"Navigating LA"
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Navigating LA

"Navigating LA" was the culmination of a semester's worth of work in the Cultural Studies course "Welcome to L.A." taught at the Claremont Graduate School Cultural Studies Program. The exhibition offers reflections on the region as a complex, cross-cultural space where community, borders, migration and bodies interact, shift, change and are contested daily and through the region's history. The students have organized a dynamic show and programs to reach a broader audience. This is a premiere collaboration between the Studio for Southern California History and CGU with instructor reina alejandra saldivar prado and her course. The exhibition features rare books authored by Leo Politi on loan from The George G. Stone Center for Children's Books; two books featuring work by Ed Ruscha and Edgar Arceneaux from the Dennison Library & Honnald Library at Claremont University, respectively; archival documentation from Regeneración, an artist collective based in Highland Park during the 90s, and works by artists from Mobile Mural Lab, Pocho Research Society, Sandy Rodriguez, Antonio Garcia, and others working in Southern California to name a few highlights. In addition to exhibit highlights archived here below, "Navigating LA" includes its own website and lesson plan.

Saturday, May 28, 2011 Poetry Reading with Gloria Alvarez
Poet Gloria Alvarez shares about her experiences navigating LA through language. Her poem "Contrastes/Contrasts" is available on the show's website under "Lesson Plan" (reprinted with permission from the artist).

Saturday, June 18, 2011 Panel “Remembering Leo Politi” celebrates the work and life of Leo Politi. Organized and moderated by CGU student Jennifer Escobar, the panel focuses on how Leo Politi represented different neighborhoods (i.e. Olvera Street, Chinatown, Bunker Hill) in his works, especially his books and paintings. Participants include: 
Harry YanGeorge Yan, Frank Yan, and Mary Yan Joe (“Moy Moy”), featued in Leo Politi’s children’s book Moy Moy;
Ellen Daigle, artist and Politi family friend; 
Fabricio Cervantes, LA historian writer, and director; 
Ann Stalcup, author of Leo Politi, Artist of the Angels.
Writer and cultural critic Max Benavidez moderates the panel.  
Special thanks to Jennifer Escobar, Monica Pelayo and all of the panelists who agreed to have the panel recorded.

The exhibition is supported in part by the Friedman Grant, the School of Arts & Humanities at Claremont Graduate University, and The Studio for Southern California History, a nonprofit resource center in LA's Chinatown.

copyright the Studio for Southern California History