Domestic Disturbances

No Splash (after David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash, 1967), by Gomez, 2013; acrylic on canvas; 96" x 96"

Domestic Disturbances

Artist Ramiro Gomez in Conversation with Lawrence Weschler
Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall

Lawrence Weschler’s book Domestic Scenes: The Art of Ramiro Gomez (Abrams, 2016) delves into the life and art of a rising young Los Angeles artist to raise questions of social equity and explore the chasms separating cultures and classes in America today.

Born in 1986 in San Bernardino, California to undocumented Mexican immigrant parents, Gomez is an artist whose work evokes the divide between affluent Angelenos and their usually invisible domestic help—the nannies, gardeners, housecleaners, and others who make their lifestyles possible—by variously inserting ima­ges of such workers into pastiches of iconic David Hockney paintings, subtly doctoring glossy magazine ads, and subversively slotting life-sized painted cardboard cut-outs into real-life situations.

Weschler is the author of seminal books on Robert Irwin (Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, 1981/2008), the Museum of Jurassic Technology (Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, 1995), and torture in Latin America (A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers, 1990).

This lecture is free and open to the public.

Cosponsored by Global Urban Humanities Initiative, Department of Ethnic Studies, BAMPFA, and History of Art Department.

Image: No Splash (after David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash, 1967), by Gomez, 2013, acrylic on canvas; 96" x 96"