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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
Yellow Pages
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Back To Exhibitions
October 01, 2022
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January 15
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Back To Exhibitions
October 01, 2022
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January 15

My Barbarian

Project Room
Performance
Icala 2022 10 06 004
9 Images

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
Resources
Credits & Sponsors
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
Database Exhibitions
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STATUS ID Title Start date End date Featured image Last updated
Active Published
126 Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
Icala 2023 02 14 039
11:54am Mar 24, 2023 Page
Active Published
127 Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork 2023-02-11 2023-05-14
Icala 001
3:53pm Mar 22, 2023 Page
Active Published
128 Christine Sun Kim: Bounce Back 2023-02-11 2023-09-10
Icala 2023 02 14 001
11:48am Mar 24, 2023 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.
12:32pm Nov 16, 2022 Page
Active Published
92 My Barbarian 2022-10-01 2023-01-15
Icala 2022 10 06 004
4:57pm Nov 08, 2022 Page
Active Published
90 The Condition of Being Addressable 2022-06-18 2022-09-04
Icala 06.20.220449 edit
12:07pm Aug 04, 2022 Page
Active Published
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.
9:13pm Jan 19, 2023 Page
Active Published
87 Jamal Cyrus: The End of My Beginning 2022-02-05 2022-05-29
Installation view, "Jamal Cyrus: The End of My Beginning," Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, February 5–May 29, 2022. Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA
12:18pm Jul 06, 2022 Page
Active Published
88 Sara Cwynar: Apple Red/Grass Green/Sky Blue 2022-02-05 2022-05-29
Sara Cwynar, "Glass Life," 2021. Six channel 2K video with sound, TRT: 19:02 min. Courtesy the artist; The Approach, London; Cooper Cole, Toronto; and Foxy Production, New York. Installation view, "Sara Cwynar: Apple Red/Grass Green/Sky Blue," Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, February 5–May 29, 2022. Photo: Jeff McLane/ICA LA
5:53pm May 03, 2022 Page
Active Published
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
Active Published
89 Minerva Cuevas: Female Earth 2021-10-10 2022-06-02
Icala witchhunt 2021 10 12 077 (1)
10:47am May 24, 2022 Page
Active Published
81 Queer Communion:
Ron Athey
2021-06-19 2021-09-05
Icala 2021 07 02 009
10:15pm Sep 01, 2021 Page
Active Published
82 Kenneth Tam:
Silent Spikes
2021-06-19 2021-09-05
Icala 2021 07 02 002
11:12am Aug 03, 2021 Page
Active Published
80 The Inconstant World 2021-03-06 2021-05-30
Tiw horvitz
9:42am Dec 22, 2021 Page
Active Published
79 Online Screening: Stanya Kahn’s No Go Backs and Earlier Works 2020-12-09 2021-01-10
Sk1b
4:13pm Jan 22, 2021 Page
Active Published
77 Harold Mendez:
Let us gather in a flourishing way
2020-09-26 2021-01-10
Icala 2020 10 05 014
3:17pm Feb 07, 2022 Page
Active Published
78 Stanya Kahn:
No Go Backs
2020-09-26 2021-01-10
Sk1a
6:46pm Dec 04, 2020 Page
Active Published
69 Ree Morton:
The Plant That Heals May Also Poison
2020-02-16 2020-07-19
Icala 2020 03 06 025
1:06pm Jan 18, 2022 Page
Active Published
74 Ann Greene Kelly 2020-02-16 2020-07-19
Icala 2020 03 06 001
1:06pm Jan 18, 2022 Page
Active Published
75 Agency of Assets x El Clasificado 2019-12-06 2020-01-26
Meztly cover
4:32pm Dec 02, 2021 Page
Active Published
73 CURRENT:LA FOOD Public Art Triennial 2019 2019-10-05 2019-11-03
CURRENT:LA FOOD
11:04am Oct 07, 2019 Page
Active Published
67 No Wrong Holes:
Thirty Years of Nayland Blake
2019-09-29 2020-01-26
Ica blake 5
3:57pm Oct 21, 2020 Page
Active Published
72 Sadie Barnette:
The New Eagle Creek Saloon
2019-09-29 2020-01-26
Ica barnette 7
5:36pm Aug 26, 2020 Page
Active Published
70 Hervé Tullet: Ideal Exhibition 2019-07-14 2019-09-08
Icala96194
11:32am Dec 07, 2021 Page
Active Published
71 Worldwide Orphans: Element of Play® 2019-07-14 2019-09-08
Worldwide Orphans: Element of Play® program in Vietnam.
12:42pm Dec 07, 2021 Page
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