Skip to main content

Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Tacos and Palaces: Current:LA Food's Artists and Installations

A pile of Cheetos | Still from "Artbound" Current LA
Support Provided By
Current:LA is a citywide public art triennial. This year, international and local artists look at food and parses its complex meanings to culture and to civilization. Learn what to expect from co-curator Asuka Hisa of the Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
What Is Current:LA Food?

Current:LA Food is a city-wide triennial presenting art projects by 15 national and international artists and teams, who have taken on the global issue of food. See Currrent:LA Food all over the 15 council districts of Los Angeles. This article was made in partnership with The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA). Find out more about Current:LA Food on our coverage here.

"Food is pleasure and peril. It can be delicious or something dangerous," says Asuka Hisa, Director of Learning and Engagement at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA). Hisa helped curate this year's Current:LA triennial focusing on food. Through fifteen installations and numerous public programs, the Department of Cultural Affairs is turning Los Angeles into a large art and food experience. Learn more about each of the chosen artists and their projects below. See how the world of food becomes a window into a city's consciousness. For more information on locations and events click here.

Adrià Julià- A Very White Flower

Council District 1, L.A. State Historic Park, Chinatown

Adrià Julià | Courtesy of the artist
Adrià Julià | Courtesy of the artist

CalArts alumnus Adrià Julià’s art revolves around film, performance, photography and installation. Born in Barcelona, Julià has lived all around the world, from Seoul to Sao Paulo and Los Angeles. After being selected to participate in Current L.A. Food, he dove deep into the popcorn industry, which is intrinsically linked to Los Angeles’ film industry. The work aims to expand on the popular movie treat’s history and impact, tracing it back to its origins as a Mexican crop to its popularization during the Great Depression and now, its impact and role in our modern society and economy.

A close-up of popcorn | Pexels/Megha Mangal/Creative Commons
A close-up of popcorn | Pexels/Megha Mangal/Creative Commons

Shana Lutker- Contemporary Museum of Temporary Containers (CMTC)

Council District 2, Valley Plaza Recreation Center, North Hollywood

Shana Lutker | Courtesy of the artist
Shana Lutker | Courtesy of the artist

Interdisciplinary artist Shana Lutker’s work explores the relationship between memory and experience. In her "Contemporary Museum of Temporary Containers" (CMTC), she said she wanted to work with disposable food containers, which are all around us, but we barely acknowledge their existence. “I am interested in the complicated stories that everyday objects can tell us about ourselves,” Lutker said. After gathering more than 1,000 containers, she said she hopes viewers will pause to consider their impact and purpose beyond just holding food. “I hope that the containers are seen and acknowledged — as amazingly convenient technological advancements and an enormous burden of unnecessary waste,” she said.

Shana Lutker's installation will be created out of disposable food containers. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food
Shana Lutker's installation will be created out of disposable food containers. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food

Eva Aguila and Coaxial Arts Foundation- Comida a Mano

Council District 3, Reseda Recreation Center, Reseda

Los Angeles-based Eva Aguila is the cofounder and artistic director of the Coaxial Arts Foundation, an arts space in downtown L.A. dedicated to expanding the community of multimedia artists in the city. For "Comida a Mano," Aguila said she was inspired by her ancestors from Michoacán, México, who would tell stories around the comal in their home. “A comal is something you see in every Mexican household,” she said. “I hope through the lens of Mexican heritage visitors will be inspired to share their own oral histories.” Stoves have replaced earthen comal ovens in most Mexican households, but some still exist in small towns and preservation societies.

Sonoran corn tortillas | Flickr/guepardo lento/Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Sonoran corn tortillas | Flickr/guepardo lento/Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Michael Rakowitz- Beneath the Date Palms

Council District 4, Pan Pacific Park, Fairfax District

Michael Rakowitz of Beneath the Date Palms | Daniel Asher Smith
Michael Rakowitz of Beneath the Date Palms | Daniel Asher Smith

The history of the Iraqi date palm provided ample inspiration for Iraqi American artist Michael Rakowitz. As part of his ongoing project, "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist," he created "Beneath the Date Palms," which recreates a room from the now-destroyed Northwest Palace of Nimrud in Iraq, but made from the packaging of Middle Eastern foods sold in the U.S. and Arabic-English newspapers given away for free in large American cities for newly arrived immigrant from places like Syria and Iraq. The goal is for visitors to think deeply about the history between the U.S. and Iraq, reflect on the relationship between the Iraqi community and the veteran community in L.A. in a communal banquet space and to consider the connection the Iraqi date industry has with California’s date industry, which stemmed from it. 

Michael Rakowitz will recreate a room from the Northwest Palace of Nimrud. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food
Michael Rakowitz will recreate a room from the Northwest Palace of Nimrud. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food

Ry Rocklen- Food Group: The Body Palms

Council District 5, Palms Park, West L.A.

Ry Rocklen | Courtesy of the artist
Ry Rocklen | Courtesy of the artist

Theater and sculpture will collide at Ry Rocklen’s "Food Group: The Body Palms." After focusing on sculpture for the bulk of his professional art career, Rocklen said he found he wanted to branch out to another form of expression. “I realized I needed a modality that allowed me to express myself with more words and feelings, a modality that allows my art to engage in the world with both stillness and motion,” he said. Bringing together sculpture, theater, costume and song, “The Body Palms is the synthesis of artistic and cultural interests that have been developing for me over the course of my career,” Rocklen said. He added that he hopes the work will allow viewers to slow down and think about their consumption habits, cultural tendencies and desires in a more detailed way.

Ry Rocklen's Food Group: The Body Plams will incorporate song and dance from costumed characters. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food
Ry Rocklen's Food Group: The Body Palms will incorporate song and dance from costumed characters. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food

Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs & Annie Gimas— ALL AGAIN

Council District 6, Delano Recreation Center, Van Nuys

Annie Gimas overlooking the ocean and Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs in a garment created in collaboration with Roxy Jamin. | Gimas' photo courtesy of the artist and Pennypacker Riggs' by Ry Rocklen
Annie Gimas overlooking the ocean and Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs in a garment created in collaboration with Roxy Jamin. | Gimas' photo courtesy of the artist and Pennypacker Riggs' by Ry Rocklen

Multidisciplinary artists Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and Annie Gimas have a special affinity to create immersive performances. Aided by Pennypacker Riggs’ experience as a singing teacher and Gimas’ professional dance education, together, they’re getting the Van Nuys community to perform. “Our piece is a choral/movement performance that incorporates both professional and non-professional/volunteer performers to engage with [the] topic of food loss, food waste and compost, through the medium of experimental opera and collective ritual,” Pennypacker Riggs said. Inspired by the need to teach people about agricultural and compost cycles, the duo wanted to bring ideas for practical action to regular people, which is why composting workshops will be held in tandem with the performance workshops. “It's important for me to make audience members feel invited and included in performance,” she said. “There is an optional interactive component for the audience, and material to take home offering simple actions we can take at the consumer level to reduce food loss and food waste.” 

ALL AGAIN will incorporate performance as a way to reflect on the environment and waste.
ALL AGAIN will incorporate performance as a way to reflect on the environment and waste. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food

Emily Marchand- A Thousand Lunches

Council District 7, Roger Jessup Park, Pacoima

Emily Marchand | Sam Widaman
Emily Marchand | Sam Widaman

For Sacramento native Emily Marchand, the key to creating a positive impact and creating a conversation about access to food starts with community. She said "A Thousand Lunches" will serve as an anchor to gather Pacoima’s community to do just that. “I hope people will enjoy learning how even local actions of community organizing can make a large and significant impact on society’s health,” she said. She also stressed artists’ role in highlighting another aspect of food that is often overlooked: how essential it is for survival. “Yes, it is fun and tasty, but when millions of people go hungry and are without resources, I feel we, as artists, need to make work stressing the necessity for community organizing and action,” Marchand said.

Emily Marchand's A Thousand Lunches will bring people together to feed homeless. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food
Emily Marchand's A Thousand Lunches will bring people together to feed homeless. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food

Jazmin Urrea- Imperishable

Council District 8, Martin Luther King Jr. Park, South L.A.

Jazmin Urrea | Tyler Lumm
Jazmin Urrea | Tyler Lumm

After living and working in South Central Los Angeles, artist Jazmin Urrea developed a keen understanding of the deep issues regarding equal access to food in the area. “'Imperishable' focuses on raising awareness about the food desert issue in Los Angeles,” she said. “Without healthier edible alternatives, low-income neighborhoods are polluted daily by artificial food dyes, processed and sugary foods.” The work carries a personal connection as well. “When I was 12 years old, I use to eat Flamin' Hot Cheetos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” Urrea recalled. “My diet resulted in me having emergency surgery for appendicitis. Years later, I noticed that my younger sister was eating junk food on the same level that I was. This led me to start incorporating junk food into my practice.” The junk food habits didn’t stop at her family, Urrea said. “When I was a student at CalArts, I also witnessed the food disparities between South L.A. and Santa Clarita during my daily commute,” she said. “It was an eyeopener to see the major difference between where I grew up, and other places that have access to healthier and organic foods.” She said she hopes her installation raises the collective awareness of the problem in South Central L.A. and in other parts of the world, and, via workshops and a panel accompanying the installation, help create new relationships between community members who want to create change. 

Concept of Jazmin Urrea's Hot Cheetos-filled sculptures. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food
Concept of Jazmin Urrea's Hot Cheetos-filled sculptures. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food

Michael Queenland- Untitled

Council District 9, Exposition Park Rose Garden

 Michael Queenland | Michael Rashkow
Michael Queenland | Michael Rashkow

Pasadena native Michael Queenland, whose preferred workspace lies in diverse East Hollywood, uses sculpture and photography to give new, artistic meaning to found objects. With "Untitled," Queenland connects Western children’s breakfast cereals with a hand-knotted rug from the border region in Pakistan and Afghanistan to show the ways in which East and West traditions intersect both culturally and politically. The cereal represents the West’s history of mass consumption and artificiality, while the rug evokes a sense of tradition and artisanal creation that prevails in the East.

Micheal Queenlan's sculpture composed of breakfast cereal will reside at the Exposition Park Rose Garden. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food
Micheal Queenland's sculpture composed of breakfast cereal will reside at the Exposition Park Rose Garden. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food

Nari Ward- Enchanted Servers

Council District 10, Leimert Plaza Park

Nari Ward | Courtesy of the artist
Nari Ward | Courtesy of the artist

As a New Yorker, artist Nari Ward is familiar with the important role food truck vendors have in providing sustenance to cities. He explained that in creating the sculpture, he was inspired by “individuals who are committed to creating resources that enable greater self-reliance for themselves and others.” “Enchanted Servers" celebrates the hard work of food truck vendors and recognizes the value of their contribution to the neighborhoods and communities they serve,” Ward said, a notion that is especially true in the case of Los Angeles’ food truck vendors, who drive mile after mile to serve all neighborhoods, hence the car jacks in the sculpture.

Nari Ward often incorporates found objects into his sculpture such as shoelaces or mango seeds, like in Mango Tourists, a series of 10-foot sculptures at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. | Flickr/Len Radin/Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Nari Ward often incorporates found objects into his sculpture such as shoelaces or mango seeds, like in Mango Tourists, a series of 10-foot sculptures at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. | Flickr/Len Radin/Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Cooking Sections- Mussel Beach

Council District 11, Venice Beach Recreation Center

Cooking Sections' Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe | Paul Plews
Cooking Sections' Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe | Paul Plews

Comprised of artist duo Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, Cooking Sections is dedicated to exploring how the world revolves around food and how changes in the environment are reflected in the availability of food through installations that incorporate mapping, video and performance. With "Mussel Beach," they are considering the impact human activity has on Los Angeles’ coastline and the Pacific Ocean, specifically related to the availability of mussels, which are slowly disappearing, juxtaposed with L.A.’s feverous health and fitness industry. They are based in London. 

 A collage of seashells and beach bodies. Part of Cooking Sections' Mussel Beach. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food
A collage of seashells and beach bodies. Part of Cooking Sections' Mussel Beach. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food

Nonfood- Algae Bioreactor 1

Council District 13, Barnsdall Park, East Hollywood

Nonfood's logo | Courtesy of Lucy Chinen
Nonfood's logo | Courtesy of Lucy Chinen

Founded by a community of artists, Nonfood is definitely a nontraditional food company. By taking the artists’ desire to create a change in our collective culture, they have created a business out of creating food items out of a more responsible food source: algae, a crop that’s incredibly efficient at turning few nutrients into growth. “People can exist independent from large food companies by learning skills and sharing that with others to yield something as essential as food,” said Lucy Chinen of Nonfood. The goal for the piece is to test out which kinds of algae grow best in the local climate. “Since we make food products from algae it’s valuable to know the conditions in which to grow it,” Chinen said. The term “bioreactor” might seem like science fiction so some visitors, but Chinen says she hopes that doesn’t make it seem too spacey. “I hope visitors see that something like a “bioreactor” is much like an aquarium and not something totally inaccessible,” she said. As to the choice of putting it in a community garden? “We hope that people will think of the future of growing your own algae can be something similar to a community garden,” she said. 

Nonfood's algae greenhouse. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food
Nonfood's algae greenhouse. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food

Julio César Morales and Max La Rivière-Hedrick- New Shores: The Future Dialogue Between Two Homelands

Council District 13, Barnsdall Park, East Hollywood

Max La Rivière-Hedrick and Julio César Morales by Matt Martinez | La Rivière-Hedrick's photo by Heimo Schmidt and Morales' by Matt Martinez
Max La Rivière-Hedrick and Julio César Morales by Matt Martinez | La Rivière-Hedrick's photo by Heimo Schmidt and Morales' by Matt Martinez

Food brings people together. It’s a phrase we hear over and over again, but Julio César Morales and Max La Rivière-Hedrick are putting it into practice by highlighting East Hollywood’s vibrant immigrant communities with large dinners celebrating their cuisine and culture. Extra inspiration came by way of Carlos Fuentes’ “The Orange Tree,” which describes the experience of living in two worlds, similiar to that of immigrant communities living in Los Angeles. With "New Shores: The Future Dialogue Between Two Homelands," that duality will come to a head and allow Angelenos to observe different immigrant cultures and their two homelands, original and adopted. “We hope visitors will discover new poetics of the everyday and new meanings for the migrant experience,” said La Rivière-Hedrick.

New Shores: The Future Dialogue Between Two Homelands will celebrate East Hollywood's immigrant communities, including the Thai community. | Flickr/Jeffrey Beall/Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
New Shores: The Future Dialogue Between Two Homelands will celebrate East Hollywood's immigrant communities, including the Thai community. | Flickr/Jeffrey Beall/Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Nancy Lupo - Open Mouth

Council District 14, Pershing Square, Downtown L.A.

Nancy Lupo | Courtesy of the artist
Nancy Lupo | Courtesy of the artist

Sculptor Nancy Lupo knows her way around a bench. She has produced several of them made out or a range or materials for several exhibitions. For her, the benches are physical ways of encapsulating a time and place with a corresponding memory, while inviting viewers to use their imaginations to piece her works together and think about how we move through our lives around them. In "Open Mouth," downtown L.A.’s Pershing Square becomes the site for Lupo’s start to the city’s metabolism by being transformed into a human mouth made out of custom benches with crevices that resemble the adult mouth’s 32 teeth. 

Nancy Lupo's Open Mouth will be constructed out of benches that resemble the mouth's teeth. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food
Nancy Lupo's Open Mouth will be constructed out of benches that resemble the mouth's teeth. | Courtesy of Current: L.A. Food

Torolab- Watts Cookbook

Council District 15, Ted Watkins Memorial Park, Watts

Torolab founder Raúl Cárdenas Osuna | Ana Martínez Ortega
Torolab founder Raúl Cárdenas Osuna | Ana Martínez Ortega

Founded in Tijuana more than 20 years ago, the Torolab artist collective, lab and workshop led by artist and architect Raúl Cárdenas Osuna, seeks to understand what constitutes having a good quality of life using a research-based art practice. Occasionally, Cárdenas Osuna gives advice to Tijuana’s government on how to develop more sustainably and directs a nonprofit. In "Watts Cookbook," the Watts community around Ted Watkins Memorial Park is analyzed using what Torolab calls molecular urbanism to get a sense of its history, social dynamics and food memories through mapping and communal recipe-gathering as a way to create a portrait of it. 

Watts Cookbook will expire the history of open fire cooking in communities of color and will take place at Ted Watkins Memorial Park in Watts. | Pixabay/Bruce Emmerling/Creative Commons
Watts Cookbook will expire the history of open fire cooking in communities of color and will take place at Ted Watkins Memorial Park in Watts. | Pixabay/Bruce Emmerling/Creative Commons

Current:LA Food runs from October 5 to November 3. Check out this map and complete guide to plan your L.A. art experience. 

Support Provided By
Read More
An 8mm film still "The Kitchen" (1975) by Alile Sharon Larkin. The still features an image of a young Black woman being escorted by two individuals in white coats. The image is a purple monochrome.

8 Essential Project One Films From the L.A. Rebellion Film Movement

For years, Project One films have been a rite of passage for aspiring filmmakers at UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television. Here are eight Project One pieces born out of the L.A. Rebellion film movement from notable filmmakers like Ben Caldwell, Jacqueline Frazier and Haile Gerima.
A 2-by-3 grid of Razorcake zine front covers.

Last Punks in Print: Razorcake Has Been the Platform for Punks of Color For Over Two Decades

While many quintessential L.A. punk zines like "Flipside," "HeartattaCk," and "Profane Existence" have folded or only exist in the digital space, "Razorcake" stands as one of the lone print survivors and a decades-long beacon for people — and punks — of color.
Estevan Escobedo is wearing a navy blue long sleeve button up shirt, a silk blue tie around his neck, a large wide-brim hat on his head, and brown cowboy pants as he twirls a lasso around his body. Various musicians playing string instruments and trumpets stand behind him, performing.

The Art of the Rope: How This Charro Completo is Preserving Trick Roping in the United States

Esteban Escobedo is one of only a handful of professional floreadores — Mexican trick ropers — in the United States, and one of a few instructors of the technical expression performing floreo de reata (also known as floreo de soga "making flowers with a rope"), an art form in itself and one of Mexico's longest standing traditions.