April 13 - July 20, 2019
In their first solo museum exhibition, Edgar Fabián Frías transforms the gallery into a multi-disciplinary offering/sanctuary/portal, mixing video testimonials, digital imagery, flower essences, and interactive elements to create an environment that encourages contemplation as well as altered states of awareness. Perpetual Flowering foregrounds the importance of self – care, creating community, and ways in which we may hold space for each other. Collectively, Fabián Frías’s works create an environment conducive to empathy and understanding, and one that reflects an intersection of various sectors the artist engages with including art practice, community organizing, therapy, ceremony, healing practices, and spirituality rooted in the sacred knowledge of their indigenous heritage. Their installation encourages the dissolution of boundaries between these areas, weaving together personal and collective narratives.
A descendant of the Wixarika, Fabián Frías organizes the installation utilizing colors associated with the sacred directions, and also re-interprets ancient ceremonial songs into contemporary music videos. Perpetual Flowering also includes a series of video testimonials that bear witness to the experiences of selected participants living in the Los Angeles area and in Tulsa, Oklahoma, offering opportunities for the viewer to connect to stories that may resonate across communities. Highly stylized digital imagery, incorporating sacred and natural elements, is presented in diverse forms evoking a home environment, such as printed shower curtains and pillows. The artist also includes sacred objects, as well as a unique flower essence charged with natural elements that are native to East Los Angeles created in collaboration with artist and herbalist Saewon Oh. Additionally, Fabián Frías collaborated with Oh on a zine that is also on view, and the two will lead a flower essence making ceremony, open to the public, to take place during the run of the exhibition.
Edgar Fabián Frías, MA MFT is a nonbinary, queer, indigenous (Wixarika) and Latinx interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator, and psychotherapist. Their work traverses academic, social, historical, and relational planes, building bridges and weaving webs. Their practice is amorphous and expansive, rooted in multivalent forms of connection and in the magic that emerges from it. Born in East Los Angeles, Frías earned dual BA degrees in Psychology and Studio art from the University of California, Riverside and completed an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Consequently, Frías’ work is often collaborative and engages with the intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects of consciousness and the continuing effects of colonial and patriarchal structures on the health and resiliency of marginalized communities. Their work has been shown at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center, Vincent Price Art Museum, Human Resources, Machine Project, SOMArts, ESMoA, Recess Gallery, Pieter Performance Space, and PAM Residencies. Frías is currently participating in the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.