Anastasiya Yarovenko / Group XLIII, Oct 2016 - Mar 2017

FINAL PROJECTS: GROUP XLIII

2/17/17 to 2/26/17

Mackey Apartments & Garage Top 1137 S. Cochran Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90019

Since arriving in Los Angeles the previous autumn, Vienna-based, Ukraine-born artist Anastasiya Yarovenko asked “how” one is supposed to be in the city: Is L.A. only for owners of private property? Is L.A. only for those with keys to an apartment? Or, is it an environment, which can be inhabited however one is able? Are the homeless not residents of the city as well? One needs only to read headlines in the Los Angeles Times to see the actions of those who would answer the last question with “No.” Every week, the city’s ceaseless ticketing, regulating, shuffling, and policing of homeless Angelenos makes it clear that local authorities feel very strongly that there are right and wrong ways of being in Los Angeles. Yarovenko’s work considered how one’s body negotiates such legislation, how L.A.’s hostility towards the homeless is made manifest. Dimensional restrictions control physical property and the space one is able to occupy. Visitors to the exhibition engaged with a sculptural and text-infused installation in the Mackey Garage Top, which prompted them to interact with the physicality of transience in Los Angeles.