Gala Porras-Kim

Gasworks presents the first UK solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Gala Porras-Kim. Her work investigates the institutional frameworks that define, legitimise and preserve cultural heritage, looking at the global circulation of precolonial artefacts extracted from their original sites and stored in museum collections in the West.

Porras-Kim’s work questions the ethical principles of museum conservation while inviting the viewer to assign new meanings to artefacts displayed within institutions. Her exhibition at Gasworks examines the (after)life of sacred objects at the British Museum, thinking through ways of compromising with their otherworldly original owners.

Interrogating whether it’s possible for objects at the British Museum to still perform their original function as spiritual offerings, Porras-Kim’s exhibition unravels the many worlds colliding in these powerful artefacts, from international law to stars, cosmologies, and forces greater than us.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Gala Porras-Kim is an artist born in Bogota and based in Los Angeles. Her work has been featured at the São Paulo Biennial; Gwangju Biennale; Whitney Biennial; LACMA, Los Angeles; and Made in LA Biennial, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. She has received awards including Creative Capital, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. She was a recent Radcliffe fellow at Harvard, and is currently artist-in-residence at The Getty.

Porras-Kim’s exhibition is commissioned and produced by Gasworks, with generous support from the Henry Moore Foundation and the Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK). Research for the exhibition was developed during a residency at Delfina Foundation, supported by the Latin America and Caribbean Patrons Group.

Gasworks commissions are supported by Catherine Petitgas and Gasworks Exhibitions Supporters.

www.gasworks.org.