--- title: šŸ› A Bright Bug Has Taken Over the Vincent Price Art Museum --- Anida Yoeu Aliā€™s installation at VPAM is about visibility. Ā Plus, baseball at Manzanar and a Black Panther coloring book | Not rendering correctly? View this email as a web page here. Hello, El Lay: Itā€™s culture writer Carolina A. Miranda, ready to try all 54 best Mexican restaurants in LA, as ranked by LA Taco. This week, contributor Sharon Mizota has a dispatch about a museum-engulfing work. But first, here are three happenings on the horizon: Lita Albuquerque: Cosmic Land, at the Palm Springs Art Museum. A survey covering nearly six decades of a SoCal artist known for her starry gallery installations and her richly hued interventions in nature. Opens October 16th in Palm Springs; psmuseum.org. The Manzanar Baseball Project. Artist Dan Kwong has been working to preserve the memory of the Japanese American baseball teams that played while imprisoned at the World War II-era incarceration center in the Owens Valley. Now he is staging a reenactment of a famous doubleheader at the site of the camp. October 17th, 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM, at the Manzanar National Historic Site; mzbbp.org. Canā€™t make it? The 18th Street Arts Center will livestream. Glenn Ligon, Sit So Your Back Isnā€™t Against the Door, at Hauser & Wirth. Ligon has long created works inspired by Black pride coloring books. A new series draws from a Black Panther coloring book that was circulated by the FBI to discredit the organization. Through January 17th; hauserwirth.com. A correction: Last week, I misspelled Silke Otto-Knappā€™s name in a description of her show at Regen Projects. Her surname is Knapp, not Knappe. Apologies! Now, onto the main eventā€¦ At top: Particle Horizon (2014), by Lita Albuquerque, who will be the subject of a solo at the Palm Springs Art Museum. (Lita Albuquerque / Laguna Beach Art Museum) THE ARTIST IS PRESENT By Sharon Mizota Anida Yoeu Ali in The Buddhist Bug at the Vincent Price Art Museum. (Monica Orozco / VPAM) Whatā€™s it like to be embraced by a bug? I have been known to startle, swat, or scream when our insect brethren get too close, but I resolved to play it cool for The Buddhist Bug, an exhibition and performance by Anida Yoeu Ali at the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM). The ā€œbugā€ in question is an enormous, saffron-colored, worm-like creature that insinuates itself into everyday life. Ali performs as its head, her body completely swallowed by a long, ribbed tube of orange fabric and a matching hijab that leaves only her face exposed. At VPAM, the bugā€™s flexible body twists and turns spectacularly through the second-floor gallery, extending out to the museumā€™s atrium and down into the lobby. There, during the opening performance, two feet emerged from the other end, perched quietly on a bench. (They were portrayed by East L.A. College theater student Estefani Hernandez.) Filling most of the museum with its ebullient curves, this bug isnā€™t scurrying for the corners; it boldly takes up space. The rest of the works in the show are photo and video documentation of other such performances, mostly in Aliā€™s native Cambodia (recorded variously by Vinh Dao, Masahiro Sugano, Dylan Maddux, and Adele Pham). Humorous, surreal, and often quite touching, these works depict the bug coiled on a cyclo (a three-wheeled bicycle taxi), draped across a wooden footbridge, or encircling a group of students in a classroom. Although the bug is clearly alien, life goes on around it: people go to work and school, make offerings at a temple, enjoy a meal or a carnival ride. The bug is simply present, suggesting that even radical difference need not be disruptive or cause for alarm. An installation view shows Ali's bright bug out in the world.Ā (Paul Salveson / VPAM) At the same time, one canā€™t help but note the humble environs: crumbling buildings, stray animals, children brushing their teeth or washing plastic bags in a river. The bug is a startlingly flamboyant presence in this place, and a quiet witness to life in the long shadow of war and imperialism. Cambodiaā€™s modern history is riven by occupation and upheaval: first under French colonialism, then the Japanese Empire, and then one of the most brutal regimes in human history. Ali was born about a year before the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, decimating the countryā€™s economy, infrastructure, and civil society, and enacting a genocide that killed at least two million people, a quarter of the population. When Vietnamese forces toppled the regime in 1979, Ali and her family escaped as refugees, eventually settling in Chicago. Ali returned to her birth country for five years in the 2010s, when the works in the show were created. The bugā€™s insertion into predominantly Buddhist Cambodia reflects Aliā€™s outsider status there as a member of the Muslim Cham community, and as a Cambodian American. It also reverberates with her experiences in the US, where being Asian, Muslim, a refugee, and a woman is, to put it lightly, not always welcomed. With a saffron hijab ā€” the same color as Buddhist monksā€™ robes ā€” the bug is a hybrid creature, neither wholly Muslim nor Buddhist, insect nor human, stranger nor friend. Seemingly unaffected by the activities swirling around it, the bugā€™s face is typically expressionless. A subtle exception occurs in the two-channel video Into the Night (2015), which depicts the bugā€™s visit to a Phnom Penh nightclub. Young Asian women gyrate around its body, partying with much older white men. Accompanied not by dance music, but by an ominous, droning sound, this footage is intercut with pensive close-ups of the womenā€™s unsmiling faces, intimating that the arrangement is not entirely of their choosing. We also get close-ups of the bug, whose eyes look ever so slightly moist. Equanimity and presence ā€” simply being with what is ā€” are core values of Buddhism; another is compassion. Ali's "bug" winds throughout the Vincent Price Art Museum. (Paul Salveson / VPAM) These qualities also surfaced in the opening performance last month. Visitors lined up to meet the bug, which for some was chiefly an opportunity to take a selfie. Ali didnā€™t seem to mind; she didnā€™t speak but would playfully lean in, nudging people with her head. When it was my turn, I pressed my palms together (a Buddhist gesture of coming together) and bowed. The bug bowed lower and longer (Aliā€™s core must be very strong!), so I dropped to my knees. Before I knew it, we were entwined, our necks nestled lightly together. I sighed a little; she hummed in reply. It was a small moment of respite from the churn of the world around us, and then it was over. I had been embraced by a bug, and I liked it. šŸ›šŸ›šŸ› Anida Yoeu Ali: The Buddhist Bug is on view at the Vincent Price Art Museum through May 22nd, 2027; vpam.org. MORE LIKE THISā€¦ For another facet of the Cambodian American experience, check out Phung Huynh: Bite The Hand That Feeds You at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles in downtown. Huynh, who has Cambodian and Vietnamese roots, inscribes graphite portraits of her family and community on pink boxes from LAā€™sĀ Cambodian donut shops, reminding us of the refugee and immigrant labor that facilitates our sugar high. Sharon Mizota is a critic and archivist based in LA. Her work has appeared in the LA Times, Bomb, Hyperallergic, and KCET. Sponsor Creatures of a Feather Dance Together in BIRDY Taiwanese choreographer LAI Hung-chung continues to show he's a rising star.Ā  ā€“Ā The List Catch the Los Angeles debut of Taiwanā€™s HUNG DANCE with a performance of BIRDY, a captivating dance work that blends Tai Chi, Chinese opera traditions, and contemporary movement. Choreographed by artistic director LAI Hung-chung and set to a mix of electronic and Chinese classical music, BIRDY draws on imagery of birds, cages, and flight to portray the journey of breaking through limitations while seeking balance and freedom. One night only! Thursday, October 29th, at the University of Southern California. Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative. Tickets are free and open to everyone, as part of its accessible-arts-for-all model. RSVP TODAY AROUND THE INTERNET Anna Kornbluh has a terrific essay in Art in America about the US bicentennial and the idea of generating a cultural common ground. A proposal suggests replacingĀ the gallery hub at Bergamot Station with affordable housing, sowing uncertainty for the galleries that remain. William Poundstone reports on the works in LACMAā€™s collection that will be on long-term view at the Las Vegas Museum of Art. Plus, Phillip Pyle goes to town on Erewhonā€™s new LACMA-inspired smoothie. The Colburn Schoolā€™s new Frank Gehry-designed concert hall is set to open in September 2027. Long Beach has a new culture mag called The Ardent, and its most recent cover features art by Christian Svanes Kolding.Ā  How prefab and modular design ā€” and the spirit of the Case Study houses ā€” is guiding post-fire rebuilding in LA. The Hospital of Emotions is staging an artsy Halloween horror experience in the basement. Signing off with Ancient Arab Mom Weapons (which are strikingly similar to Ancient Latina Mom Weapons). Thanks for reading!Ā šŸ¤“ Did someone forward you this email? Subscribe to Art Insider for more design, art, and culture from Carolina Miranda. SUBSCRIBE KCRWĀ 1900 Pico Blvd.Ā Ā Santa Monica,Ā CAĀ 90405Ā  You received this email because you are subscribed to Art Insider from KCRW. Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive. Unsubscribe from all future emails. | | --- |