Rafa Esparza talks about his Tierra. Sangre. Oro. exhibition with Kate Green at Artforum …

My interest in browning the white cube—by building with adobe bricks, making brown bodies present, and collaborating—is a response to entering traditional art spaces and not seeing myself reflected. This has been the case not only physically, in terms of the whiteness of those spaces, but also in terms of the histories of art they uphold.

Adobe bricks are loaded; they signify brownness, the land, and labor. They also reference my own history: my father’s practice of working with adobe and my experience of adobe brickmaking as a collaborative process. By building with adobe in galleries I am bringing all of this—and the muddy history of American soil, colonization, and progress—into a traditionally white context.

Keep reading in Artforum.

Liz Craft’s Candy Colored Clowns in Comic Future. Photography © Fredrik Nilsen

 

LA artist and Comic Future alum, Liz Craft, was recently interviewed for the “Top Ten” feature in Artforum, where she gives a shout out to Ballroom and recounts her time in Marfa:

Good curating doesn’t just bring together interesting combinations of art; it also brings together artists. Last fall, Ballroom Marfa invited me to participate in a show called “Comic Future,” and as it happened, the majority of people included in the exhibition came out for the opening. For three days we hung out in this small Texas town.

I liked everyone involved, but had a particularly good time with Sue Williams. The experience made me remember how much I like artists.

 

Check out the rest of Craft’s “Top Ten” at Artforum.