Events

Join artist Gala Porras-Kim for an intimate discussion about her creative process. Offering a window into her multidisciplinary practice researching ethnographic collections around the world and unpacking their methods of acquisition, preservation and museology, this conversation will consider a series of questions surrounding the conservation of ancient heritage that her practice raises: What happens when objects of the past enter museum collections? How are their original functions or intended destinies affected? Who decides how we should care for them? Should these decisions be made only by museum specialists, or are there other agents that should also be part of the discussion? How can speculation allow us to envision alternate models to preserve and understand the past?

Gala Porras-Kim is an interdisciplinary artist living in Los Angeles. Her work is made through the process of archival research and learning about the social and political contexts that influence how such intangible things as sounds, language, and history have been represented through methodologies in the fields of linguistics, history, and conservation. 

Carlota Ortiz Monasterio is a 2023 MODA Curates Fellow and the curator of A Speculative Impulse: Art Transgressing the Archive.

To join this in-person program meet in the Wallach Art Gallery lobby on the 6th floor. Advance registration is not required. 

A Speculative Impulse is on view at the Wallach Art Gallery March 25 through April 9, 2023. 

MODA Curates is an annual opportunity offered by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery and the MA in Modern and Contemporary Art, Critical and Curatorial Studies Program (MODA) for outstanding curatorial proposals related to student theses.