From starting a food bank in South Central LA to joining one of the biggest art galleries in the world
The art and activism of Lauren Halsey
Hi everyone,
Science of Art is a newsletter written by me, Shagun Singh. I deconstruct and analyze the careers of artists who support themselves solely through their art. I am a user researcher, designer, and public artist.
If you haven’t read my last post where I analyzed my first artist, you can read it here.
Artists make sense of the age we live in and create representations of it based on the socio-political, and cultural structures of the present day. While a lot of activist artists like Tania Bruguera, are critically acclaimed and lauded for their activism and art, few make it to the mainstream art market and compete on an international scale. Lauren Halsey is an artist who has been able to bridge the gap between community and commerce. She was recently signed by the Gagosian Gallery, one of the biggest art galleries in the world with 19 galleries in the top cultural capitals of the world.
I came across Lauren Halsey’s work while researching places to meet friends in the city. MET rooftop installations have always been a favorite since it combines art, sweeping city views, and a cocktail bar! Halsey was commissioned to create an installation for the MET roof this year.
While activist art often centers around a specific cause, community art, as the name suggests is tied to a local community and usually a geographic location. I am speculating here but the aspirations of community artists who create their work alongside the community they are trying to engage may not be seeking an international stage at all and being in Paris or Hong Kong may feel antithetical to their mission.
Halsey’s work, however, is a blend of making art with and for the community as well as art that is inspired by the community she grew up in.
Halsey grew up in South Central, LA. Her family settled in the area during the Great Migration of the 1920s and witnessed the neighborhood changing from race-oriented restrictive covenants to Watts riots. Rapper and activist Nipsey Hussle was murdered in the area in 2019. The area is now faced with gentrification and disenfranchisement which Halsey is addressing with her art. But what is driving her success?
Activist Art…but not heavy-handed
Halsey’s art communicates the cultural and historical legacies of black life through Afrofuturism and fantasy.
Larry Gagosian whose gallery is now representing Halsey, says the following in the NY Times article about Halsey.1
“She’s dealing with issues of race and culture and her neighborhood, but it’s not heavy-handed. It combines this seriousness with something very elegant and highly imagined.”
In short, Halsey’s art is approachable, universal, and communal even though it is a part of blue chip galleries and museums. Being able to strike a balance between both worlds has been a huge reason for her work’s commercial success.
Top art schools and gallery representation
There are numerous school and college dropout success stories but those are the exception and not the norm.
Halsey has a knack for getting into difficult places. Halsey went to the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies. LACES as it is commonly known, is the highest-ranked school within the Los Angeles Unified School District. The admission rate for this magnet school is less than 7%.
She then went to Cal Arts and Yale, both of which are on the top 15 art schools list by Artsy. These schools are key to getting gallery representation because the end-of-year shows are attended by galleries and collectors looking for the next Wangechi Mutu. Antwaun Sargent, a director at Gagosian, saw Halsey’s work at Yale, which led to her inclusion in one of their shows in 2021 and an offer for representation in 2023. Her other gallerist David Kordansky saw her Thesis exhibition at Cal Arts.
Residencies, Awards, and Kickstarter!
Halsey’s residency and award track record is impeccable. The Skowhegan residency has an acceptance rate of 3%. The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Award is a $10,000 - $15,000 grant. The Mohn Award that Halsey won in 2018 is $100,000. Halsey received a budget of up to $25,000 to realize her artwork at Frieze New York 2019 as a part of the Frieze Artist Award. Her 2015 residency at the Studio Museum of Harlem gave her a stipend as well.
Halsey set up a Kickstarter in 2017 to fund her public art installation in South Central L.A. She raised $18,548 towards it.
The network is where the home is
A randomly selected page from Halsey’s bio lists a total of 26 shows, out of which 14 are in California, close to LA, 6 in NYC, and 4 elsewhere. Her six-page bio is packed with her accomplishments and follows the same rule. 75% of her shows are in Los Angeles CA, followed by NYC. For someone who has been raised in the city and worked there all her adult life, this provides a big advantage from a support and network perspective. Halsey is heavily invested in her community and neighborhood, and the city is making space for her to express herself.
Her present gallerist David Kordansky saw her Thesis exhibition in Cal Arts, and then came across her work again at the Museum of Contemporary Arts (MOCA) in LA and signed her in 2018. All three locations can be traversed in an afternoon, some of it on foot. Proximity helps. Here is an extract from a research paper on Fame and Creativity from Columbia Business school
The shared perspective and reciprocity prevalent in a dense local network can help an innovator access distribution platforms that require coordination and peer support (Coleman, 1988). For instance, researchers working in a common field can leverage their network to assemble a conference, which would promote their work. Distribution platforms that attract the attention of a large and interested audience can increase an innovator’s fame substantially. The cooperative norms that characterize the dense local networks can help an innovator elicit the peer support and coordination vital for access to such platforms (Reagans and McEvily, 2003). In contrast, an innovator with a sparse local network may not be able to achieve the cooperation and common vision required to promote her work in such distribution platforms.2
Doing it on the cheap
Halsey didn’t want to figure out her medium of choice while paying university tuition since she comes from a working-class background. She enrolled at El Camino Community College and took a wide range of classes in various artistic mediums - printmaking, sculpture, photography- to understand her sweet spot, carving.
Until she was in her early 30’s, Halsey was creating her artwork for blue chip organizations, and galleries inside a makeshift studio carved out of a detached garage behind her Grandma’s home in South Central. Halsey often enlists friends and family to create her work. For her, making art is a communal, familial act, but it is also cost-efficient.
Collaborations
In the case of Halsey, her work also fits into the larger mainstream creations that take inspiration from the very movements like Funkadelic and Afrofuturism that form a basis for Halsey’s work.
Halsey teamed up with Nike for the new edition of Classic Air Force 1 Sneakers. Nike likes to collaborate with key figures that move our culture forward and Halsey is one such artist. Over the past few years, there has been a boom in collectors collecting sneakers which could add value to Halsey’s work in the secondary market. I don’t have exact numbers but her Nike deal is probably pretty good too.
Art worlds reckoning with race
Art as a social act is receiving the attention it deserves, and artists working with issues of identity and representation are at last receiving their rightful recognition. Antwaun Sargent, a director and curator with Gagosian who is also a person of color, shared in a New York Times article his realization that he is witnessing a moment of reckoning in which galleries and museums are confronting their history of excluding artists, curators, and executives from diverse backgrounds. Halsey's success is a testament to the progress emerging from this reckoning.
Learnings
Activist and protest art pieces have become more valuable over time, making them a smart investment choice. As the world gets more polarized, the demand for these pieces is likely to go up, especially if you pick a good one.
Only 10% of art graduates continue to work as artists, so I am not sure whether to affirm this choice, but top art schools do help with gallery representations, though not sure how helpful that is given that you are saddled with back-breaking student loan debt.
If you're an innovator and you're part of a close-knit local network where folks share ideas and help each other out, it's much easier to get your work noticed on distribution platforms that need teamwork and support.
Before diving heads in, experiment and find your strengths and weaknesses on the cheap. Don’t rent a full studio, or get professional help before you have hit your stride. Apprenticing could be a good way to find an artistic calling.
Work by Black American artists witnessed a remarkable surge of nearly 400% between 2008 and 2021.3 Even though acquisitions of work by Black American Artists peaked in 2015, there has been a big push to show more work of women and African American artists.
Artist collaborations with brands can provide new revenue streams and recognition, so they are worth pursuing if the brand’s values align with the artist’s vision.
It is worth looking into art residencies that offer stipends. Many art residencies are venues for gallerists, collectors, and curators to find new talent so it can be an investment.
Ambition and constantly putting out work for a receptive audience is a huge driver of subsequent success. I talked about this in my previous article on Refik Anadol - a person needs to consistently produce high-impact work throughout their career to be very successful.
Kid quote of the day
My 6-year-old explained what a headbutt is.
It’s when someone bumps their head against someone’s butt.
That's all for me, folks. I would greatly appreciate it if you could share this newsletter with someone who would benefit from reading it.