Lauren Halsey: emajendat
Serpentine, London
11 October 2024 – 2 March 2025
Credit Eddie Salinas
land of the sunshine wherever we go II (detail), 2021
White cement, wood, and mixed media
82 1/2 x 79 x 77 in. (209.6 x 200.7 x 195.6 cm)
Courtesy Lauren Halsey
we still here, there, 2018
Plaster, joint compound, Portland cement, builder’s paper,
carpets, foam board insulation, wire mesh, wood, fountains,
figurines, trophy figures, plaster busts, mannequin arms,
miniature flags, hair extension packs, doll parts, fabric,
artificial crystals, artificial rocks, oil containers,
aerosol spray cans, signs, mirrors, glass,
artificial aquarium plants, incandescent clamp lights,
LED lights, compact discs, marine epoxy, resin,
acrylic paint, glitter
Dimensions variable
© Lauren Halsey
Courtesy the artist and
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Photo: Zak Kelley
Serpentine presents emajendat, the first UK exhibition of Lauren Halsey (b. 1987, Los Angeles, USA). On view at Serpentine South, the exhibition will transform the gallery into an immersive environment that responds to Serpentine’s location in Kensington Gardens.
For the past decade, Lauren Halsey has developed a distinctive visual vocabulary deeply rooted in the South Central neighbourhood of Los Angeles where she and her family have lived for generations. Through maximalist installations and stand-alone objects, Lauren Halsey archives and remixes the signs and symbols that populate her environment. She has described herself as obsessed with material culture. Her regular wanderings through her neighbourhood, in which she documents the changing streetscape, are accompanied by a gathering of objects, posters, flyers, commercial signs, slogans and tags that celebrate local businesses and the communities’ activism which she adds to her studio archive. These eventually find their way into her floor- and wall-based assemblages, and miniature dioramas embedded in her ‘funkmound’ sculptures.
Lauren Halsey’s vibrant and energetic work merges past, present and future via her interests in the iconography of cultures in the African diaspora, ancient Egypt, Black and queer icons, visionary architecture and the visual and sonic maximalism associated with funk. At once radical and collaborative, Lauren Halsey’s practice extends to Summaeverythang, the community centre she founded in 2019 that is ‘dedicated to the empowerment and transcendence of Black and Brown folks socio-politically, economically, intellectually and artistically.’
emajendat, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK, builds on several recent major projects including the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (l), for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Roof Garden Commission, New York (2023) and keepers of the krown at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024) where the artist reconfigured the form of the Hathoric column by carving the capitals with the likenesses and stories of people from her local community. Both of these projects offer increasingly ambitious architectural schemes that engage with their surroundings while functioning as testing grounds for Lauren Halsey’s ultimate ambition to create a public sculpture park sited in South Central Los Angeles.
Lauren Halsey says: "...and it was a natural extension of my dreaming."
Bettina Korek, CEO, Serpentine, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine, say: "It's an honour to present Lauren Halsey's first institutional exhibition in the UK. Her work epitomises Serpentine's mission of building connections between artists and audiences and brings to fruition a yearlong artistic bridge between London and Los Angeles. Incorporating sand, plants, light and sound, this commission is one of the artist's most ambitious installations to date. By archiving and remixing the changing signs and symbols of her community, Lauren Halsey offers a celebratory and creative form of resistance to its growing gentrification. Sharing this work with new audiences in London is a perfect example of Serpentine's mission to platform voices that deserve full attention today."
Reflecting on the way in which South Central's improvisational backyard culture thrives despite a lack of green spaces in the city, emajendat, offers an extension of the park into the galleries.
Inside Lauren Halsey's 'garden', visitors can move through technicoloured sand dunes before physically entering a life-size diorama. The walls and floors are covered with the mirrored side of discarded CDs transforming the gallery through a prism-like effect while scaled-up recreations of figurines originally collected from swap meets and community members in and around South Central will populate the space. Sculptural components, plants, a live water feature with cupped hands showcasing the heaviiy adorned nails like those commonly worn in the Black community, found objects, ephemera and a bespoke wallpaper densely populate the galleries. Traversing time, cultures and references, Lauren Halsey's installation at Serpentine draws on a wide range of sources and iconography that celebretes South Central's rich visual culture and its inhabitants, offering blueprints for imagining new futures.
Publication: To coïncide with the exhibition, Serpentine and Rizzoli will release the most comprehensive publication to date on Lauren Halsey. Designed by ALASKA ALASKA, the London-based design studio founded by Virgil Abloh in 2017, it will bring together new and insightful contributions from poet Will Alexander; art historian LeRonn Brooks; musician and founding member of Parliament-Funkadeiic, George Clinton; writer, dancer and experimental filmmaker Harmony Holiday; poet and performer Douglas Kearney; and Serpentine CEO Bettina Korek. Generously illustrated in colour throughout, it also features an extensive conversation between Lauren Halsey and Serpentine's Chief Curator Lizzie Carey-Thomas and Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist.
LAUREN HALSEY: BIOGRAPHY
Lauren Halsey (b. 1987; lives and works in Los Angeles, USA) earned a RFA from California Institute of Arts and an MFA frorn Yale University in 2014. Lauren Halsey has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including Seattle Art Museum (2022); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2021); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2019); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018). Lauren Halsey presented monumental site-specific installations at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2024 and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden in 2023. Lauren Halsey is the 2021 recipient of the Seattle Art Museum's Gwendolyn Knight | Jacob Lawrence Prize and received the Mohn Award for artistic excellence at the Harnmer Museum's Made in L.A. 2018 biennial. Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modem Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Harnmer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. In 2019, Lauren Halsey founded Summaeverythang Community Center and is currently in the process of constructing sister dreamer, lauren halsey's architectural ode to tha surge n splurge ofsouth central los angeles, a major public sculpture park in South Central Los Angeles.
Lauren Halsey: emajendat is curated by Lizzie Carey-Thomas, Director of Programmes (interim) and Chief Curator and Chris Bayley, Exhibitions Curator; and produced by Mike Gaughan, Gallery Manager.
SERPENTINE SOUTH
Royal Park of Kensington Gardens
