Emma Balda

I am fascinated by the many ways in which works can be shown. Here are a few…

“Finally and Just for a Minute“, 2022, hanging from the ceiling in my studio at 18th Street Art Center (Olympic Campus) in Santa Monica, CA. (Canvas, burlap, hemp cord, acrylic paint, ribbon) (Pictured, the Los Angeles-based artist Randi Matushevitz)

“Rent Wound Tear, Mend Heal Repair”, 2022, hanging on wall in slight relief, in the exhibition “Collective Acts of Peace” at the 18th Street Art Center Airport Campus Slipstream Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. (Canvas, string, hemp cord, lace, acrylic paint)

“Womb”, 2020, hanging from the ceiling in 18th Street Art Center’s Slipstream Gallery, in my studio at 18th Street Art Center’s Olympic Campus, Santa Monica, CA, and in the Arts at Blue Roof Summer Festival, in the “Please Touch” exhibition at Blue Roof Studios in South Los Angeles. (Plastic hula hoop, raw canvass, jute cord)

“Unfolding Possibilities“, 2021, on pedestal in the exhibition “Recovery Justice: Being Well“, at the 18th Street Art Center Airport Campus Slipstream Gallery
in Santa Monica, CA. (Mulberry paper, sewing thread, gold thread)

“Chromatic Interactions: The Golden Thread“, 2020, hanging on the wall in my studio at 18th Street Art Center (Olympic Campus) in Santa Monica, CA.
(file cards, sewing thread, gold thread, markers, crayons, pencils)

18th Street Arts Center is pleased to present the exhibition (Re)imagining Home: On Care for Our Common Home, curated by Emma Balda and Venus Tung-yan Lau, on view in the Kitchen Lab at 18th Street Arts Center’s Airport Campus (3026 Airport Ave. in Santa Monica) from August 22, 2022 – July 31, 2023.

What is home?

Over the last two years, our notions of home have been challenged, transformed, and clarified. The pandemic has simultaneously forced us to shrink our physical home, while also asking us to expand our sense of home to now include people, food, rituals, and ideas. We have also seen our relationship with and to the Earth change. We have seen that our sense of home must expand to include the Earth and the way we care for it.

As we attempt to create a shared home, the first step in that is defining what home means to us. This project asked the 18th Street community to examine the idea of home outside of the domestic sense. They were asked to identify people, memories, materials, places, movements, or concepts that resonate as home to them. These ideas, in combination with art that reflects on this concept, will then be displayed on the monitor in the Kitchen Lab at the Airport Campus. This project relied heavily on 18th Street’s theme “Our Shared Home,” while also deconstructing and defining what that sense of home means so that we can better understand what it means to share this space with one another.

This exhibition highlights the artworks of Alexandra Dillon, Christopher Tin, Dan Kwong, Dan S Wang, David McDonald, Deborah Lynn Irmas, Debra Disman, Edi Dai, Elham Sagharchi, Gwen Samuels, Jeff Beale, Julia Michelle Dawson, Lionel Popkin, Luciana Abait, M Susan Broussard, Melinda Smith Altshuler, Michael Masucci, Po-Hao Chi, Rebecca Youssef, and Yvette Gellis, all artists in residence at 18th Street Arts Center.

Explore a 360 view of the virtual exhibition HERE.