{"id":331521,"date":"2026-03-10T10:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T10:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/331521\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T10:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T10:48:10","slug":"angelenos-scathed-by-fire-dominate-new-yorks-whitney-biennial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/331521\/","title":{"rendered":"Angelenos scathed by fire dominate New York’s Whitney Biennial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWe evacuated on January 7th, and never returned,\u201d the artist Teresa Baker tells me when we connect to talk about the work she\u2019s made for this year\u2019s Whitney Biennial, which is among the country\u2019s most influential exhibitions of contemporary American art.<\/p>\n

Hosted every two years by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, this year\u2019s biennial features 56 artists and collectives, roughly 1 in 6 of whom have lived and worked in Los Angeles in the time since the survey\u2019s last iteration. The mass destruction wrought by last January\u2019s L.A. fires made that interval far from routine, and like Baker, many participating artists have spent time recovering or rebuilding.<\/p>\n

Baker, her husband and their three young children \u2014 all under the age of 5 \u2014 moved five times in the last year. First to San Diego, then to San Francisco and New York City, and finally twice within Montana, a state Baker has known since childhood.<\/p>\n

Baker\u2019s Indigenous and German heritage inform her three large abstract collage hangings, created using synthetic turf animated by acrylic paint, yarn and a variety of natural materials, including corn husk, willow, buffalo hide and buckskin. They are undeniably painterly. The pieces, says Baker, were made \u201cin a tumultuous time, a time of transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Art <\/p>\n

Installation view of Whitney Biennial 2026. From left to right: Teresa Baker, \u201cTo the Morning Light,\u201d 2025; Teresa Baker, \u201cThe Harvest Melting on Our Tongue,\u201d 2025; Teresa Baker, \u201cVoluminous Day,\u201d 2025. <\/p>\n

(Darian DiCianno \/ BFA.com)<\/p>\n

The glory of the natural world, \u201cthe very big, grandiose gestures\u201d of the Montana landscape, has informed Baker\u2019s art since her flight from L.A. After working in her new home studio, Baker says she marvels at the beauty of dusk \u2014 the depth of orange and blue \u2014 as she drives to pick up her kids from school.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what I\u2019m experiencing right now, and maybe, am especially aware of because of the intensity of the last year, is awe,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s so simple, but I think that\u2019s what this landscape is giving me, constant awe in the midst of a really depressing world, and a tough year for the family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leaving L.A. was hard, especially the supportive artistic community she cultivated, but \u201cwith all of the scientific unknowns post-fire,\u201d Baker explains, \u201cwe made the decision to leave for the safety of our young children.\u201d<\/p>\n

By returning to Montana, Baker has drawn herself into alignment with another L.A. artist, Andrea Fraser. Fraser was born in Montana and says she considers herself a \u201cWestern person,\u201d even though she lived in New York for 25 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is very different from the culture of the East Coast, which is much more European-influenced, much more intellectual,\u201d Fraser says.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Andrea Fraser, Untitled \u201c(Object) IV,\u201d 2024 (detail). Microcrystalline wax, aluminum and steel armatures, 5 7\/8 \u00d7 35 3\/8 \u00d7 15 3\/4 in. (14.9 \u00d7 89.9 \u00d7 40 cm). Collection of the artist. \u00a9 Andrea Fraser. Courtesy the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, and Nagel Draxler Gallery. <\/p>\n

(Rebecca Fanuele)<\/p>\n

Fraser is among this biennial\u2019s most seasoned participants, having also participated in 1993 and 2012. Her contribution \u2014 five modeled microcrystalline wax sculptures of sleeping toddlers \u2014 appears beside three paintings from the 1960s by her mother, Carmen de Monteflores, who is now 92.<\/p>\n

Pondering her return to sculpture after several decades as an acclaimed performance and conceptual artist, Fraser notes that the L.A. artists in this year\u2019s biennial are united by the intersection of conceptual art and craft.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least once a year I go into the ceramics studios at UCLA and throw a dozen pots,\u201d she says, noting that it\u2019s a process she is quite good at.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy garage was sort of my woodshop for a while. I made my desk, I made my partner\u2019s desk, cabinet, shelves. I was doing quite a bit of that, but then I turned my garage into my home gym, a different kind of sculpting,\u201d she says, with a laugh. \u201cVery Los Angeles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Installation view of Whitney Biennial 2026. Hyundai Terrace Commission Kelly Akashi 2026. \u201cMonument (Altadena).\u201d<\/p>\n

(Timothy Schenck)<\/p>\n

Another L.A.-based artist, Kelly Akashi, who lost her home and studio in Altadena, has erected \u201cMonument (Altadena),\u201d a glass chimney on the Whitney\u2019s outdoor patio. Inspired by the brick-and-mortar version left behind on the site of her former home, it stands as a solemn icon, echoing hundreds of other slender survivors that still dot the L.A.-area burn scars, as well as Manhattan\u2019s many skyscrapers that now frame it.<\/p>\n

The chimney, says Akashi, is \u201ca kind of restless object. It only functions with a home.\u201d Once you create a chimney that stands alone, \u201cit always signals that absence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sculptor Sula Bermudez-Silverman \u2014 who, like Akashi, often works with glass \u2014 has also been thinking about home in relation to the loss brought about by the L.A. fires.<\/p>\n

The biennial\u2019s catalog features Bermudez-Silverman in conversation with her father, the psychoanalyst George Berm\u00fadez, and in it Bermudez-Silverman says that the Eaton fire in Altadena \u201chas been a big catalyst for me to rethink my own relationship to material things, and also about the broader impact of consumption, which has led me to live more minimally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Iraq-born, L.A.-based artist Ali Eyal stands inside his home studio in front of his work. Eyal is part of this year\u2019s Whitney Biennial in New York City \u2014 an exhibit that features many artists who have lived and worked in L.A.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

The L.A.-based Iraqi painter Ali Eyal, who left his home country in 2017, experienced the fires through the prism of his tumultuous youth. \u201cWhen I saw that black smoke, it took me back to the war time, it seemed like a war zone,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cL.A. reminds me of my childhood. I don\u2019t know why,\u201d Eyal mused, adding that the light of the sun is one of the most palpable throughlines, conjuring challenging memories, but also affirming the pleasure of the present.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Installation view of Whitney Biennial 2026. Ali Eyal, \u201cLook Where I Took You,\u201d 2026.<\/p>\n

(Jason Lowrie \/ BFA.com)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sunset is a difficult time for me, because of all of the violence that happened to me happened during sunset,\u201d Eyal explained. \u201cBut in L.A., the sunset is different, the purple, the orange, all of these colors together.\u201d<\/p>\n

While that same sun will always rise in the East and set in the West, the work of these artists affirms that each new day is ours to make anew \u2014 no matter what sorrows may lay behind us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe evacuated on January 7th, and never returned,\u201d the artist Teresa Baker tells me when we connect to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[113665,163404,3257,55284,146,163406,2607,85,46,69422,163403,163405,6376,1886,762,139841,22877,1661],"class_list":{"0":"post-331521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-altadena","9":"tag-andrea-fraser","10":"tag-artist","11":"tag-baker","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-glass-chimney","14":"tag-home","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-kelly-akashi","18":"tag-l-a-fire","19":"tag-l-a-artist","20":"tag-los-angeles-times","21":"tag-new-york","22":"tag-time","23":"tag-whitney-biennial","24":"tag-whitney-museum","25":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}