Almost two decades ago, while she was an architecture student at El Camino College, Lauren Halsey began conceiving a sculpture park for South Central, the Los Angeles neighborhood where she grew up. At long last, that sculpture park has finally arrived and is now open to the public.
Curated by Christine Y. Kim and organized by the arts organization Los Angeles Nomadic Division, the park is officially titled sister dreamer lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles. It is in many ways the grandest expression to Halsey’s desire to meld past and present in the hope of creating a future in which “Black people can experience themselves differently and not feel weighed down by some of the oppressive forces,” as she once put it.
Halsey has exhibited projects elsewhere, most notably at the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. biennial in 2018, where she took the top honors. Presentations on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and outside the Arsenale during the 2024 Venice Biennale followed. But unlike those projects, sister dreamer is free to the public and not held within the confines of an art institution. It is meant to be for the community, by one of its members.
Below, take a look inside the sculpture park.
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Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio sister dreamer is set in the former site of Gwen’s Ice Cream, a shop that was a neighborhood destination before it burned down in a fire in 2014.
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Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio Like many of Halsey’s other projects, the sculpture park draws on ancient Egyptian art, paying homage to age-old objects such as the goddess Hathor. But Halsey’s works typically have a contemporary twist: one of her sphinxes, for example, wears sunglasses.
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Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio The columns are etched with silhouettes of people as well as insignia of brands recognizable to locals in South Central. Also etched into some of the columns are ancient Egyptian symbols, such as the ankhs seen here.
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Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio At the center of sister dreamer is a structure that Halsey has termed an “oculus,” according to a Los Angeles Times report from last week. The structure is carved with similar symbols to the ones that appear on the columns.
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Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio Inside the oculus, one can find images and textual references to the Grim Sleeper, a serial killer who targeted Black women between the 1980s and the 2000s. The focus on women is common for Halsey, whose column-like sculptures shown at the 2024 Venice Biennale paid homage to her grandmother, as well as female activists and artists.
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Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio sister dreamer will be activated by programming organized by the Broad museum and Halsey’s own nonprofit, Summaeverythang. While the installation is only temporarily sited here for now, it is likely to relocate to a permanent space next year, according to the Los Angeles Times.
