Tuesday, December 12, 2023, at 3 pm
Getty Center and Online
Free | Advance ticket required
To attend in person, click “Get Tickets”
To watch online, register via Zoom.
Conceptual artist Gala Porras-Kim is the subject of the latest film in Getty’s Artist Dialogues series, which engages L.A. artists in conversations exploring their art, materials, fabrication processes and working methods, as well as their thoughts on conservation.
Porras-Kim takes the practice of collecting, conserving and exhibiting objects as the subject of her work, which highlights the way these institutionalized actions inadvertently create new meanings. A self-appointed advocate for entities—spiritual, microbial, or otherwise—that may lay claim to these objects, Porras-Kim brings focus to their original functions and contexts, and how they can subvert common practices in collecting institutions. Her work often takes the form of lusciously rendered, large-scale drawings of catalogued collections, but she has also employed materials such as dust, efflorescing concrete, and mold spores.
In the film Gala Porras-Kim, the Living Collection (2023, 11:25 minutes), Porras-Kim describes her history, her process, and her interest in the uncertainties and biases inherent in museum practices that are typically presumed to be “scientific.”
Following a screening of the film, she joins conservator Sanchita Balachandran, Director of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, whose writings take a critical look at the roles of conservators and whose current research centers on the original users and makers of ancient objects. Together they will discuss Porras-Kim’s work and its implications for current art conservation approaches. Questions from the audience will follow.
Artist Dialogues is part of the Getty Conservation Institute’s Art in LA project.
1200 Getty Center Drive Los Angeles, CA 90049 (Get Directions)
