Uploaded November 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The third conversation in our Imaginaries of LA series brings together artists Umar Rashid and Sandy Rodriguez. They will discuss how interweaving histories, cartographies, and cosmologies helps us see the stories of conquest, violence, and survival that constitute Los Angeles’s past and present in new ways.
Since before its official founding in 1781, Los Angeles has existed on contested Tongva land. Although long recognized as a diverse and multicultural city, its history is marked by segregation, racist city planning, and harmful urban redevelopment policies. Imaginaries of LA is a series of conversations between Los Angeles-based artists and curators that explores what is at stake in the various strategies that artists use to represent Los Angeles and provides a forum for debate about the past, present and future of the city.
Umar Rashid (also known as Frohawk Two Feathers) is a natural storyteller. He employs writing, illustration, painting, and sculpture to construct fabulations or, put simply, alternative historical narratives that reference a panoply of cultures, collapsing geography and time.
Sandy Rodriguez is an artist and researcher who investigates the methods and materials of painting and image-making across cultures and histories, exploring the intersections of history, social memory, contemporary politics, and cultural production.
This program is moderated by Zanna Gilbert, senior research specialist, and was organized by Zanna Gilbert and Isabel Wade, research assistant at Getty Research Institute.
This event is in conjunction with 12 Sunsets: Exploring Ed Ruscha’s Archive, an interactive website that allows users to discover thousands of photographs of Sunset Boulevard taken by artist Ed Ruscha between 1965 and 2007.
This program is part of the GRI's Untold Stories series, which celebrates the "untold stories" of visual culture, exploring how new works, people, and interpretations can shed new light on our understanding of and appreciation for the history of art.
This event occurred on November 10, 2021.
Learn more about this event:
https://www.getty.edu/visit/cal/events/ev_3356.html
The third conversation in our Imaginaries of LA series brings together artists Umar Rashid and Sandy Rodriguez. They will discuss how interweaving histories, cartographies, and cosmologies helps us see the stories of conquest, violence, and survival that constitute Los Angeles’s past and present in new ways.
Since before its official founding in 1781, Los Angeles has existed on contested Tongva land. Although long recognized as a diverse and multicultural city, its history is marked by segregation, racist city planning, and harmful urban redevelopment policies. Imaginaries of LA is a series of conversations between Los Angeles-based artists and curators that explores what is at stake in the various strategies that artists use to represent Los Angeles and provides a forum for debate about the past, present and future of the city.
Umar Rashid (also known as Frohawk Two Feathers) is a natural storyteller. He employs writing, illustration, painting, and sculpture to construct fabulations or, put simply, alternative historical narratives that reference a panoply of cultures, collapsing geography and time.
Sandy Rodriguez is an artist and researcher who investigates the methods and materials of painting and image-making across cultures and histories, exploring the intersections of history, social memory, contemporary politics, and cultural production.
This program is moderated by Zanna Gilbert, senior research specialist, and was organized by Zanna Gilbert and Isabel Wade, research assistant at Getty Research Institute.
This event is in conjunction with 12 Sunsets: Exploring Ed Ruscha’s Archive, an interactive website that allows users to discover thousands of photographs of Sunset Boulevard taken by artist Ed Ruscha between 1965 and 2007.
This program is part of the GRI's Untold Stories series, which celebrates the "untold stories" of visual culture, exploring how new works, people, and interpretations can shed new light on our understanding of and appreciation for the history of art.
This event occurred on November 10, 2021.
Learn more about this event:
https://www.getty.edu/visit/cal/events/ev_3356.html
