Monuments of Home

Towering outside Venice’s Arsenale, the faces of Lauren Halsey’s loved ones gaze down at visitors from atop columns that flank the river. The artist’s installation melds Egyptian iconographies and architecture with contemporary symbols and motifs derived from her own experiences. The result is a poignant portrait of Black culture in Los Angeles etched in stone. 

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Halsey makes monuments of the people and places she loves. Born and raised in South Central, Los Angeles—where her family has resided since the 1920s—the 37-year-old artist creates spirited works that celebrate Black culture and reclaim legacies lost to gentrification and colonization. Her presentation at this year’s Venice Biennale titled keepers of the krown, 2024, cements her status as one of the art world’s most intrepid voices with an installation that encompasses core facets of the artist’s life and inspirations, from Afrofuturism and funk music to her LA roots and loved ones.

The rising art world star’s career began in 2006 while she was still a student at community college in Torrance, California. She was particularly drawn to the Walking City proposals made by Ron Herron of avant-garde British architectural group Archigram in the 1960’s. Those utopian structures compelled Halsey to consider various forms of architectural interventions and emboldened her to create her first collages where street signs, palm trees, and pyramids could exist in a single composition. Since then, she has built up an archive of life as she knows it, framed by the histories and shared stories passed down to her.

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Halsey was already planning on producing a prototype of such a temple when the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art commissioned a work from her as part of its Cantor Roof Garden series in 2022—which has showcased artists including Héctor Zamora, Alicja Kwade, Huma Bhabha, and Alex Da Corte. (She was also recently announced as a Co-Chair for the 2024 Met Gala.) The resulting installation on the Met’s rooftop, titled the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I), 2022, now extends to her sculptures at the Biennale, opening up an international dialogue about whose histories are shared and whose are forgotten.

In Venice, this fusion of cultures and histories is epitomized by intricate signage and familial vestiges etched into Halsey’s Pharaonic temple, including emblazoned phrases such as “Thou shall not fold,” and “We want a full and complete freedom.” Her immersive installation embodies the international, city-wide exhibition’s theme of “Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere,” which grapples with displacement, migration, and belonging. Halsey’s contribution to the 60th Biennale transcends time and culture, weaving together delicate narratives of resilience and identity.

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Lauren Halsey's keepers of the krown is on view until November 24, 2024 at the Venice Biennale at Giardini and Arsenale, Venice.