Lauren Halsey (United States, b. 1987), yes we're open and yes we're black owned, 2021. Acrylic, enamel, and mirror on wood. The Studio Museum in Harlem; gift of Beth Rudin DeWoody
© Lauren Halsey
Grounded in the iconography and spaces of her home neighborhood of South Central, Los Angeles, Lauren Halsey proposes an architecture for new Black queer spaces, wherein structures are reflective of and in service to their surrounding communities.
Halsey collects items from her neighborhood to use in her art, including party flyers, hair spray cans, and action figures. In her installations, she brings items considered “low-culture” into art spaces as celebrations of those very objects, while paying close attention to quotidian qualities of Black life in the United States. The brightly painted boxes of her large-scale sculptures archive signage and symbols from South Central and blend them with ancient Egyptian iconography to draw a visual, cultural, and genealogical link across time periods. These works are mobile. So, while they belong to and celebrate her neighborhood, they also embody its spirit no matter where they appear across the globe. Alongside her artistic practice, she runs the Summaeverythang Community Center, an organization in South Central dedicated to the empowerment of her local community.
