The Maps That Failed Us Too, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Luciana Abait, examines the nature of the relationship between humanity and Planet Earth.
The monumental sculptural piece The Maps that Failed Us is a piece from Abait’s Displacement Series which speaks to the nature of borders and the human displacement caused by natural disasters. Drawing from her own experience as an immigrant, the artist created a collage of various maps which blurs and skews borders and countries as we know them. Bodies of land are no longer in logical order, speaking to the interconnectedness of the world and how each destructive event affects neighboring countries and the rest of the world. The resulting work is an enveloping piece that becomes its own range of mountains to explore and subverts the concept of border restrictions upon citizens seeking “a new and dignified life.”
The Iceberg Series includes works on paper which combine digitally crafted images of icebergs and mountains with elements of human-made objects. The skies are vibrant and unnatural colors – alluring at first but ultimately concerning. The imagined landscapes, while intoxicatingly beautiful, examine the effect that humanity has had on the natural environment and urge us to consider the future of the planet. The artist applies delicately rendered moments of pastel drawing to the digital compositions to achieve a balance of color which allows the viewer to enter the surreal space.
The Maps That Failed Us Too is running concurrently with a solo exhibition of Luciana Abait’s work that is on view through December 10th, 2022 at Laband Art Gallery.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Luciana Abait was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and is currently based in Los Angeles where she is a resident artist of 18TH Street Arts Center in Santa Monica.
Her photo-based two- and three-dimensional works deal with climate change and environmental fragility, and their impacts on immigration in particular.
Abait’s artworks have been shown widely in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia in solo shows in galleries, museums and international art fairs.
Selected exhibitions include Luciana Abait: On the Verge at Laband Gallery (Loyola Marymount University), A Letter to The Future at Los Angeles International
Airport in California; Flow, Blue at Rockford College Art Museum and Luciana Abait at Jean Albano Gallery in Illinois; Nest at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania;
and ARCO in Spain.
Some other diverse public art projects include her being part of The Billboard Creative (where her artwork was displayed on a billboard in Hollywood), Sur
Biennial, Rio Hondo College and LUMINEX in Los Angeles, where her 34 foot high immersive video installation “Agua” was projected onto a historic cultural
monument: the Petroleum Securities Building in Downtown Los Angeles.
Abait’s works are held in private, public and corporate collections from the United States, Europe, Latin America and East Asia. She is the recipient of the 2016 Santa Monica Individual Artist Fellowship Award and the 2022 “Art Lives Here” Award by the Geffen Playhouse.
