Landlords

Posted on June 26, 2023October 24, 2023 by Sarah Rara

LANDLORDS (2022)

Four video billboards installed along Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles as part of the virtual exhibition Echoes, an experimental collaboration between Epoch Gallery and LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab. Link to virtual exhibition HERE

Landlords 1-4 introduces the landlord as mosquito, presented as a series of shimmering long-takes installed along Wilshire Blvd. The landlord-mosquito feeds, and never stops feeding, in a series of eternal loops. The videos conjure the mundane horror of the landlord-tenant relationship within an environment of wealth and property consolidation by large real estate corporations that withhold, rather than provide, housing— an investment strategy that relies on logics of scarcity and extraction.

billboard with monochrome purple/magenta image of mosquito with sparkles, billboard situated in ruins of construction on Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles

a round wrinkled shape, close up of the body, with a mosquito perched on top against a black background

billboard with monochrome purple/magenta image of mosquito with sparkles, billboard situated in front of cement corporate building with grid of windows on Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles

billboard with monochrome purple/magenta image of mosquito with sparkles, billboard installed on the facade of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art lined with palm trees on Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles

Sarah Rara

Info | Work

Sarah Rara’s multi-disciplinary practice— including video, sound, performance, and writing— explores the position of witness within fragile systems. Their work in sound and moving image considers gender, queerness, technology, disability, and illness, in connection with environmental research. Regarding the environment as relational and invested with notions of identity, Sarah Rara’s work considers the socio-political and personal dimensions of sensing technologies. They are a primary organizer of the ongoing project lucky dragons. Their work, solo and in collaboration, has been presented at such institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art (as part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial), the Hammer Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, London’s Institute for Contemporary Art, PS1 in New York, REDCAT and Human Resources in Los Angeles, MOCA Los Angeles, the 54th Venice Biennale, Documenta 14 in Athens, and the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among others. Rara is a 2018 recipient of the LACMA Art + Technology fellowship and current artist-in-residence at Bangkok 1899, Bangkok, Thailand. Rara is Assistant Professor of Moving Image at Williams College.

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