Hello Los Angeles!

It’s culture writer Carolina A. Miranda, and this week I’m reporting on an intriguing show inspired by Diné (Navajo) forms.

First, I wanted to give you a heads up that CARLA (aka Contemporary Art Review LA) is having its annual fundraising soiree and auction on May 9th at Night Gallery in downtown. This vital LA art magazine, founded by Lindsay Preston Zappas, features reviews, profiles, and artist recommendations. In our narrowing media landscape, they are a critical source of information about what is happening artistically in our sprawling city. I personally dig their Snap Reviews — short pieces you can read online or in a newsletter format.

I’ll be at the soirée and hope you’ll be there, too. If you can’t make it, you can always make a bid on their fundraising auction, now available online. Find the deets here.

Now, onto the art, as well as looks at…

• LACMA!
• The inimitable High Desert Test Sites
• Purple Rain

At top: A view of CARLA magazine's Ten Year Soirée & Art Auction last year. (Leah Rom)

POWER UP

Nanibah Chacon, Bed rot (2026). (Timothy Hawkinson Gallery)

During a flash visit to New York City last month, I managed to see the latest iteration  of the Whitney Biennial. It was a quick visit — I had a flight to catch — but was stopped in my tracks by the sight of three sculptures on one of the museum’s decks. Created by New Mexico artist Nanibah Chacon, they consist of three larger-than-life steel pieces that, on first impact, resemble electrical towers. But when you look closer, you’ll see that their forms evoke the Diné deities found in sand painting — anthropomorphic figures in spiked headdresses, each bearing decorative elements such as large metallic beads and dangling bells. Made of industrial materials, the sculptures camouflage well with the Manhattan skyline, which is cluttered with antennas, rooftop ventilation units, and water towers. But they nonetheless manifest as supernatural — as if a trio of otherworldly beings landed on earth and decided to take the form of the urban landscape around them.

If you can’t make it to New York to see the biennial, the good news is that Chacon currently has a small solo show on view at Timothy Hawkinson Gallery in the Fairfax area, which features three of her small-scale steel pieces, along with a new series of paintings inspired by the concept of “bed rot” (the act of intentionally remaining in bed and being unproductive). Also on view is a new wall sculpture made from a rainbow of bright neon, a modern depiction of a Diné deity that connects heaven and earth.

 One of Chacon's sculptures at the Whitney Biennial: Our Gods Walk Among Us, 2026. (Carolina A. Miranda) 

Chacon, who was born and raised in New Mexico, is of Chicana and Diné heritage and was raised on the Navajo reservation. She is perhaps best known as a muralist, crafting graceful compositions that feature a mix of nature and people, while also engaging social and environmental issues. Visit her hometown of Albuquerque, and you are bound to stumble into one of her works on a city wall (as I did in 2021). Likewise, if you live on the Eastside of LA, you may be familiar with her 2017 mural, ¡Resiste!, which showed two women with Indigenous features and the word “resist” in building-sized letters. For years, it occupied the western wall of the Self Help Graphics & Art building in Boyle Heights.

Her current show at Hawkinson, …And I’ll say, it could be worse (reflections on light through dark times), shows the artist exploring intimate spaces. The Bed Rot paintings feature piles of brightly patterned Diné blankets in abstracted settings that could be read as places to sleep — the time when we are most vulnerable. Bed rot implies decay, but Chacon counters with elegant combinations of color and pattern. Moreover, across some of the paintings, you’ll find the repeating images of a small cross resembling a plus sign, a symbol of the Spider Woman of Diné lore, who taught women how to weave — a figure that can signify benevolence and protection. The instinct to take to bed can reflect a desire to hide, to escape the darkness around us. But such a space can be a site of consolation and inspiration, too.

An installation view of paintings and a sculpture by Chacon at Hawkinson. (Timothy Hawkinson Gallery)

The steel sculptures likewise take contemporary concepts and fuse them with a Diné worldview. The coal refineries of the Navajo Nation are studded with masses of electrical infrastructure. Chacon was interested in exploring the idea of what it might mean to reconceive these structures beyond their utilitarian use. Could the electrical tower of today serve as the cultural artifact of tomorrow? Could something ordinary carry in its engineering an element of myth?

Like her pieces at the Whitney, the trio of steel sculptures on view at Hawkinson show her testing out those ideas to remarkable effect. Though these are finer and much smaller, rendered at a human scale (in the range of six feet), they are nonetheless captivating, allowing the viewer to come face to face with the divine.

The sculptures engage the forms within sand painting in an intriguing way. Traditionally, sand painting has been practiced as part of ritual ceremony, often for healing, painstakingly laid out on the ground, then destroyed upon a ceremony’s conclusion. One way to think about these works is as a temporary threshold where the human and spirit worlds meet. It is a site of great energy, which can be virtuous or bring with it the possibility of destruction. In our heavily industrialized, AI-addled society, an apt metaphor might be an electrical tower.

AROUND THE INTERNET

• I review LACMA’s new Peter Zumthor-designed galleries for Bloomberg Citylab. Come for the Erewhon smoothies, stick around for my ruminations on glare.
• For incisive takes on the building, see Shane Reiner-Roth in Dezeen and Jori Finkel in The Art Newspaper.
• And Leah Ollman has a great essay on its curation.
• Kriston Capps has a must-read on Trump’s proposed arch.
• The National Gallery of Art has received a historic $116 million gift.
• Julia Halperin profiles Alma Allen, the artist who will (rather controversially) represent the US at the Venice Biennale.
• Plus, a good story about artist Andrea Zittel and the 25th anniversary of High Desert Test Sites in Joshua Tree.
• Paula Mejía reports on the market’s growing taste for Latin American art.
• Coco Fusco has an insightful review of the Wifredo Lam show at MoMA.
• Gabrielle Bruney has a fascinating essay in Places about the disappearing public bench.
• Abstract painter James Hayward, who was born in San Francisco, has died at 82.
• The beloved Michael Tilson Thomas, who served as a guest conductor at the LA Phil, and later led the San Francisco Symphony, is dead at 81.
• Times classical music critic Mark Swed comes through with an appreciation about what the aforementioned meant for LA.
• A new non-profit, surf- and skate-oriented art space called Chameleon is opening its doors in Venice on April 29th.
• Arts District stalwart, The Box gallery, will close after 19 years.
• Signing off with this spectacular photo essay featuring the Minnesotans who tried out for Prince’s Purple Rain.

Thanks as always for subscribing! 😎

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