Exhibition Reception: Sherin Guirguis “My Place is the Placeless”

Exhibition Opening Reception
May 13, 2017 | 5-8 PM
18th Street Arts Center
Join us to celebrate the Artist Lab residency of Sherin Guirguis, as well as exhibitions from Antoni Hervàs, Sara Debevec, Delia Prvački, and Milenko Prvački.
Reception includes meet and greet with the artists, refreshments, and art-viewing.
My Place is the Placeless
Sherin Guirguis
Artist Lab Residency & Exhibition: April 24 – June 30, 2017
Main Gallery
Los Angeles-based Egyptian artist Sherin Guirguis uses painting, drawing, and sculpture to explore the hidden histories of places and communities. In her works, the political and social content is inseparable from formal and material considerations. In her Artist Lab residency and exhibition, she will create an environment for investigations into the intersections of art and activism through the explorations of materials made from the earth’s elements, including pigment, paper, soil, and water. Guirguis seeks to address problems of displacement, environmental destruction, and cultural and historical memory loss through conversations with local artists engaged in political activism, and through workshops with local Santa Monica youth and adult participants.
A Home Anywhere
Sara Debevec, Milenko Prvački, Delia Prvački
May 11 – 26, 2017
Atrium Gallery
This exhibition asks three artists to respond to historical traumas they are assumed to share based on geographic proximity, or shared national heritage. For artists Delia and Milenko Prvački and Sara Debevec, the shared geography of the former Yugoslavia is a distant one, both physically and in time. Whether there is insight to be found in their proximity, there is likely to be comfort. In sculpture, works on paper, and video, these three artists make a home anywhere.
In the Project Room: Antoni Hervàs
May 11 – 26, 2017
Antoni Hervàs’ artistic practice stems from research into the limits of drawing. At 18th Street, Hervàs will exhaustively investigate the ONE archive at USC, focused on gender and queer issues and local histories, seeking clues on how personal narratives could be intertwined with this complex network of knowledge. Hervàs is interested in following the traces of Queercore culture, which was born in LA, and other local subcultures such as “roller girl derby,” reflecting the practice of minority sports as a form of resistance; and local spectacles including Tiki culture or the “Luchavaboom,” where the merging of cabaret, psychedelia, and lucha libre (as in choreographed fighting) gives birth to figures like Cassandro, the queenqueer of the luchadores.