Gabe Medina / Ellsworth Artist Residency / Art Share LA
- LA Art Documents
- Feb 18
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 12
The Ellsworth Artist Residency
Cohort 8
Gabe Medina
Art Share LA
Video by L.A. Art Documents / www.laartdocuments.com
The Ellsworth Artist Residency program is dedicated to creating an accessible studio space for artists and is a dynamic opportunity for emerging artists to work and develop their visual art practice. The residency includes professional development opportunities including studio visits with curators, critics, scholars and artists as well as inclusion in a group exhibition in Art Share L.A.’s gallery. A selection committee, consisting of professionals in the field, including curators, scholars, and artists, reviews all the submitted applications.
Gabe Medina's art practice explores Mexican-American im/migration, cultural hybridity and familial history through the lens of local plant life and family photo archive of South Central Los Angeles. Central to his practice is the exploration of ancestral connections to the land, which has been severed as a result of colonial/cultural displacement and erasure. Using family photo archives from the 1970’s and clay-based installations, Medina's current work delves into domestic visual languages, such as wrought iron fence motifs, stucco walls and local plant life indigenous to Mexico Michoacán. Much of his work is Informed by his family’s agricultural history. Despite physical displacement and the loss of access to ancestral lands, his family has to cultivate plant life indigenous to in their family garden the same plant life that is Indigenous to Michoacán in their garden. The Nopales, Corn, Aloe Vera, and Rose Bushes they now persistently grow here come into contact with wrought iron fence gates and window bars present in South Central Los Angeles. Medina's work investigates how immigrant communities terraform our visual, spatial and sensory landscape to reflect that of their heritage. Focusing domestic cultural artifacts, ceramic and clay objects play a significant role in his approach due to their historical functional and ritual use deeply embedded in Mexican homes. Medina's work vividly narrates the theme of im/migration and resilience, inviting others to reflect their own stories and experiences of navigating dual cultural identities in the United States.
