Beside the Edge of the World
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Robin Coste Lewis, Nina Katchadourian, Dana Johnson, and Rosten Woo. Photo: Kate Lain. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia, 1516. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz filming at The Huntington. Photo: Kate Lain. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz conducting research in the cryopreservation lab at The Huntington. Photo: Kate Lain. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Magnolia Portoricensis botanical specimen. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), Monstrorum Historia, 1642. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Nina Katchadourian conducting research at The Huntington. Photo: Kate Lain. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Installation view of Nina Katchadourian's Strange Creature. Photo: Gina Clyne. Courtesy of Clockshop.
Dana Johnson conducting research at The Huntington. Photo: Lisa Blackburn. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), Walden, autograph manuscript, page 127, 1846–1853. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Rosten Woo conducting research at The Huntington. Photo: Kate Lain. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Showcasing new work by artists selected for a yearlong collaboration with Los Angeles arts organization Clockshop, this exhibition marks the fourth year of The Huntington's /five initiative. Artists invited to participate in this year's project are Nina Katchadourian, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, and Rosten Woo, and writers Dana Johnson and Robin Coste Lewis, poet laureate for the city of Los Angeles. Each participant will create work based on research in The Huntington's collections investigating ideas of perfection and utopia using Thomas More's satirical work Utopia (1516) as a foundational text and starting point.
Installations
Strange Creature
Nina Katchadourian's koi-shaped sculpture installed in the Chinese Garden lake was created as part of the latest /five initiative. Strange Creature was inspired by The Huntington’s collection of 16th- and 17th-century maps and books, as well as the Red Ru-Fish, a carp with a human face from the ancient Chinese mythological text Shan Hai Jing ( Guideways through Mountains and Seas.) The creatures depicted on early modern nautical charts offered a challenge to Katchadourian: How much have we really seen of the world, and how well do we know it? She imagined a creature, somewhat familiar but also strange, slowly surfacing from the Chinese Garden’s lake. Her installation suggests that there is more around us than we can see or perceive. About the artist
Artists
Dana Johnson
Dana Johnson is the author of the short story collection In the Not Quite Dark. She is also the author of Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the novel Elsewhere, California. Johnson's The Story of Biddy Mason (2016) retraces the parallel but contrasting early 20th-century Los Angeles of Henry E. Huntington and African American entrepreneur Biddy Mason. Her work has appeared in Zyzzyva, The Paris Review, Callaloo, The Iowa Review and Huizache, among other publications. Born and raised in and around Los Angeles, Johnson is a professor of English at the University of Southern California.
As part of the exhibition, Dana Johnson created a limited-edition publication, Trailblazer: Delilah Beasley’s California, that imagines the life of Delilah Beasley in early 20th-century California.
Nina Katchadourian
Nina Katchadourian is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes video, performance, sound, sculpture, photography, and public projects. Her projects often make a case for closer scrutiny of our everyday surroundings by creating situations that attempt to provoke and awaken a viewer’s curiosity.
Robin Coste Lewis
Robin Coste Lewis is Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles. She won the National Book award in 2015 for Voyage of the Sable Venus: and Other Poems.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz is an artist whose expanded moving image work relates to Boalian theater, experimental ethnography, and feminist thought. Her recent work is on the sensorial unconscious of anti-colonial movements and everyday poetic work in the Caribbean. She has received the Herb Alpert Arts Award, a USA Ford Fellowship, and a 2015 Creative Capital Visual Artist Grant.
Rosten Woo
Rosten Woo is an artist, designer, and writer living in Los Angeles. His projects aim to help people understand complex systems, reorient themselves to places, and participate in group decision-making. He is co-founder and former executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) and winner of the 2016 National Design Award for institutional achievement. His book Street Value about race and retail urban development was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2009.
Collaboration
Founded in 2004 by artist and filmmaker Julia Meltzer, Clockshop is a multidisciplinary arts organization in Los Angeles that aims to shape the future of the city by providing agency to local artists and writers through commissioning artworks, curating inclusive public programs, and collaborating with other public institutions.
Nov. 9, 2019- Feb. 24, 2020, Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, The Huntington
Showcasing new work by artists selected for a yearlong collaboration with Los Angeles arts organization Clockshop, this exhibition marks the fourth year of The Huntington's /five initiative. Artists invited to participate in this year's project are Nina Katchadourian, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, and Rosten Woo, and writers Dana Johnson and Robin Coste Lewis, poet laureate for the city of Los Angeles. Each participant will create work based on research in The Huntington's collections investigating ideas of perfection and utopia using Thomas More's satirical work Utopia (1516) as a foundational text and starting point.
Stories
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Strange Creature
Strange Creature by Nina Katchadourian is a koi-shaped sculpture installed in the Chinese Garden lake.
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Dana Johnson and Delilah Beasley
Author Dana Johnson explores the work of Delilah Beasley, historian and columnist who wrote Negro Trail Blazers of California.
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News Release - Exhibition Takes a Fresh Look at 'Utopia' with New Works
Exhibition takes a fresh look at 'Utopia' with new works that engage with The Huntington's collections.
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Utopia is Nowhere
Artist Rosten Woo talks about his desire to create artistic works that help people reorient themselves to place.
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#5attheH
Discover the latest updates about the /five initiative on Instagram.
Support for this exhibition is provided by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, the Pasadena Art Alliance, and WHH Foundation.
Beside the Edge of the World is a Huntington Centennial Exhibition. The Huntington's Centennial Celebration is made possible by the generous support of Avery and Andrew Barth, Terri and Jerry Kohl, and Lisa and Tim Sloan.
About /five
About the /five initiative
2019: Beside the Edge of the World
2018: Rituals of Labor and Engagement
2017: COLLECTION/S: WCCW/five at The Huntington
2016: Orbit Pavilion
In Store
As part of the exhibition, Dana Johnson created a limited-edition publication, Trailblazer: Delilah Beasley’s California, that imagines the life of Delilah Beasley in early 20th-century California. Buy