Insomnia is a series of watercolor and acrylic paintings. This body of work is the result of a year of insomnia. As a stroke survivor, Diaz practices repetitive memory exercises, using drawing as a tool for excavating and retaining information. In her commitment to rendering a painting every night, Diaz turned to the unfiltered, spontaneous imagery that surfaced during her insomnia, whether dreams, fantasies, or memory. In her introspection, splashes of color became figures and objects that transformed into scenes of domesticity and city life drawn from her upbringing in Mexico and Los Angeles. Personal memories, folklore, familiar iconography of her Mexican heritage, and American pop culture are intertwined in surreal compositions that consider family, loss, and the complexities of the Latinx experience in the United States. As Diaz expresses, “these works reveal meaning in relation to others, to experience, to memory, to story, to dreams and dreamers, to imagination and to the larger context of home.”
For more images from the Insomnia Project please visit the Luis De Jesus Gallery website, here.
La Tía y Don Francisco II, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40 in.
This is a solo exhibition comprised of a series of embroidered works on canvas. They are based on salvaged photos the artist brought from her family’s drug-cartel abandoned home in Mexico and photos from her family’s apartment in East Los Angeles after her family’s displacement because of gentrification. These are all embroidery portraits of family members who were lost, forgotten, or estranged by family members. In an attempt to bring value and visibility to these family members, Diaz reconstructed all these portraits working as an archivist, stitching to bring representation and visibility to her family who has been considered invisible.
Installation view, 2018. CACtTUS Gallery, Long Beach, CA.
Armenian Dad, 2018. Colored thread on canvas, 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 framed, actual pieces variable. CACtTUS Gallery, Long Beach, CA.
Left: Aunt Gloria (bride); Center: Aunt Gloria; Right: Aunt Antonia (at end of row), 2018. Color thread on canvas, all works: 19 3/4 x 19 3/4; actual pieces variable. CACtTUS Gallery, Long Beach, CA.
Prison Gourmet is a multi-media installation of a cooking-demonstration table with letters, recipes, and prisoners cooking ephemera, a recipe video, a cookbook, and a performance that recreates prison recipes using commissary food items. Inmates from vending machines buy the limited list of food items. Although in some prisons like federal prison, inmates have access to microwaves, these recipes are made from limited kitchen tools that they make on their own using whatever is available to them. Some of these food recipes suggest keeping ingredients in trash bags for days. Prisoners make unconventional mixtures of ingredients to create their own unique flavors. The intent of Prison Gourmet is to address and question the politics of food and incarceration. Among some of these, there are questions about freedom and food, punishment and food justice, food and taste, prison food recipes as psychological strategies for survival, communal meals, and accessibility of food and health.
The project has been installed and performed at various locations like LACMA, San Jose Art Museum, El Segundo Art Museum, Newcomb Art Museum, and many more.
Mixed Media Performance and Installation a part of Let Them Eat exhibition by Fallen Fruit, 2015. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA.
Mixed Media Performance and Installation a part of Let Them Eat exhibition by Fallen Fruit, 2015. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA.
Prison Gourmet: Tamale Preparation. Performed and recorded at Slanguage Studio in Wilmington, CA. Assisted by Antonio De Jesus Lopez.
Installation view from To Live and Dine in LA, curated by Josh Kun. 2015. Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles, CA.
Casa Verde Burrito Menu by Jason Vera detail from To Live and Dine in LA, curated by Josh Kun. 2015. Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles, CA.
Performance and Installation for Eat exhibition at El Segundo of Art Museum. 2019. El Segundo, CA.
Installation view from Around the Table: Food, Creativity, and Community, 2013. San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA.
Performance a part of Around the Table: Food, Creativity, and Community, 2013. San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA.
Installation view. 2013. Slanguage Studio, Wilmington, CA.
Thumb Wrestling Politics, 2012 from group installation The Subterraneans / XYZ: The Artists Behind LA's Artist-Run Spaces at Torrance Art Museum.
This video focuses on three thumb Wrestling matches between Diaz and the honorary mayor of the town city she lived in, an activist, and another local artist. They were all invited for a match to the artist-run space she co-founded called Slanguage. Using humor and the context sport of Wrestling to settle art-community arguments, the artist dukes out their problems in a thumb wrestling match. Inspired by games or sports, Diaz creates a strategic, democratic space for communication and dialogue. Not everyone can participate in body wrestling, but everyone can participate in a match of thumb wrestling. It also fits into the idea of thumb war, which is about conflict, competition, and argument within an artist and its relationship to community members. The thumb wrestling game is a metaphor for dialogue in a day-to-day conflict.
Video Still 1 from Thumb Wrestling Politics, 2012. Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA.
Video Still 2 from Thumb Wrestling Politics, 2012. Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA.
Video Still 3 from Thumb Wrestling Politics, 2012. Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA.
Video Still 4 from Thumb Wrestling Politics, 2012. Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA.
Video Still 5 from Thumb Wrestling Politics, 2012. Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA.
Hip Hop Imaginary: The Bucket Brigade Part I is part one of a larger performance that imagines a world merging both elements of opera and street subculture, Hip Hop. The Bucket Brigade has concentrated on developing a narrative staged in the port city of Wilmington (South of Los Angeles) in the locations where it is the most contaminated soil and air pollutants due to the oil refineries in the city. The work pays tribute to people who have died of cancer as a result of the contaminated air through a shamanistic performance by appropriating urban cultural elements of Opera costumes and urban dance culture. She wears a costume and carries a make-shift bucket brigade (air sampling device) to monitor air pollution in the places she knows are the most contaminated. She brings two forces into play-- that of the artist’s perseverance in making a public protest, and that of an attempt to participate in a cultural, contemporary landscape through memory. For this exhibition, the artist shows the performance costume, bucket brigade, photos of the performance, and other performance memorabilia.
Photo detail from installation at 2011 Sur Biennial, 2011. Cerritos College Art Gallery, Cerritos, CA.
Photo detail from installation at 2011 Sur Biennial, 2011. Cerritos College Art Gallery, Cerritos, CA.
Installation detail from installation at 2011 Sur Biennial, 2011. Cerritos College Art Gallery, Cerritos, CA.
Installation detail from installation at 2011 Sur Biennial, 2011. Cerritos College Art Gallery, Cerritos, CA.
Installation detail from installation at 2011 Sur Biennial, 2011. Cerritos College Art Gallery, Cerritos, CA.
Police and Thieves, Invisible Cities, LA. Madrid, Spain. Part of ARCOMadrid International Contemporary Art Fair.
Collaborated work by Karla Diaz and Mario Ybarra Jr.
Multi-media installation including film, paintings, letters, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other ephemera about two marginalized L.A. stories. The installation was a personal glimpse into the L.A. stories of a cop friend and a friend serving time in prison. Inspired by the title of the reggae song Police and Thieves by Jamaican musician, Junior Murvin which describes the struggle between cops and robbers from both sides. The installation surveys the complex relationships between police and criminals, providing an intimate perspective that questions notions of power, freedom, community, and civic engagement.
Curated by Kris Kuramitsu and Christopher Miles for the Museo Casa de Cervantes.
Installation view from Invisible Cities, 2010. Mixed Media. Museo Casa de Cervantes, Madrid, Spain.
This is a multi-media installation of memorabilia and archives (including photos, newspaper clippings, postcards, paintings, film, and other ephemera ) from a community arts cultural center that the artist Diaz grew up going to. The Center was co-founded by Diaz’s mentors, artist Dixie Swift and Manazar Gamboa, a poet, and playwright from Chavez Ravine. It is located in Long Beach, CA. A glimpse of the center’s archives touches upon the community’s struggle to overcome displacement, violence, and art as a vehicle for resistance and expression. Community engagement through the exchange of diverse cultures for Homeland, begins with the belief that all citizens, from all cultures, have the right to grow and flourish in their communities. The installation hopes to engage audiences in redefining the meaning of “citizenship.”
Installation view, 2010. Mixed Media Installation. Darb 1718 Contemporary Art & Cultural Center, Cairo, Egypt.
Installation view, 2010. Mixed Media Installation. Darb 1718 Contemporary Art & Cultural Center, Cairo, Egypt.
Detail view, 2010. Mixed Media Installation. Darb 1718 Contemporary Art & Cultural Center, Cairo, Egypt.
This is a multi-media performance about Latinx artists growing up in Los Angeles. It’s the second of the three-month artist residency part of MOCA’s Engagement Party Program. The performance plays with the notion of the word Dyslexia, a learning disorder marked by a severe difficulty in recognizing and understanding written language and “lexicon” meaning units in a language. It explores the idea of a visual language and its poetics in relationship to text, spoken word, performance music, and video.
Dyslexicon word performance at MOCA Engagement Party, 2009. Los Angeles, CA.
Dyslexicon word performance at MOCA Engagement Party, 2009. Los Angeles, CA.
Collaborated work by Karla Diaz and Mario Ybarra Jr.
This project was developed for the exhibition called the “Uncertain States of America” curated by Daniel Birnbaum and Hans-Ulrich Obrist. The project idea started with taking note of bird watchers in the artists own community—in a local park in Wilmington, CA and discovering that within a very distraught landscape full of refineries, there existed a rich patch of trees that attracted many distinct birds to their neighborhood. As a strategy, the “club” was used as a tool or trope for observation; to look at their environment, to look at nature, to look at art-bird-related designs in pop culture, hairstyles, and the ephemera of birds. Words such as “habitat” and “migration” were key in developing this project as well as the research of language in the idea of native and non-native species of birds and how that parallels the idea of international migration of humans. For this exhibition, the artists worked with the education department at the Serpentine Gallery and a group of 5 young artists to gather bird research from London and performed a bird-calling Concerto (concert) at the opening of the exhibition which aired at the BBC radio station in London.
Installation view from Uncertain States of America, 2006. Serpentine Gallery, London, UK.
Bird Concerto recorded by BBC Radio at Serpentine Gallery from Uncertain States of America exhibition, 2006. Serpentine Gallery, London, UK.