You are invited to A CELL IS A CARNIVAL, an event series organized by the DMA MFA 2026 cohort: Chelly Jin, Rowena Kou, Sadia Quddus, Sagan Yee, Stamatis Hamouzas, and Xiner Lan. Inspired by the osmotic capacity of art to move across and through permeable boundaries, we offer this programming as a means to cultivate a community-building and exhibition practice beyond the university campus and our immediate networks.
All programming is free and takes place across Los Angeles during the first week of December. We invite you to enter, to circulate and celebrate, to absorb and be absorbed in turn … and then to break away, retreat, and say our fond farewells. Until the next time.
All events are free with RSVP. Follow us for updates and announcements:
Instagram: @subtangled_complex
Website: cellisacarnival.cargo.site
A CELL IS A CARNIVAL: MAIN EXHIBIT + OPENING NIGHT @ GAMEPLAYARTS
Exhibit Run: Dec 6 – Dec 8, 2024
Opening Night: Friday, December 6 at 7 PM
Gameplayarts, 5511 W. Pico Blvd
A CELL IS A CARNIVAL is an experiment in nested proximities and mixed metaphors: body as fairground, ritual as network, wormhole as world. As emerging artists, we are self-organizing systems. We operate as organelles, barkers, and daemons. We seek to replicate, merge, and evolve in concert with friends and familiar strangers, while maintaining tenuous boundaries of individual autonomy. Inspired by images of permeable organic membranes and the cloth walls of circus tents, our collective practice also functions as a fluid structure, facilitating an endless circulation between solitude and belonging.
As you pass through the barrier, you will discover a myriad of forms shaped by ecological, neurological, and ethereal modes of existence. Populated by fools and fractals, ambient performances and screens as otherworldly portals, this mysterious space hosts six distinct yet codependent entities: an encrypted hand puppet, divinatory technologies, consensual eavesdropping, teeth as a symbol of eroded time, the gamification of the mammalian reward system, and kaleidoscopic fragments of self and memory.
Featuring art and performances by Chelly Jin, Rowena Kou, Sadia Quddus, Sagan Yee, Stamatis Hamouzas, and Xiner Lan. Free and open to the public.
ECHOES IN THE GARDEN
An immersive, experimental workshop exploring dialogical self-inquiry mediated through AI, facilitated by Chelly Jin and co-presented with Social Software. This workshop invites you to play with the multiplicities within one's self, and reflect on the evolving interactions between nature, human, and machine. Within the context of our programming series, Echoes in the Garden is a kind of offshoot tendril, a reflection of our cohort’s capacity to nurture each other’s solo projects and extend our reach into new realms of creative inquiry.
Limited to 5 participants. Location to be announced. RSVP here.
BEINGS IN PROGRESS @ HR-LA
An invitation to share works-in-progress in the company of friends and familiar strangers. This event is intended especially for artists who may feel alienated from institutional forms of critique, with projects in a vulnerable stage of needing fresh yet compassionate eyes. Ultimately, it is for anyone interested in a communally-shaped creative process. Beings in Progress is part of an ongoing effort to grow our art practices beyond traditional frameworks that are prone to failure in times of crisis.
Sunday, Dec 1 – 6 to 9 PM
Human Resources, 410 Cottage Home St.
This show was born in Creating Context + Collaborative Practice, an experimental course aimed at developing skills in collective organizing and community outreach beyond the university campus. The course was conceived of and is instructed by writer and curator Nora Khan, Arts Council Professor in UCLA’s Design Media Art MFA program.