KIARA CRISTINA VENTURA

An Ode To is an exhibition featuring young artists of color who are honoring their native culture, spirituality,and aesthetics through an abstracted lens. With intention, each artist dedicated their pieces to something or someone that they would like to honor. Located at Band of Vices gallery in West Adams Los Angeles, a historically Black and Latinx district, the exhibition as a whole tells a national and American story by revealing images that speak to each artist’s past and current experience.

Evoking the familiar, the figurative and abstract works throughout the show speak to memory, spirituality, and home yet also the finite beauty of our everyday traditions and aesthetics. Each piece in the exhibition was created as act of tribute and dedication further questioning how art can serve as a tribute to one’s life and today’s society. How can an artists make work intentionally? And who and what is the work for? Themes throughout the exhibition include honoring breathe, the self, soul, spirit, home, historical and cultural figures, and more. The artists push viewers, especially those who share similar experiences as them, to appreciate the mundane whether it’d be the color palette of their local bodega, the hug of a loved one, or the beautiful intangible abstraction of our everyday music and spirit.