Chris Bayley, Exhibitions Curator, leads a tour of Lauren Halsey: emajendat.
For the past decade, Lauren Halsey (b. 1987, Los Angeles, USA) has developed a distinct visual language deeply rooted in South Central Los Angeles where her family has lived for generations. Through objects and installations, Halsey archives and remixes the changing signs and symbols of her environment, gathering physical and graphic material from her neighbourhood. In her work Halsey merges past, present and future via her interest in iconography connected to the African diaspora, Black and queer icons and architecture. Halsey cites the collective sonic and visual layering associated with Funk music as the blueprint for her approach to making, traversing time and drawing on a wide range of sources.
emajendat, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK, transforms Serpentine South Gallery into an immersive ‘Funk garden’ that responds to the building’s location in Kensington Gardens, offering an extension of the park into the galleries. Central to the exhibition is a life-size version of Halsey’s signature vignettes, usually seen in miniature within sculptures or as intricately arranged tableaux. Here, a prismatic floor and walls made from CD’s provide the setting for scaled-up figurines, funkmounds and a live water fountain. The artist’s first moving image work is presented alongside sand dunes and a bespoke wallpaper.
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