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New dates: Opening reception: Feb 17, 6pm
Exhibition on view Feb 18 - 25, 2023
USC Roski Graduate Gallery

Opening reception reservations here.

Location/Hours: 

USC Roski School Graduate Building
1262 Palmetto Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Gallery hours: Wed - Sat, 12 noon - 5pm

About the Exhibition:

As yet another transplant in the city of Los Angeles, Aggarwal explores identity construction, considering the discourse of representation and aesthetic value. The exhibition charts the hybridization that comes from displacement, thinking through the negotiation of what you bring to a new home, what you leave behind, and what you throw away. 

Using mundane objects and liminal spaces as materials, the work interrogates what fades into the background and is accepted as routine. Creating daily rituals and rules for collecting materials to locate the self and meaning-making is analogous to mindfulness practice. Through the exhibition, she seeks to create an ongoing space for acceptance, embracing simultaneity, hybridity, and even failure. 

About the Artist:

Vrinda Aggarwal (b.1999, New Delhi) is an interdisciplinary artist working with video, projections, installation, and performance. She received a BA. in Communication from USC Annenberg in May 2021. Her most recent work deals with displacement, cultural loss, and nostalgia due to moving countries. She uses personal and found materials, often waste or unused, thinking about the difference in consumption and behavior patterns between her old and new home. She creates rituals and uses repetition to locate the self and take space. At the same time, think about compulsive acts of accumulating objects or mark-making rooted in anxiety. She recently showcased her site-specific installation, Boneyard, in collaboration with Sophia Stevenson at the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies in Catalina Island. She also showed her “Rakta Mikvah” work in the zoom webinar “Come A Little Closer” with the 18th Street Art Center.