GALA PORRAS-KIM: THE LIVING COLLECTION
Short film for the Getty Museum’s Art in L.A. Artist Dialogue Series, 2024. Cinematographer & Editor. Directed by Ellen Moody.
Conceptual artist Gala Porras-Kim, Getty’s Artist in Residence from 2020 to 2022, takes the practice of collecting, conserving and exhibiting objects as the subject of her work, which highlights the way these institutionalized actions inadvertently create new meanings. A self-appointed advocate for entities—spiritual, microbial, or otherwise—that may lay claim to these objects, Porras-Kim brings focus to their original functions and contexts, and how they can subvert common practices in collecting institutions. Her work often takes the form of lusciously rendered, large-scale drawings of catalogued collections, but she has also employed materials such as dust, efflorescing concrete, and mold spores. In Gala Porras-Kim, the Living Collection (2023) Porras-Kim describes her history, her process, and her interest in the uncertainties and biases inherent in museum practices that are typically presumed to be “scientific.”
