Join us for a conversation with exhibition curator Matthew H. Robb and artist Gala Porras-Kim moderated by art historian and critic Kavior Moon. Porras-Kim’s current exhibition The weight of a patina of time includes a chronological selection of Porras-Kim’s installations and series of research-based projects from the past seven years (2016–2023). All these works consider a container and its contents, as well as the relationship of the container’s scale to those contents: the bag that holds the tiny fragment; the glyph that holds the sound of language; the building that houses the hidden chamber; the box that holds the curious objects; the body of water that contains the offerings; and the documents that list and describe all these containers across time and space.

About the Speaker

Gala Porras-Kim lives and works in Los Angeles/London. She received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2009 and an MA in Latin American studies from UCLA in 2012. Solo exhibitions have been held at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville (2023); Gasworks, London and CAMSTL, St. Louis (2022); Amant and Kadist, Brooklyn (2021); and MOCA LA (2019). She has participated in numerous biennials, including the 12th Liverpool Biennial (2023); 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021); 34th Bienal de São Paulo (2021); Whitney Biennial (2017); and the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA (2016). Porras-Kim is a recipient of numerous awards, including an Art Matters Foundation Grant (2019), Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2016), and a Creative Capital Grant (2015). She has participated in residencies at the Getty Research Institute (2020-22); Delfina Foundation, London (2021); and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge (2020). Her work is in the collections of MOMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Brooklyn Museum in New York; MOCA, LACMA, and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; MCA and DePaul Art Museum in Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Perez Museum, Miami; and the Seoul Museum of Art.

Kavior Moon is an art historian and critic based in Los Angeles, where she received a PhD in art history from UCLA. Her scholarly work focuses on institutional critique and experimental post-studio art practices. She has taught at UCLA, ArtCenter College of Design, Claremont Graduate University, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. Her essays and reviews have appeared in such publications as Artforum, Art in America, ARTnews, Kaleidoscope, and X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly.

Matthew H. Robb is the Mesoamerican specialist at the Library of Congress. He is an expert in the history of art and architecture at Teotihuacan, as well as the history of collecting pre-Columbian art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has lectured and written on a broad range of topics related to the Indigenous arts of the Western Hemisphere. 

Parking available in UCLA Lot 4, 198 Westwood Plaza, directly off Sunset Blvd; $3/hr or max $15/day. Rideshare drop-off at 305 Royce Dr.

Image credit: Installation view, Gala Porras-Kim: The weight of a patina of time, 2023, Fowler Museum at UCLA; Photo: Elon Schoenholz