By Abe Ahn – HyperAllergic.com – Photo: author for Hyperallergic | Abe Ahn.
Photo: Installation view, Lauren Halsey: we still here, there, MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles
Seeing a neighborhood transform is a jarring experience. In Los Angeles, a panaderia could give way to a fancy café or a botánica to a curio shop for Silver Lake shamans. The consequence of these changes over time is often the forced migration of people out of cohesive communities, disrupting the sense of belonging that results from shared memory and collective history. These transformations gradually atomize neighborhoods to a point where long-time locals may feel like strangers in their own home. For the artist Lauren Halsey, however, gentrification is anything but inevitable. Her site-specific installation we still here, there at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) transforms the typically austere space of the museum into a utopian dream made of the people, symbols, and imagery of South Central Los Angeles.
