Women Around Town by Karen Schifman
We mourn the passing of artist Yayoi Kusama who spread her polka dots throughout the art world and who wished for the world the following:
“Eternal unlimited universe, love for humanity, and longing for peace in the world.”
IN THE GALLERIES
Luis de Jesus Gallery has 3 compelling exhibits opening this month. The first features the work of
Egyptian American artist Sherin Guirguis: Into the Lake of Fire, a series of monoprints created during her recent Sam Francis Foundation “Call to Dream” Fellowship in Paris, France. Drawn from research with heritage objects held in Parisian institutions, the series explores cultural memory, honoring ancestral languages at risk of being forgotten. September 12 — October 24, 2026.
Also at Luis de Jesus is June Edmonds: Inheritance. Edmonds’ work invites critical reflection on the relationship between memory, national identity, and collective responsibility. Contextualized within a moment when Black and Brown presence and histories are increasingly targeted for erasure, the exhibition is a direct call to confront the stains of American history and envision a more equitable future. Inheritance revisits Edmonds’ iconic Flag series, reimagining the American flag as a mutable symbol whose promises of freedom and belonging remain unevenly realized. While earlier iterations honored individual figures and events in Black American history, these new paintings address the broader systemic injustices shaping the lives of American citizens and immigrants. Rather than treating the emblem as a fixed national monument, Edmonds presents it as a contested site where idealized projections collide with lived contradictions. Through these individual works, the exhibition rejects a monolithic national ethos, inviting viewers to reconsider the flag’s visual and social power through a liberatory lens. (LDJ) September 12-October 24, 2026.
A third exhibit at the gallery also presents the work of a woman artist. Phung Huynh: Bite The Hand That Feeds You,. Huynh was born in Viet Nam and is currently based in Los Angeles. Her documentary-style drawings, paintings, and sculptural installations honor immigrant experiences.. This series of drawings, paintings, and sculptural installations are centered on pink donut boxes—an iconic yet often overlooked artifact of Cambodian refugee labor in California and across the United States. Donut shops, frequently framed as success stories of refugee entrepreneurship, obscure the physical toll, racialized labor conditions, and intergenerational sacrifices that make such survival possible. Huynh reclaims the donut box as a charged container—one that holds sweetness alongside exhaustion, nostalgia alongside exploitation, and cultural memory alongside erasure. Rendered fragile, monumental, or emptied, these forms question who is feeding whom, who is consumed, and who is rendered disposable within capitalist and nationalist frameworks.(LDJ) The exhibition runs from September 12 through October 24, 2026.
Craig Krull Gallery presents Jacqueline Valenzuela: Sanctified Steel . “Valenzuela describes the work as an examination of the “rituals, labor and belief systems embedded within Chicano lowrider and Kustom automotive culture. Drawing from experience working alongside painters, fabricators and builders in an auto body shop, I consider the garage as a contemporary site of devotion – a place where acts of restoration, customization and maintenance become expressions of care, identity and remembrance.” Many of the paintings in Sanctified Steel employ a compositional framing device similar to the nicho, a shadow-box folk art object in Catholic Latino communities that serves as a devotional altar to honor saints or loved ones. One of her first prototypes in this nicho style was a work titled En tu Recuerdo, inspired by a female lowrider in Santa Ana who assembled a lavish marigold and candle filled installation with her red ’65 Corvair in remembrance of stories about her lowrider uncles. The 32 x 26” box-like assemblage combines white faux fur, fuzzy dice, jewels, and pompom fringe around an intimate painting of the car with flowers bursting from its hood. Several works in this exhibition include depictions of the Virgen de Guadalupe, an apparition of a mestiza form of Mary that appeared to an Aztec convert to Christianity near Mexico City in 1531. She has become recognized around the world as the patron saint of Mexico, the embodiment of a new cultural identity, as well as a protector of the oppressed and the outlawed, the central unifying icon of Chicano and lowrider culture. Valenzuela often combines the larger picture of Chicano life with references to individual personal narratives. (CK) September 05 – October 31, 2026.
IN THE MUSEUMS
I finally visited the wonderful Mingei Museum in San Diego’s Balboa Park. This treasure dedicated to folk art, craft and design does not disappoint. The word mingei (民芸) translates to “arts of the people” or folk art. The structure alone is beautifully and thoughtfully designed with a unique restaurant and gift shop on the first floor. Currently there are 4 main exhibitions in their second floor galleries: Farm to Craft, To Catch a Fish, Clearly Indigenous, and India Thompson: Looks like Home. Of special note and for those fans of Dale Chiuilly’s glass work, Clearly Indigenous explores how indigenous artists fuse heritage and contemporary glassmaking to illuminate their stories, connection to nature, and cultural traditions. The stories and selections in this exhibit are outstanding. This is just one example titled Killer Whale Totem by Preston Singletary.
Now for a bit about India Thompson’s exhibit. India Thompson: Looks Like Home explores emotional attachment to the ordinary domestic objects in places we call home during the age of renting. By meticulously weaving works from reed, the artist creates versions of her apartment’s contents, unpacking what it means to live in a space that is not legally hers. Thompson transforms familiar, perhaps oft-overlooked, forms we depend on in our daily routine—such as a microwave, toilet, or refrigerator—into poignant sculptural pieces. Thru October 25, 2026.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s current exhibit on the second floor of BCAM, Eileen Cowin: Between Panic and Paradise highlights the career of the acclaimed multi-media artist. Cowin is celebrated for her provocative, open-ended visual narratives that blur the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. Based in Los Angeles since 1975, her work spans photography, video, installation, and public art. Cowin is highly regarded for treating the camera lens as an unreliable narrator, utilizing carefully staged gestures, cinematic framing, and everyday props to construct psychological depth and unresolved stories. Thru January 3, 2027.
There are two noteworthy exhibits at the Craft Contemporary. The first is part of Craft Contemporary’s Clay Biennial series, Tierra marks a reconsideration of the biennial’s conceptual and material parameters as this exhibit features works that treat clay as more than a material, tierra expands its lens to explore artist practices deeply rooted in land, earth, and relationship. Exhibition artists include Jackie Amézquita, Natalia Arbelaez, Syd Carpenter, Teresa Castro, Armando Guadalupe Cortés, rafa esparza, Miguel Fernández de Castro, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Karla García, Christine Howard Sandoval, Joanna Keane Lopez, Ruben Olguin, Iman Person, Jeri Redcorn. Thru October 25, 2026.
Also at the museum is Earthen Comforts: Airing Earth is a courtyard installation led by Liz Gálvez (Office e.g.) that stages mass and fiber as shared infrastructures for collective comfort in the Los Angeles summer. Building on the practice’s ongoing investigation into heat resilience and material experimentation by staging thermal infrastructures as architectural and civic propositions, the project adapts passive cooling strategies from desert contexts into the M&A x Craft Contemporary Courtyard. Thru October 25, 2026.
An interesting photography exhibit opens this month at the Getty Center. Every Minute is History: Five Views of Los Angeles focuses on the work of five photographers whose distinct approaches to the medium helped expand traditional representations of Chicano/a communities in Los Angeles during the second half of the 20th century. Drawing from a wide range of influences, including social documentary practices, staged scenes, fashion and the popular press, these artists—Laura Aguilar, Reynaldo Rivera, George Rodriguez, Patssi Valdez, and Ricardo Valverde—pushed the medium in new and often provocative directions. September 1 thru January 3, 2027. (Image below by Laura Aguilar).
Don’t forget about the astounding installation by the late Betye Saar at the The Huntington.
Drifting Toward Twilight is a commissioned site-specific installation that features a 17-foot-long vintage wooden canoe and found objects, including birdcages, antlers, and natural materials harvested by Saar from The Huntington’s grounds. On view through November 2027.
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