Per Capita
2021
Acrylic on cow hide
41 by 73 inches
Umar Rashid
PER CAPITA
May 1 - July 3
Opening: Saturday, May 1st, 11am-6pm
Hours: Monday-Friday 12pm-5pm and Saturday 12pm-6pm
Transformative Arts is pleased to present Umar Rashid PER CAPITA, an installation inspired by the artist's 2021 COLA Fellowship.
PER CAPITA, an immersive experience outside the white cube, extends Rashid's acuity to form space and time as a cosmic journey that reimagines colonial Los Angeles. Rashid's rich iconography questions the role of the individual in the collective shaping of the city. What does it mean to build a city – a gathering place – from diverse migratory peoples and experiences? Whose values dominate and whose heads roll?
Rashid's COLA project focuses on expanding his sculptural practice, specifically conceiving the Babylonian Ishtar Gate through the imagery and materials that define Los Angeles. The Ishtar Gate, once described as one of the world's seven wonders, in Rashid's reimagining translates Babylon's lapis lazuli into Dodger blue, lions into pitbulls and asps into rattlesnakes. In Rashid's LA, sentinels of the goddess are titled Yves Klein garden figures and the West African trickster Anansi continues to weave a web of playful confusion, pain as well as potential.
Ishtar is the goddess of love, war, sex and fertility, death and destruction, representing both darkness and light. Rashid uses these contradictions to stretch visual narratives, sifting through layers of history, power and subjugation, as well as divinity, desire and desecration to show us the temporalities of our consumption and creativity. PER CAPITA examines and judges the city we live in, its miseries and its pleasures.
Please observe Covid safe practices. Remember to wear your mask and socially distance. All are welcome.
Transformative Arts, formerly Quotidian, is located at 410 S Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles.