Installation view of Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, “Gwen and Her Grandbaby”, 2022. Oil, acrylic, and vintage photograph on canvas. 48 x 72 in. Courtesy the artist.
TATYANA FAZLALIZADEH: FINDING SOFT GROUND
April 6, 2024 – August 10, 2024
In Collaboration With California African American Museum
Opening Program: April 6, 2024, 2:00–3:00 p.m.
In Conversation: Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and Essence Harden
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Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice considers Black image making as a site of protest, contestation, affirmation, and possibility. Finding Soft Ground, Fazlalizadeh’s first exhibition at Art + Practice (A+P), considers the conditions, precarity, and imaginative determination of safety for Black women. Utilizing the three galleries of A+P, Fazlalizadeh transforms each space into distinct installations examining the street, the home, and the natural world in relation to terror and refuge. The works in Finding Soft Ground—which include wheat-pasted prints, oil paintings, drawings, a single-channel film, and site-specific materials—are rooted in Fazlalizadeh’s Black feminist theory.
Finding Soft Ground is presented in tandem with Speaking To Falling Seeds, the artist’s installation of monumental portraits of Black Los Angeles women wheat pasted onto the atrium walls of the California African American Museum (CAAM).
Both exhibitions draw upon photographs and conversations that took place in the spring of 2023 while Fazlalizadeh was living in Los Angeles. The portraits ask how safety is presumed, built, and felt for the city’s Black residents.
This exhibition is curated by Essence Harden, Visual Arts Curator, CAAM, and is co-presented by CAAM and A+P as part of CAAM at A+P, a five-year collaboration.
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, “Tanya, alone”, 2020. Graphite on paper. 8 x 10 in. Courtesy the artist.
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, “Self Portrait on Bed”, 2022. Oil and acrylic on canvas. 48 x 72 in. Courtesy the artist.
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, “Tameka”, 2023. Graphite on paper. 8 x 10 in. Courtesy the artist.
Educational Resouces
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A+P’s education program welcomes teachers, students and art enthusiasts to explore and engage with A+P’s museum-curated exhibitions. Interested in bringing your group to A+P? Free guided tours are available to schedule Tuesday–Friday, 11:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Installation View
Installation view of "Tatyana Fazlalizadeh: Finding Soft Ground" at Art + Practice. 6 April – 10 August 2024. Los Angeles, CA. Photo: JW Pictures.
Installation view of "Tatyana Fazlalizadeh: Finding Soft Ground" at Art + Practice. 6 April – 10 August 2024. Los Angeles, CA. Photo: JW Pictures.
Installation view of "Tatyana Fazlalizadeh: Finding Soft Ground" at Art + Practice. 6 April – 10 August 2024. Los Angeles, CA. Photo: JW Pictures.
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Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist working primarily in painting, public art, and multimedia installation. She is from Oklahoma City, born to a Black mother and Iranian father. Foregrounding community engagement and the public sphere, her site-specific works consider how people, particularly women and Black folks, experience race and gender within their surrounding physical environments. Fazlalizadeh is the creator of Stop Telling Women to Smile, an international street art series that tackles gender-based street harassment. Stop Telling Women to Smile sparked a cultural shift, creating conversations on public violence against women that centered intersectionality through public art. Ongoing for ten years, the project has been studied in schools and was released by Fazlalizadeh as a book, Stop Telling Women to Smile: Stories of Street Harassment and How We’re Taking Back Our Power, in 2020.
Fazlalizadeh has lectured about her work and social practice methodology at institutions such as the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Museum, as well as at Brown University, Pratt Institute, Stanford University, and The New School. Profiles on Fazlalizadeh have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Magazine, and on National Public Radio. She is a Forbes “30 Under 30” lister, a Mellon Foundation fellow, and, in 2018, she was the inaugural Public Artist in Residence for the New York City Commission on Human Rights.