Lauren Halsey Excavates South Central L.A. on Met Rooftop

Lauren Halsey b. 1987, United States Follow +

Lauren Halsey's commission for the Metropolitan Museum's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden is now on view through 22 October 2023.

'My installation for The Met's Roof Garden reflects my interest in conflating narratives from contemporary South Central Los Angeles with those evoked in ancient pharaonic architecture,' Halsey said in a statement.

'My hope is that viewers in New York feel the connections intuitively,' she said.

Titled the eastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I), the work is a 22-foot-tall structure surrounded by four columns and four sphinxes, which are modelled on members of her family.

The work is composed of over 750 glass-fibre-reinforced concrete tiles inscribed with phrases cribbed from the artist's predominantly Black community.

The rooftop temple is ostensibly inspired by the Met's Temple of Dendur, a Roman Egyptian religious structure constructed around 23 BC.

Talking to Ocula Magazine in 2020, Halsey said that 'hieroglyphs allude to a form of imagining, time travel, myth making, and fantasising around the origins of Black diasporic folk, as so many of us African Americans don't know where our specific origins are on the African continent.'

Conversation Lauren Halsey: Centring Community Jareh Das

New York Times art critic Holland Cotter likened the work to 'the Pharaonic funk and empyreal jazz of George Clinton and Sun Ra.'

He noted that Halsey conceived of this monument to her community in the face of 'the relentless tide of disenfranchisement and gentrification.'

In New York City, the installation likewise looks out over 'vivacious, ever under-threat Black and Brown neighbourhoods, precious, present and gone.'

When the installation concludes its run at the Met, it will be reconstructed in South Central Los Angeles.

The Met's roof garden has previously featured work by Imran Qureshi (2013), Dan Graham (2014), Pierre Huyghe (2015), Cornelia Parker (2016), Adrián Villar Rojas (2017), Huma Bhabha (2018), Alicja Kwade (2019), Héctor Zamora (2020), and Alex Da Corte (2021). —[O]

Main image: Exhibition view: Lauren Halsey, _theeastside of south central los angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture(I) _(2022). The Roof Garden Commission. © Lauren Halsey. Courtesy the artist; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles/New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo: Erica Allen.