Presented by the City of West Hollywood and curated by Deborah Oliver, Art in Odd Places 2025: VOICE marked the Festival’s West Hollywood debut and celebrates the 20th edition of this iconic public visual and performance art event, which has been presented in cities across the globe.

Art in Odd Places 2025: VOICE took place from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. for three days (July 25-27, 2025) at three different City locations:

1)    Plummer Park, located at 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard, on Friday, July 25, 2025;

2)    West Hollywood Park, located at 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard, on Saturday, July 26, 2025; and

3)   Sunset Boulevard, between N. Sherbourne Drive and N. Doheny Drive, on Sunday, July 27, 2025.

The project was presented in celebration of the City of West Hollywood’s 40th year of cityhood. Art in Odd Places honored the voices of creativity, resilience, and advocacy and reminded us that when people make their voices heard, extraordinary change is possible. The theme of the 2025 festival, VOICE, invited artists to consider and explore the many ways voices resonate in public spaces. Inspired by West Hollywood’s legacy as a hub for activism and culture, the festival asked: “How can art express the complexity of our times?” and “Can art help us find resonance and connection amidst disconnection?”

For 20 years, Art in Odd Places (AiOP) has presented visual and performance art in unexpected public spaces in New York City (NYC), nationally, and internationally. AiOP reminds us that public spaces function as the epicenter for diverse social interactions and the unfettered exchange of ideas. Ed Woodham, founder of AiOP, is an independent elder Southern queer conceptual social absurdist artist, curator, producer, and educator entangled in a mélange of NYC, national, and international activities across media and culture for more than 45 years. Woodham employs humor, irony, subtle detournement, and a striking visual style to encourage greater consideration of — and provoke deeper critical engagement with — the urban environment. Woodham created the project Art in Odd Places as a response to vanishing public space and personal civil liberties.

Curator Deborah Oliver is an educator, independent curator, producer, and interdisciplinary artist. She received her BFA + MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Her practice is focused on performance art and its history, practice, curatorial applications, community exchange, and dialogue. She is the founder and curator of Irrational Exhibits, a durational performance, installation, and media exhibition established in 2001 at Track 16 Gallery. In 2024 the 13th edition of Irrational Exhibits: Juxtaposing Terrains took place at five galleries at the Bendix Building in Downtown LA. Oliver is a faculty member at the University of California Irvine Department of Art and co-founded with Ulysses Jenkins “The Art of Performance @ UCI” an annual performance event for the student community.

Art in Odd Places 2025: VOICE featured a diverse group of local, national, and international artists presenting a curated selection of work encompassing the disciplines of dance choreography, sculptural installation, sound art, endurance performance, social practice, protest art, textile art, painting, and more. Some of the artworks were stationary, while others roamed. Participating artist projects included:

Echoes in Color by Andrea Derujinsky

A three-part public installation featuring large hand-dyed canvas collages placed horizontally across iconic West Hollywood locations. Each piece explores personal and collective voice through themes of growth, memory, and belonging. Viewers are invited to reflect, wander, and witness art rooted in place, season, and identity.

Andrea Derujinsky is a painter and installation artist based in West Hollywood. Using hand-dyed canvas and watercolor techniques, her large-scale textile works appear in public spaces across Los Angeles. Rooted in a legacy of artists, her work merges place, expression, and personal mythology.

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Goddesses and Monsters: A Racket of Banshees by Association of Hysteric Curators (Maya Mackrandilal, Mary Anna Pomonis, Monet Clark, Marjan Vayghan, Michiko Yao & Taryn Lee)

AHC is a decentralized collective of artists and curators imagining alternative feminist futures through exhibitions, performances, dialogue, and creative action. Each festival day features a shifting constellation of feminist works—participatory rituals, multimedia experiments, and mythic invocations that embody the futures we seek. Drawing on ancestral archetypes and radical imagination, AHC asks: What must we invoke, and what must we release? What truths hide in the monsters we fear—and what futures emerge if we follow their call? These works form a living pantheon, transforming streets into sanctuaries.

Performances: Maya Mackrandilal, Ritual for the Future; Mary Anna Pomonis, Pussy Cat Chorus; Michiko Yao, That’s Just How I Express My Love (Jenny series); Monet Clark, The Creature in the Time of the Narwhal  /  roaming performance; Marjan Vayghan and Taryn Lee.

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Choreography for Picketers by Asuka Hisa

A 3-day participatory performance that provides a sign workshop using upcycled cardboard, a movement lesson, and strategies for effective picketing choreography. Each day of the festival will have a different protest topic. Celebrate the city’s history of activism and rehearse moves for one’s next protest. 

Asuka Hisa is the Director of Learning and Engagement at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA). She curates and produces programs for museum and community audiences with a focus on artists and social action. In 2024, she was a Smithsonian Fellow in Museum Practice. She is a lecturer and adjunct faculty member for Occidental College, UCLA’s School of Art and Architecture, and Otis College of Art and Design with courses on learning and engagement in contemporary art museums.

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Revolutions by Beck+Col with Tetiana Sklyarova and Kayla Aguila

Caught between our world and the dream world, this multi-media durational performance uses voice and movement as a bridge to another realm in an attempt to create a unified consciousness. Dancers in ruffled monster costumes revolve in a state of hypnotic waking sleep around a colorful sculpture to the eerie soundscape of Songs of Sayyids and Dervishes composed by Gurdjieff and De Hartmann. A figure who appears to be directing them moves between the sculpture, the dancers, and the audience, while another trapped within the sculpture sings a haunting aria.

Beck+Col is a Los Angeles artist duo. They create alternate universes that are populated by monsters, spawning a counter mythology and queering of existing norms. Their work questions individualism, highlighting the effects of atomization and in contrast, the power of community.

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Sound Frictions by Brian Black & Zane Alexander S.B.

In this durational roaming performance, a wandering group of performers in specially textured suits juxtapose exaggerated physical gestures with a subtle sonic experience as they use their bodies to sand wooden objects, activate their voices, and react to the sensation of the sanding. 

Brian & Zane have collaborated on several sound-based performances since 2023 and co-founded the collaborative group Division of Labor. Brian Black is an interdisciplinary artist focusing on interactive sound works, installation environments, and durational performance. Zane Alexander S.B. is a composer, performer, and community music organizer that creates experimental music.

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REST by Cade Moga

An interactive durational performance that explores the withdrawal of labor as a powerful tool of resistance. The work is inspired by a global movement that emerged in China called Tǎng Píng (“”Lay Flat””), in which youth protested exploitative labor conditions by collectively lying down on public roads. The performance begins with Cade in drag inspired by luxury sleepwear, interviewing and recording the voices of passersby. Then, Cade will REST inside a coffin-shaped bed. The audience can look for the word REST, which will be illuminated on the headboard as part of the installation. 

Cade Moga is a non-binary artist from Curitiba, Brazil, who works in the fields of performance, installation, and video. Influenced by the intersections of queerness in body horror cinema and magical realism in South American literature, Cade constructs surreal worlds exposing the absurdity of societal expectations, such as the daily production of surplus value within a Capitalist arena. Cade was a lead performer and creative collaborator in Seek Bromance, a work that received a Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale in the theater category.

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Shifting Daydreams by Chelsea Boxwell

A large shining painting-installation made of brightly painted canvas and eclectic fabrics is integrated into each West Hollywood VOICE site’s infrastructure, pushing painting off the wall and into public space and immersing the community in a space of color and connection and encouraging viewers to connect with and embrace the frivolous nature of the work and freedom of childlike expression.

Chelsea Boxwell is a multidisciplinary artist based in West Hollywood, CA whose art practice explores site-specific, multidimensional painting compilations that embrace fluidity, color, and transformation. Her work engages audiences by inviting interaction and dialogue with space and examines how materials and light transform color.

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Public Service Announcement by christy roberts berkowitz with Abbe Land

A virtual local history tour narrated by Abbe Land, former West Hollywood City Council member and five-time mayor. This project documents the people’s history of Plummer Park, West Hollywood Park, and Sunset Plaza through QR code-activated audio tours. By featuring Land’s 22-year perspective, the tour preserves vital narratives of civic engagement and community activism at a time when such histories face intentional obscuration. The project celebrates WeHo’s historical resilience. 

christy roberts berkowitz (intentionally lowercase, including her maternal surname) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, musician, and educator working for care and dignity amid ongoing man-made crises. Based in Southern California, she is LA County’s Creative Strategist and founded KCHUNG Public at MOCA. She holds an MFA from Claremont University.

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mercy: An Ode to Black Women's Free Labor by Constance Jaquay Strickland

This live performance that honors the unpaid labor of Black women across generations explores how survival, resistance, and grace live in the body, while asserting that safe and dignified work is a human right. Audiences should look for how movement carries memory and how the body tells stories, history tries to silence.

Constance Jaquay Strickland is a Los Angeles–based transdisciplinary and durational artist. Since 2013, her experimental work has investigated the mental health of women who often go unseen and without empathy, using the body as a portal and vessel. Through movement, physical photography, and filmmaking, she traces memory, migration, and the weight of inherited labor.

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Why Bodies Bend by Curt LeMieux & Marley Van Peebles

In this installation of soft-sculptures depicting anthropomorphic persons enacting exaggerated gestures, the artists create a set of human-like forms that push and pull figuration in unexpected directions, prodding the depths of corporeal experience, creating expressive bodies in motion. The entities are quirky and offbeat. They occupy a physical space transformed by queer activism and culture, the city of West Hollywood. They posit distorted and awkward appearances. From this twisted perspective, they sit in full confidence and strength, voicing all of who they are. 

Curt LeMieux’s approach to art making is rooted in experimentation with process and materials. His practice involves a range of visual disciplines, and he is best known for creating works that suggest a tension between fragility and strength; they are at once ephemeral yet anchored with a sense of permanence.

Van Peebles uses found objects to create what he calls “flat objects.” Using common domestic items, such as discarded food packaging and clothing. His art is directly linked to his everyday actions, and the spiritual or instinctual place without theoretical grounding. Van Peebles graduated from Parsons School of Design, The New School, in 2020.

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I'm just drawn that way by Dakota Noot

Inspired by cartoons and pop culture, this vibrant installation features bold freestanding cutouts made from crayon and colored pencil on foamcore. Centered on celebrating femme and queer bodies, Noot invites real people, especially femme-presenting LGBTQ+ individuals, to serve as muses. The work reclaims public space as a joyful site of queer visibility, honoring femininity as a powerful, unapologetic force across identities.

Dakota Noot is a Los Angeles-based artist and curator. He uses drawings, paintings, and installations to create animal-human hybrids that explore rural yet fantastical, queer identities. Originally from Bismarck, North Dakota, he continues to show in both North Dakota and Los Angeles, including group and solo exhibitions.

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Bot Thoughts by David Yashin

A non-musical lip-sync performance reimagining the Voice in Samuel Beckett’s THE UNNAMABLE as an AI Chess Bot stuck in a tangential loop of questions, answers and observations. Watch, listen and even play a game of chess as the unfeeling AI trys to imagine a life free from the ceaseless stream of online data that fuels its existence. A reminder that the human-like bots swaying online political discourse are but dangerous illusions, voices without souls.

David is an interdisciplinary artist from NYC and a member of SAG-AFTRA & AEA. For over a decade, he has taken on many roles in the arts and entertainment industry, jobs that include acting, singing, stuntwork, precision driving, and even a bit of costume, prop, and set design. In his free time, David enjoys hiking, biking, and traveling with his bf Quang.

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Cntrl + F by Elana Mann & Sharon Chohi Kim

This performance, fusing sonic sculpture and voice, amplifies tensions of freedom of speech, the dissonances of communication, and the attempted silencing of voices. Kim will move and sing with Mann’s “Call to Arms” sculpture, wearing a flowing robe printed with nonsensical letters, symbolizing the fragmentation and distortion of language. Chohi will vocalize a list of words banned by the current presidential administration, who reportedly finds (and punishes) users of these words through the “command F” keyboard shortcut. 

Elana Mann is an artist and activist who explores the power of the collective voice, the embodiment of language, and deafness. Sharon Chohi Kim’s work as a performing artist and composer includes immersive experimental opera, performance art, improvisation, electronic sound art and site-specific space activation through movement and voice.

 

 

 

 

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雌犬 - Female Dog by Ibuki Kuramochi

A site-specific Butoh dance performance exploring the raw, physical voice of the female body from a feminist perspective. In the park, the artist channels animalistic instinct; on the street, she cradles a dog and walks like a mother, reclaiming “female dog” as a symbol of care, resistance, and transformation. Audiences should look for how voice emerges through shifting bodies and spaces.  

Ibuki Kuramochi is a Japanese-born interdisciplinary artist working in Butoh, performance, and video art. Her work explores feminist and post-humanist themes through the body’s physical expression. She has performed and exhibited internationally in the U.S., Japan, and Europe.

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Ground(s) by Issaiha Cunningham

With diverse casting, audiences are invited to experience childhood reframing and memory access through the intersectional lens of blackness and queerness. Ground(s) addresses the place in which I found my voice, through a practice that strengthened my voice over time. On playgrounds, children live out loud, unbound by the dangers of the outside world or even the world within the grounds they play. Reflecting backward, how can our voices be strengthened by the memory of these experiences? How can we see them differently? 

Issaiha Cunningham (They/He) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, California. Born in the small town of Tryon, North Carolina, Issaiha brings forth a raw, authentic, and introspective approach to their craft; blending elements of theatre, music, dance, and sculpture to help them identify themes of home-building, self-discovery, and ownership.

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Access & Activate Your Anthem by Jeff McMahon & William Roper

Create your own shout-out, anthem, secular prayer, short song/jingle for the world (or at least WeHo) to hear. The lead artists, a musician and writer, will provide concepts/ words/ movements/ themes/ riffs/ rhythms to develop, as we craft, through improvisation, vocal responses to our world, our environment, our lives. If you wish, you can record your efforts and bring them home with you; there will be no amplification or recording provided.

JEFF MCMAHON: Professor Emeritus, School of Music, Dance & Theatre, Arizona State University. Writer/performer. Born in LA, based in New York City.

WILLIAM ROPER: LA-based multi-disciplinary artist specializing in tubas and ancient aerophones.

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Condom Cloud by Joseph Ravens

A spectacle rooted in the urgency of Silence = Death, this durational performance, created in the 1990s in response to the AIDS epidemic when suffering was met with societal silence, gives voice to those ignored by mainstream media. It speaks across decades, echoing the silencing of marginalized communities then and now. Standing beneath a cloud of helium filled condoms, Ravens gives them to passersby, requesting they keep the moment mori until it deflates – as a reminder that silence is still deadly. 

Joseph Ravens received a BFA in theater, studied audiovisuals at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, before earning an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Known as an artist, curator, and academic, Ravens is the founder of Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery and faculty in the Performance Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Queerytales: Snow White & The Seven Deadly Sins: Chapter 2 The Whispers by Jynx Prado

The performance questions queer bodies in odd places, positions, vulnerability, and their stories in the context of fairytale. The stories and anecdotes in the audio player throughout the piece question the social norms and notions about publicly presenting as queer in vulnerable spaces in a time where anti trans and anti queer movements are on the rise. The audience can hear the stories told and interpret them as they see fit while thinking of who they are and where they are.

Jynx Prado critiques social, cultural, & natural environments & the coexistence of them through an interdisciplinary practice. Prado creates sculptures, performances & visuals that intertwines queerness, their Latino/a/x/e community & historical & mythological texts. They create humorous & yet uncanny characters to embody the irony & absurdity of their world.

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The Skeletons in My Closet by Kacie Lyn Martinez

An interactive weaving installation that gives form to the unspoken weight of our secrets. Participants write a never-voiced truth on a fabric strip and weave it into a communal tapestry. This silent, anonymous act transforms private vulnerability into shared expression, symbolizing how hidden stories can unite us. As the tapestry grows, it becomes a collective voice—one of empathy, identity, and shared humanity.

Kacie Lyn Martinez creates multimedia landscapes that explore emotional and psychological geographies; they have been shown internationally. She’s been in residence at Plyspace, 77Art, and more. Her public art invites collective vulnerability and has been supported by Asana, The Other Art Fair, and the CA Arts Council.

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ice and soil/hielo y tierra by Kiyo Gutiérrez

An installation featuring a banner documenting a ritual-performance in which a message was composed using ice cubes and soil on the concrete bed of the L.A. River. Look for a QR to witness the ritual. The artist had originally planned to perform it live during the festival; however, visa issues prevented this. Uncannily, the sign was created on June 5th, 2025, just one day before the horrible ICE raids in L.A. that tore families apart and deepened the cruelty of this administration. It honors the fierce, inspiring resistance in L.A. and stands in solidarity with all migrants, immigrants, and undocumented people. Performers: Andrea Nuch and Kiyo Gutiérrez

Kiyo Gutiérrez is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist whose ritual-performances combine archival research, sculpture, textiles and audience participation. Her work reexamines colonial history, uncovering how bodies and materials reflect extraction, resistance, and transformation. Her work has been shown in México, Brasil, Colombia, Bolivia, Spain, Italy, and the U.S. She holds an MFA from USC and is an alum of Georgetown’s Laboratory for Global Performance.

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Threnody by Marcus Kuiland-Nazario

This is a one-on-one performance is an excerpt from Threnody, an interdisciplinary work exploring grief, loss, cemetery traditions, and funeral practices. You can talk to Marcus about anything that you lost that you need to talk or share about. It could be a person, your former self,or an object that was precious to you. Any loss that you are grieving or mourning over. We will not be conversing about politics. Threnody is funded by the Jacki Apple Award in Performance and Artist Projects. 

Marcus Kuiland-Nazario is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and producer, founding artist of the 18th Street Arts Center and Highways Performance Space.  His works are long-term research-based cross-genre projects exploring extreme states of emotion such as grief, anger, and loss, all influenced by the cultural and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora.

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Gaze Demon Exchange by Mathilda LaZelle Moore

What’s visible online is increasingly different for everyone – aren’t you curious just HOW different? The artist, in elaborate cyborg drag, vends ephemera inspired by her algorithmic gaze, in this newsstand portal between digitally siloed selves-interdisciplinary performance that plays with the contemporary warping of foundational social exchange – my gaze for yours. This entity will offer a FREE print to anyone who approaches her, in exchange for a glimpse of your own algorithm – have your phone handy!

The Gaze Demon is a new entity among many in Mathilda’s multidisciplinary practice. In a somatic fathoming of glitch, she is connecting with the contemporary crisis of scale through glittering absurdity and a porosity of selfhood. Her work has been featured by MICA, Wassaic Project, The Torrance Art Museum, the deYoung Museum and many other entities.

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Motherline by Mehregan Pezeshki & Cesar Osorio

Motherline is an interactive visual and musical performance that amplifies maternal voices—those who shape identity, nurture community, and embody care. Through music, text, and audience participation, it collects messages between mothers and children, weaving a real-life “thread” of caregiving wisdom. Through this performance, we invite the public to listen, reflect, and contribute, creating an immersive and deeply personal experience that honors the universal language of love and connection. 

Mehregan Pezeshki is an Iranian-American multidisciplinary queer artist. Her artwork is often autobiographical, unraveling the traumatic memories of her youth while growing up in Iran. She uses photography and performance to uncover hidden behavior that affects our daily lives.

Cesar Osorio is a Colombian-Texan composer and performer born in Houston. As a cross-cultural artist, his work is often concerned with the dual nature of experience and consciousness: life and death, light and darkness, love and suffering. His compositions encourage reflection of shared human experience.

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Leaf: The Silent Extinction by Oleksandr Brzhezytskyi

We draw attention to the fight against constant deforestation, saving trees today means saving ourselves tomorrow. This work reflects the urgent action needed to protect nature. Trees are not relics to mourn in museums—they are living, breathing partners in survival. The artist contemplates a future where forests thrive. Plant a seed. Protect a forest. Speak for the trees—they cannot speak for themselves.

Born and formed as an artist in Odessa, Ukraine. Since 2022, I live and work in LA, California. The main creativity is to create Art that calls for a global view of life, nature and feelings around us. The world is a part of us, and we are its creation!

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Speech by Olivia Leiter

What do we expect to hear in public? What do we expect of a speech? In this performance, the artist speaks from behind a podium in various locations in each park and on Sunset while discussing walking, living alone, waiting in line, and bumping into a glass wall in sweetgreen. 

Olivia Leiter is an artist living in Los Angeles. Recent projects include performances about shame, workshops with 50 pairs of wooden clogs, a film about housing co-ops in New York City, and a book that meditates on the word circumference by way of Emily Dickinson. Olivia received her MFA from UC Riverside.

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duro/SUAVE or SOFT/hard Oscar Corona

A queer performance installation that playfully critiques the gender binary through costumes, props, prompts, interactive audience participation, humor, and drag-inspired exaggeration. Using action words like “Yes,” “No,” “Soft,” and “Hard,” participants embody roles that mock rigid gender norms and heteronormative expectations. By queering public space and inviting spontaneous acts—reciting media lines or drawing idiomatic phrases—this art happening challenges cultural conformity and celebrates fluid, performative identity in a cathartic, communal experience.

Oscar Corona (b. 1993) is a queer, first-generation Mexican-American artist from Southern California. Their interdisciplinary work explores marginalized identities, power, and self-perception through video, painting, and sculpture. Influenced by artists like Mike Kelley and Martine Syms, Oscar blends performance, lo-fi mark-making, and casting techniques to create bold, poetic works that reimagine identity and reality with a DIY aesthetic and synesthetic flair.

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Orpheus the lyre by Paul Donald

A large wooden head, visually somewhere between a shed, a ship, and skull, made from cedar planks, is bound with rope, its mouth is open. A figure, the sole performer, up upon the head, stands on it, hangs from it, lays on it, and twisting the ropes that bind it, knocking against and rubbing the wood, “plays” the head as if it were some kind of monstrous instrument or vessel, forces the head to “sing” from its open mouth.

Los Angeles-based artist Paul Donald performs works that enact a self-demolition by way of construction—construction performances/performances with construction. Materiality and embodiment, smell and sound, metaphor and simile, all entangled, he makes to break—chipping away at structures of whiteness, masculinity, and colonial subjectivity, one wooden object at a time.

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Deconstructing Legalese: Executive Orders by Renée Reizman

Using the Trump Administration’s executive orders as our canvas, this found poetry workshop examines contracts and codes imposed upon us by bureaucratic systems and reconstructs the language to reclaim our voice. The nuance of our identity, advocacy, health, relationships, and values are dismantled, minimized, and erased through legalese. The public is invited to reconstruct Trump’s jargon as a resistance to the orders through the act of collage into empowerment. Poems will be displayed throughout AiOP and incorporated into a zine.

Renée Reizman is a disabled, Jewish, interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator. She works with communities to reveal the ways infrastructure and public policy contribute to social inequality. She is the founder of Disability Drawing Club and is currently an adjunct assistant professor at Pepperdine University and the University of Southern California.

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Fugere by Saun Santipreecha & Luc Trahand

An audio-visual sculpture that brings together collective voices, dislodged and disembodied, held within public infrastructure. Rooted in both the words fugitive and fugue, Fugere’s compositional subjects flee from one another while seeking refuge in the architectural system itself. Engaging with the legacy of Beuys’ social sculpture as well as the currents of neoliberalism, participatory readings from various texts remain in flux, framed by fixed sculptural forms.

Saun Santipreecha is an interdisciplinary artist and composer (b. 1989, Thailand) based in Los Angeles, working at the intersection of image, sound, and body. He has had three solo exhibitions (two in Los Angeles (2023, 2024), one in Rome (2024)), as well as a sound sculpture commission for the ADN East German guardhouse at the Wende Museum (2024).

French-American interdisciplinary artist Luc Trahand’s work engages with the decortication of semiotics and the dis/integration of self within the socius. His most recent exhibitions are hum•drum (Aug–Sept 2024), an installation at Reisig & Taylor Contemporary, and circa ten to the ninety (2025), an ongoing performative chess project collaboration.

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The Word on the Street by Scott Froschauer

In this installation, reimagined street signs, the materials, colors, fonts, and installation techniques of street signs are hijacked to deploy positive and constructive ideas in place of the typically coercive and negative language the signs usually broadcast. 

Scott Froschauer is an experimental artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. His background consists of an education in engineering, theoretical linguistics, science, art, computer programming, and business, with practical experience in fabrication, design, non-ordinary reality, experiential narrative, venture capital, counterfeiting, and breathing.

 

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Oh you should have seen by Simon Leung

A baritone aria addressing the natural setting of Los Angeles, late 20th Century gay male sexuality, and loss in the same community under the penumbra of AIDS from the opera Proposal for The Side of the Mountain. 

Simon Leung was born in Hong Kong. His foremost concern as an artist is how “the ethical,” broadly defined, can be thought and traced. His projects in various media meditate on the ethical condition, broadly defined, as challenge and possibility. His works include an opera, context-specific works, and “art workers’ theater” on the intersection of art and labor context. He is currently a Professor of Art at UCI.

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A long way but not far by Terry S. Hardy

Commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of Paul Monette’s passing, this installation of seventeen blue banners is printed with excerpts from Paul’s book, Love Alone, written for his lover, Roger Horwitz, who died from AIDS. 

Terry S. Hardy’s work addresses themes of identity, human rights, sexuality, and religion, examining social concerns through painting, sculpture, performance and installations. His most recent work focuses on the intimacy of loss, memorializing those who are forgotten, and his own mortality. His work has been included in more than 70 exhibitions throughout the US and abroad.

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Feel Seen and Heard - (Sentirme visto/a y escuchado/a) by Yadira Dockstader

A sound-based ephemeral sculpture and performance experimenting with alternative modes for the dissemination of qualitative research related to medical humanities and the public health sphere. Documentation and interviews from the Chicano/ Latine community reveal the effects of health inequities within current restrictions and cuts in research about DEI-flagged words. In the unraveling of words, meaning fades; yet through rhythm and repetition, language becomes a brief, echoing archive.

Yadira Dockstader is a Mexican-American interdisciplinary artist and researcher from Southern California. She received her B.A. in Studio Art and Art History from the University of California, Riverside. Her current research includes a medical humanities emphasis, and art and ecology at the Burns Piñon Reserve in Yucca Valley. Her work aims to open dialogues about the politicization of bodies, illness, and disability.

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Art in Odd Places 2025: VOICE is dedicated to Jacki Apple (1941-2022) – an artist, writer, composer, producer, and educator based in New York and Los Angeles. A champion of performance and conceptual art, she was dedicated to increasing the cultural power of fellow artists.

Let us celebrate Voice together, an expression of identity, agency, and the shared humanity that connects us all!

Deborah Oliver – Curator

Previous Events

From NYC to WEHO: How to join AiOP 2025 in West Hollywood with Ed Woodham and Deborah Oliver. Saturday, February 15, 1pm – 4pm; West Hollywood Library Community Meeting Room, 625 N San Vicente Blvd.

Global visual and performance art festival Art in Odd Places (AiOP) founder Ed Woodham & Los Angeles curator, educator and artist Deborah Oliver shared information on how to participate in the upcoming AiOP festival taking place in West Hollywood, July 2025.