 PM
Art Buzz: Rebecca Morris: 2001-2022 & My Barbarian
Tours
Free
Exhibitions
Morris

December 08, 2022, 2022, 8:30 PM - 10 PM
My Barbarian: Double Future at REDCAT
Performance
Programs
Img 0813 copy

December 09, 2022, 2022, 8:30 PM - 10 PM
My Barbarian: Double Future at REDCAT
Performance
Programs
Img 0813

December 10, 2022, 2022, 8:30 AM - 10 PM
My Barbarian: Double Future at REDCAT
Performance
Programs
Img 0813

My Barbarian Exhibition Guide (English)
My Barbarian Exhibition Guide (Spanish)

My Barbarian is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and curated by Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Mia Matthias, former Curatorial Assistant, Whitney Museum of American Art. The presentation at ICA LA is organized by Anne Ellegood, Good Works Executive Director, with Caroline Ellen Liou, Curatorial Assistant.

Lead funding for My Barbarian is provided by Karyn Kohl and Silas Dilworth.

The exhibition is generously funded by Beth Rudin DeWoody, Tim Disney, Charles Gaines and Roxana Landaverde, Jill and Peter Kraus, Sarah and Joel McHale, and the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Family Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation and Carla Shen.

Special thanks to VIELMETTER LOS ANGELES.

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

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Last updated at Friday, 21 Oct 2022 10:07 AM, by Adam Lee Log in
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STATUS ID Title Start date End date Featured image Last updated
Active Published
468 Sandra Vásquez de la Horra: The Awake Volcanoes 2025-10-11 2026-03-01 1:47pm Apr 14, 2025 Page
Active Published
336 Will Rawls: [siccer] 2025-04-05 2025-08-31
Icala 2025 04 09 034
9:36am May 08, 2025 Page
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369 Jackie Castillo: Through the Descent, Like the Return 2025-04-05 2025-08-31
Icala 2025 04 09 200
12:46pm Apr 25, 2025 Page
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501 J&L Books: Reading Room 2025-04-05 2025-08-31
J+l books courtesy jeff mclane installation view 01
11:45am Apr 24, 2025 Page
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402 An Incessant Unknowability: An Archive of Protest Inspired Typography and Its Open Source Uses 2024-12-04 2025-03-02
Genderfail bookshelf residency image 1
1:18pm Apr 23, 2025 Page
Active Published
303 Agency of Assets x SUAY
Fix the Future
2024-10-05 2024-11-17
Icala 2024 10 11 117
3:51pm Oct 18, 2024 Page
Active Published
137 Scientia Sexualis 2024-10-05 2025-03-02
Icala 2024 10 29 001
1:52pm Apr 02, 2025 Page
Active Published
270 Demian DinéYazhi' 2024-10-05 2025-08-24
Poz 1492 (2019)
3:08pm Oct 16, 2024 Page
Active Pageless
435 Reading is Transcendental 2024-10-05 2026-03-01 3:19pm Mar 04, 2025 Page
Active Published
237 Kathryn Andrews 2024-09-07 2024-11-17
K andrews dsf9640 corrected hires
1:15pm Oct 28, 2024 Page
Active Published
204 Returning 2024-06-05 2024-07-28
Returning_Exhibition Image__01.JPG
1:51pm Mar 03, 2025 Page
Active Published
171 Ooga Boogie, cha cha cha! 2024-04-10 2024-06-02
Ooga Boogie, cha cha cha!_Exhibition Image_1.JPG
4:44pm Jul 03, 2024 Page
Active Published
138 Kima Ten Years 2024-02-10 2024-04-07
Ten years exhibition image 1
4:04pm Jul 03, 2024 Page
Active Published
133 Scratching at the Moon 2024-02-10 2024-07-28
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4:36pm Dec 04, 2024 Page
Active Published
136 Foreign Investments (Bottarga in Costa Mesa) 2024-02-10 2024-07-28
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5:11pm Jul 30, 2024 Page
Active Published
132 Barbara T. Smith: Proof 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
Installation view, _Barbara T. Smith: Proof_, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, October 7, 2023–January 14, 2024. Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA.
9:33am Mar 05, 2025 Page
Active Published
134 Infinite Rehearsal with Chris Emile and No)one. Art House 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
Icala(10 10) 055
3:47pm Nov 22, 2023 Page
Active Published
135 Data (beta): the labor of looking 2023-10-07 2024-01-14
Icala(10 10) 061
2:51pm Aug 12, 2024 Page
Active Published
129 Trương Công Tùng 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
Tct 1
1:34pm Sep 13, 2023 Page
Active Published
130 Carmen Argote: I won’t abandon you, I see you, we are safe 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
Icala 2023 06 12 042
2:40pm Aug 17, 2023 Page
Active Published
131 Alberta Whittle: between a whisper and a cry 2023-06-10 2023-09-10
Aw 1
10:44am Jul 29, 2023 Page
Active Published
126 Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
Icala 2023 02 14 039
10:40am May 09, 2023 Page
Active Published
127 Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
Icala 001
1:14pm May 04, 2023 Page
Active Published
128 Christine Sun Kim: Bounce Back 2023-02-11 2024-01-14
Icala 2023 02 14 001
11:42am Feb 19, 2025 Page
Active Published
91 Rebecca Morris: 2001–2022 2022-10-01 2023-01-15
Image of exhibition introduction text, Rebecca Morris painting hands in the background.
1:10pm Apr 01, 2024 Page
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