How does art change the way we see our environment? Guided by Teaching Artists and inspired by solo exhibitions of the work of Paul Pfeiffer and Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio at MOCA, artworxLA participants used art to trace their relationships to identity, place-making, media and spectacle.

The art of Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio makes connections between Central America and Los Angeles, focusing on multiple sites as part of the same community and history. His recent works address the intersection of social and environmental justice through specific uses of material. By painting latex rubber onto the trunks of trees in the LA neighborhoods where he grew up, he creates casts that capture the trees’ textures, markings, and surface layers while also connecting the history of the ficus tree to the history of Central American communities that have lived and grown in the same areas. His use of materials like rubber and amber have strong ties to indigenous knowledge and reclaiming histories in the face of colonial erasure. In their own works, artworxLA students considered the ways humans mark their existence and the intersecting stories held in materials, images, and objects.

Paul Pfeiffer uses video, photography, sculpture, sound and installation to examine how media and spectacle wire the ways that we see. With strategic editing and sampling, Pfeiffer offers a new version of mass media images and footage from sporting events, concerts, films, and game shows that bring the viewer or spectator into focus. For their projects, artworxLA students created works that reflect on their own relationships to celebrity culture, sports, social media, content, and music that center their own perspectives on how media has changed for their generation.