PREVIEW: Thursday 23 September, 6–8pm
OPENING TIMES: Friday–Saturday, 11–6pm (or by appointment)

In her first solo exhibition in the UK, Carmen Argote will present Be loved, part of an expansive new project encompassing video, sound, objects, and works on paper.  

The project began by addressing how patriarchal violence is perpetuated, and the impact this had on her grandmother, father, mother, and her own notion of self. Through a process of searching and digesting, this has developed into a deeper psychological understanding of self and the inner child. Over the last year the work itself has pushed back against this pain and shifted towards a process of healing, confronting personal adherence and performance of these values, and their ongoing transformation.

Carmen Argote (2021) PHOTO: Craig Kirk

The video is composed of a series of ritual-actions filmed at the Evergreen Cemetery (the oldest, and one of the largest cemeteries in Los Angeles). Through the process of these somatic actions N Evergreen Ave 4 is the beginning material of the searching process to mother the inner child.

I began to dig a hole and kick up some of the dirt of my ego.
I encountered new feelings that had previously been numb. 
The transmutation now asked a different question.

Rather than a didactic method, the approach to the work is more visually poetic, drawing on childhood relationships to make sense of this complex experience. This project will continue to develop through a residency at Primary in September, where large-scale works on paper will be produced in situ, culminating in an installation that will bring all of these elements together for the first time.

Carmen Argote (born in Guadalajara, México, and now living in Los Angeles) is a multidisciplinary artist who works through the act of inhabiting a space. Argote’s practice is in conversation with the site she is working from, often pointing to the body, to class, and to economic structures in relationship to architecture and to personal history.