As part of Gatherings, LAND presents a year of virtual programs with artist Kathryn Garcia. Marking the passing of time, the virtual offerings are guided meditations with the artist, presented within Garcia’s immersive sculptural environments set in different landscapes. At a time when we are physically distanced from one another, Garcia’s practice invites us to go within and connect on a deeper level with our bodies, the earth and each other. Influenced by ancient matriarchal cultures, Garcia seeks union and collective healing driven by the divine feminine, bridging past, present, and future.
Ofrenda, 2021
Premiering March 20, 2021 – Spring Equinox
Ofrenda is an offering, a gift, a blessing. It is an invitation to an inner journey, a journey back home.
The Apparition, 2020
Screening December 21, 2020-January 1, 2021
“Spiritual interchange and oneness between woman and earth as forms of therapeutic, internal healing also figure’s in Kathryn Garcia’s mesmerizing multi-media works. Filmed in Ibiza, a Spanish island, the artist’s video footage features Garcia in striking ritualistic goddess poses which emulate historical ancient iconography. In the backdrop hovers Es Vedrà, the uninhabited Goddess Island near Ibiza, a well known energetic vortex. By channeling feminine wisdom and spirituality, Garcia’s nude body serves as a bridge between terrestrial elements of the earthen ground and the cosmic qualities embodied in the beams of light radiating from the prisms. A hypnotic combination of video, light, performance, and sound healing in the artwork pull human consciousness towards the divine feminine, Garcia’s body behaving as the primary medium to usher a sense of cathartic release.”
-Lisa Aubry
Luna Llena, Full Moon Clearing, 2020
October 1, 2020
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Luna Llena was offered as a sound clearing on the full Harvest Moon amidst Garcia’s exhibition, The Feminine Divine, at Gavlak Gallery.
A Wave and the Ocean, 2020
Premiered July 31, 2020
A 15 minute guided meditation and healing
A wave is a metaphor for the breath. A wave rises, crashes and recedes only to return again.
Immersing oneself in the sounds of the ocean is in itself a form of meditation: May We Breathe as the Ocean Waves. Our consciousness, like the sky, is luminous, pure, spacious and radiant. Our thoughts are merely clouds drifting and disappearing across a vast emptiness. Our being is mysterious, elusive, fluid and mutable – an amalgam of the waves of experience, like the Ocean.
For A Wave and the Ocean Garcia will guide participants in a meditative experience. The meditation will take place on a beach in Malibu, within a temporary immersive sculptural environment, a temple, created by the artist.
Kathryn Garcia (b. 1978, Los Angeles, CA) lives and works between Los Angeles and the Mediterranean. Inspired by her spiritual practice and travels to ancient and sacred sites, Garcia works in a variety of media, including site-specific performance, video, sculpture, and drawing. Provocative and oftentimes interactive, her work engages with the Goddess Archetype as a means of exploring identity vis a vis the female body. Garcia’s bodies – her body, or the constructed bodies seen in her drawings, are created as vehicles for spiritual experience where a fem-queer body becomes sacred site. Her interactive works explore themes such as healing, mindfulness, participation, interconnectedness, and the experiential in art and are meant as offerings to the public. These offerings take place within immersive sculptures that the artist considers temples. Early on in her career, Garcia worked on international projects with Javier Peres, Emi Fontana and Rirkrit Tiravanija, such as Daddy the Magazine (2007) Women in the City (2008), Palm Pavilion (2008) and Asile Flottant (2010). Garcia’s work has been exhibited in the US and abroad, including The Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana; LAXART, Various Small Fires, 356 Mission, and Harmony Murphy Gallery, all in Los Angeles; Pace Gallery, Invisible Exports, GBE, Participant, PS1-MOMA, all in NY; Ballroom Marfa, Texas; The Power Station, Dallas; Nina Johnson, Miami; Southard Reid, London; Embajada, Puerto Rico; Arredondo/Arozarena, Mexico City; and DESTE foundation, Greece.
A Wave and the Ocean is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
LAND’s 2021 exhibitions are made possible with lead support from the Offield Family Foundation and the Jerry and Terry Kohl Foundation. Additional support is provided by the the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, the California Community Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Trust Foundation, Fran and Ray Stark Foundation, the Chauncey and Marion D. McCormick Family Foundation, the Poncher Family Foundation, Brenda Potter, and LAND’s Nomadic Council.