LA Living Spaces & We Will Be Heard

LA Living Spaces: Photographs by Ellie Zenhari

We Will Be Heard: Works by CSUDH Students

Exhibition Coordinator on behalf of CSUDH was Kathy Zimmerer, Director, University Art Gallery, Art and Design Department, with participating faculty member Michele Bury, Chair and Professor, Art and Design Department, CSUDH.

April 23- May 21, 2017

Opening reception, Sunday, April 30, 12-4 p.m.

Zenhari’s solo exhibition, LA Living Spaces, includes photographs focusing on San Pedro, Wilmington and the Los Angeles Port and its environmental impact on the surrounding cities. Curated by Martabel Wasserman, Curator of Community Engagement at Angels Gate, Zenhari’s new series, LA Living Spaces, builds on her original visual photo narrative, The Toxic Port Project. Zenhari continues to explore environmental justice issues in these photographs. The photographs are organized into three areas: The Old Port, Housing and Environment, and Labor and Refineries. Her ongoing photography series on the Los Angeles Port is part of a collaboration (2014) between the Art & Design Department and Dr. Vivian Price, Labor Studies, CSU Dominguez Hills. Dr. Price, an activist on environmental justice and labor studies, will write all the accompanying educational text for Zenhari’s exhibit.

In Spring 2014, Professor Zenhari developed The “San Pedro Port Project” emphasizing the concept of solitude, commodity and pollution in the port of Los Angeles through imagery, and these photographs, along with photographs by her students, were exhibited at the Angels Gate Cultural Center. Besides participating in the solo exhibit, “Watts Now: Photographs by Ellie Zenhari” she was also co-curator of “Portraits of the Human Experience” in the University Art Gallery, CSUDH in 2015, and “Watts Now: A Student Exhibition” which was held in 2016 in the University Library Cultural Art Center at CSUDH.

The exhibit of CSUDH student work, We Will Be Heard, includes photographs of the Los Angeles Port and its inherent environmental issues by students. Also on display will be Subvertisement posters, where student designers have subverted advertising to focus on social justice issues, zines designed by students as part of the DH Art Collective and curated by student Allison Garcia, Reality T.V. Creative Pitch Decks from four reality series being developed by students, and selected paintings, drawings and mixed media sculptures by students from the Art and Design Studio Art classes.

Sunday, April 30, 2017

Exhibition Programs

LA Living Spaces exhibit tour, 1:00 p.m., led by Photographer Ellie Zenhari, Assistant Professor, Art and Design Department, CSUDH, and Dr. Vivian Price, Associate Professor, Labor Studies, CSUDH. Ellie Zenhari will discuss her current series on the LA Port in the exhibit, LA Living Spaces. Her photographic concepts include The Old Port, Housing and Environment, and Labor and Refineries. Dr. Vivian Price will discuss the LA Port workers, unions and the environmental justice issues of the port complex for the surrounding neighborhoods.

Dr. Vivian Price entered the academic world after considerable experience as a worker in factories, refineries, and as a union electrician. As both a researcher and an activist in the field of Labor Studies, she also is active in environmental justice issues in Los Angeles, especially in the community of Watts and the cities of San Pedro and Wilmington.

CSUDH Student Dance Performance, 2:30 pm, Refill Please, Choreographer: Mayra Pedraza, Dancers: Mayra Pedraze, Lily Cabrera, Zantino Bustos, presented in conjunction with the CSUDH Department of Theatre Arts & Dance, Dance Program, Marco Carreon, Adjunct Faculty.