Project Description

Gala Porras-Kim’s artwork for the main station entrance will depict a selection of objects sourced from The Fowler Museum at UCLA that reflect the cultures and histories of various communities in the surrounding area. These objects will be rendered in display methods typically found in art institutions, bringing elements of a museum into public space. The artwork asks us to consider representations of history, how objects come to be displayed within an institution, and how categories of display can change the definition of objects and create new relationships and narratives between time periods and cultures. The artist hopes that regular riders will look for and find a new object or artifact to contemplate each time they commute.

Artist Statement

“Many of my works deal with representations of history through understanding how objects exist within an institution and the negotiation between their historical life and their current life in museums. The physical form is as Index drawings that bring various objects from collections together that do not have a historical reference to each other as a new categorization of things they now have in common is made from their current circumstance.”

About the Artist

GALA PORRAS-KIM (b. 1984, Bogotá, Colombia) employs a rigorous, research-based practice to investigate how artifacts are framed (or not) by the institutions that steward them, and how social and political contexts influence representation in the fields of linguistics, history, and conservation. Porras-Kim earned a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts in 2009 and a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2012. Her residencies have included La Tallera, Proyecto Siqueiros, Mexico (2019); Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2020); Delfina Foundation, London (2021); and the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2022). Porras-Kim’s work has been written about extensively and featured in exhibitions around the world. Among the many awards she has received are the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2015), Creative Capital Grant (2015), Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2016), Artadia Los Angeles Award (2017), and Art Matters Foundation Grant (2019).

Location: Westwood/UCLA Station