Gala Porras-Kim’s interdisciplinary work questions the social and political contexts that influence the manifestation and interpretation of language and history. The work comes from a research-based practice that aims to reconsider how intangible subjects, such as sounds, language, and history, have been represented in the fields of linguistics, history, and conservation. At this year's Art Basel Hong Kong, the artist is presenting a new body of work Reconstructed Lacuna to continue her investigation of ethnographic institutions. She selects objects, such as embroidered fabric scraps, broken stones, and restorations of fragments, within museum collections that are unidentified—lacking indicators of provenance and history such as date, medium, or site of origin—and proposes hypothetical complete forms for these fragments. Her proposals, in the form of new objects, are singular suggestions for objects whose possibilities for interpretation are infinite. The project commenced with the artist's contribution to the Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only biennial at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.  

Gala Porras-Kim (b.1984) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received an MFA from CalArts and an MA in Latin American Studies from UCLA. Her solo exhibitions include: Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; LABOR, Mexico City; and has recently been included in group exhibitions at the Seoul Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Hammer Museum.