Artist iris yirei hu’s exhibition at Visitor Welcome Center is a heartfelt commemoration of her “spirit sister,” writer emi kuriyama, who passed away last year. Her works on canvas and fabric are by turns riotously inchoate and placidly austere, mixing symbolic imagery with excerpts from kuriyama’s writings. Both works are connected by “placenta,” a large, twisted fabric rope lying on a quilt in the middle of the floor. SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter »Although much of the symbolism is opaque, the works have an intense, dream-like quality centered around notions of birth, transformation and sacrifice. The exhibition also offers a handout of kuriyama’s poetry, from which much of the text in hu’s works derives.

Source: Los Angeles Times February 04, 2017 15:22 UTC