Lauren Halsey is an artist who reimagines the relationship between architecture and community. For the Biennale Arte, Halsey presents a new installation at the end of the Arsenale comprised of a series of monumental columns inspired by everyday life in South Central Los Angeles. Halsey has made columns before, some inscribed with words and images, others hand painted. For this iteration, she recontextualises the form of the Hathoric column by carving the capitals with the likenesses and stories of people from her neighbourhood, honouring their contributions. This remix of temporalities – the ancient with the contemporary – is a political gesture to uphold the Black and African American diaspora and its history with the same reverence as other architectural landmarks across the West. The installation, embedded with power and stories from Halsey’s local community, stands in conversation with the rest of Venice’s architecture.
This is the first time the work of Lauren Halsey is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Juan Silverio
