Bari Kumar: Remembering the Future

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Bad Kumar: Remembering the Future, on view at LACMA's satellite gallery in Charles White Elementary School in MacArthur Park through June 13. The exhibition explores the work of Los Angeles—based contemporary artist Bari Kumar through 10 original works by the artist, including oil paintings and cloth constructions that explore themes of fragmentation, the human body, and iconography from the East and the West. Kumar's work will be presented alongside ancient objects from LACMA's South and Southeast Asian Art collection dating from the ninth through the early 20th century. Additionally, a new ephemeral work, created collaboratively between Charles White Elementary School students and the artist, will be on view. Together the group will produce a rangoli, a traditional Indian art form created with colored powder. The rangoli is created for celebratory occasions, such as special holidays, and is usually found at the entrance of a home or courtyard. The school's rangoli will be created, erased, then re-created by students throughout the duration of the exhibition. Additionally, the rangoli will periodically be outside of the gallery to welcome the community into the exhibition.

Bari Kumar: Remembering the Future will be the seventh exhibition as part of LACMA's On-Site initiative, an ongoing engagement with the museum's surrounding community. This program offers elementary-school students access to original works of art from LACMA's collection and opportunities to interact with artists working today. This exhibition is co-curated by Eduardo Sanchez of LACMA Education and Julie Romain, assistant curator of South and Southeast Asian Art.

"This collaboration with Bari Kumar is the first time LACMA has presented an exhibition dedicated to South and Southeast Asian art at Charles White Elementary School. Bari Kumar: Remembering the Future looks into the past with examples of ancient art from LACMA’s collection but also looks to the present through the artist's contemporary works, which draw from ancient objects as a source of inspiration," said Eduardo Sanchez. "This view of the past and connection to the present was one of the inspirations for the title of the exhibition."

"I am thrilled to be working with LACMA and the students of Charles White Elementary School on this exhibition. With the ranogli I hope to engage students in a discussion about the symbiotic relationship between creation and destruction through this ephemeral art practice” said artist Bari Kumar.

Bari Kumar

Born in Andhra Pradesh in 1966, Bari Kumar studied at the Rishi Valley School in India. Kumar moved to Los Angeles in January 1985 and studied graphic design at Otis/Parsons School of Design, graduating in 1988. Kumar’s work is informed by his bicultural experiences: canvases feature desolate landscapes with fragmented imagery, words, and symbols and are inspired as much by Los Angeles, where he has lived for 30 years, as from childhood memories of growing up in rural southern India. His work has been shown internationally in India and throughout the United States, including the Craft and Folk Art Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, Queens Museum of Art, Pacific Asia Museum, and more.