Forthcoming:

The Crenshaw Dairy Mart (CDM) is thrilled to announce its forthcoming exhibition, Free the Land! Free the People! a study of the abolitionist pod, as part of the Getty PST ART: Art & Science Collide. In 2021, CDM began prototyping and building abolitionist pods - autonomously irrigated, solar-powered gardens within modular geodesic domes - with communities impacted by food insecurity, housing insecurity, and the prison industrial complex. Offered alongside workshops on food justice, art, and healing justice, CDM's abolitionist pod project reimagines community care and models how art, architecture, and science can collectively address systemic issues. CDM’s programming will accompany an exhibition about the abolitionist pod project and its evolution across Los Angeles County. Events will include health and wellness workshops using herbs and flowers, organic gardening and micro-farming workshops, a community farmers market, and  Black farmers’ meet-ups.

The exhibition, Free the Land! Free the People! a study of the abolitionist pod, is organized as a survey and studio of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart artist collective’s ongoing research for the abolitionist pod, with illustrations, archival documentation, architectural renderings, sketches, and drawings of the collective’s many configurations of the geodesic structure during its prototype phases as they engage with a history of collectives and cooperatives at the interstices of food justice, land sovereignty, and the Black Liberation Movement. The exhibition falls in conjunction with the artist collective’s year of programmed study and research for the abolitionist pod, entitled Imagination Year, following suit their collective practice of prototyping an abolitionist imagination collating the spiritual-historical-political discourse of the abolitionist pod program, through prayer and somatic-embodiment practices, as it ties to contemporary imaginings of economic autonomy, community resilience, and collective agency for oppressed communities bound to land usage and its reparations. These ruminations and points of departure for the Crenshaw Dairy Mart collective each intersect with the convening of over 500 Black nationalists who sought the creation of a sovereign nation-state, the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). The RNA’s demand for financial restitution and reparations of land, is most notably recognized under the moniker “Free the Land! Free the People!” The exhibition coincides with a concurrent resource and larger archive in indexing the networked Black farmers across Los Angeles county with whom CDM has collaborated with on the abolitionist pod, traversing contemporary movements towards alternative permacultures, which include localized, small-scale farming and micro-farming as models for community care, community safety, and economic autonomy within the larger contemporary abolitionist movement.

Free the Land! Free the People! a study of the abolitionist pod is among more than 60 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty. For more information about PST ART: Art & Science Collide, please visit pst.art

RSVP for September 21, 2024 Opening Reception here.

Past Exhibitions:

noé olivas: Gilded Dreams

PRESENTED BY CRENSHAW DAIRY MART GALLERY WITH SUPPORT FROM CHARLIE JAMES GALLERY

February 28, 2024 - March 31, 2024

Presented by Crenshaw Dairy Mart (CDM) Gallery with support from Charlie James Gallery, Gilded Dreams is a solo presentation of a new body of work by interdisciplinary artist noé olivas. The exhibition features new works in sculpture, painting, and performance as a continuation of the artist’s investigation into what he calls the poetics of labor. 

For over a decade, olivas has explored the various manifestations of labor in the United States from his lived experience as a first-generation Mexican American from a working-class family. Gilded Dreams expands on the poetics of labor by interrogating labor’s relationship with leisure, the American West, and its potential for liberation through CDM’s three guiding themes: ancestry, abolition, and healing. olivas is a co-founder of CDM, an artist collective and gallery dedicated to communal arts and education, and its guiding themes have long been central to his own practice as he explores his family’s relationship to the invisibility of immigrant labor and the grueling toughness of its performance. Gilded Dreams is both a critique of US-Mexico relations and a meditation on the possibility of collective liberation. Utilizing an urban vernacular rasquachismo, olivas employs his family’s archive of tools, objects, and other collected materials to construct sculptures that meditate on the intended material use of these objects while also transforming them into spiritual icons capable of forging a path towards freedom. 

The opening reception for Gilded Dreams will feature a performance program that honors important members of olivas’ artistic community. Happening durationally, the commissioned performances will reinterpret CDM’s core themes of ancestry, abolition, and healing, and present audiences with transformative moments of collective reflection.

Yes on R! Yes on J! Shut Down MCJ! A Decade in Abolitionist Aesthetics

Presented as part of Ordinary People on view at the Long Beach Museum of Art

October 6, 2023 - January 14, 2024

Yes on R! Yes on J! Shut Down MCJ! A Decade in Abolitionist Aesthetics is a survey exhibition presented by the Crenshaw Dairy Mart. The exhibition expands on the artist collective and arts organization Crenshaw Dairy Mart’s 2020 inaugural exhibition, Yes on R! Archives and Legal Conceptions (Part 1: 2011 - 2013), which examined the early organizing work between several local grassroots abolitionist organizations over the span of nine years. The culmination of these many organizations and coalitions, which include Dignity and Power Now, Reform LA Jails, and Justice LA, together mobilized to implement Measure R on the 2020 Los Angeles, California primary elections ballot, which subsequently passed by a landslide in the same year. This former exhibition and latter, Yes on R! Yes on J! Shut Down MCJ! A Decade in Abolitionist Aesthetics, together explore the historic movement to end jail expansion in Los Angeles for over a decade. These exhibitions also trace how the arts - as either performance, public interventions, collectives, and happenings - have historically been the first response to injustices within the ecosystem of grassroots abolitionist organizing and have respectively culminated towards legislative feats in the directions of decarceration and justice reinvestment, vis-a-vis structural abolition.

Image: Image Courtesy of Long Beach Museum of Art and Crenshaw Dairy Mart. Photo by Jeff Mclane.

juice wood : I Could Show You..

Presented by The Crenshaw Dairy Mart Fellowship For Abolition and the Advancement of the Creative Economy (CDM-FAACE)

September 24, 2023 - September 29, 2023

I Could Show You is an immersive mixed media exhibition and experience taking place in 3 parts.

Wassup! I’m juice wood, a Revolutionary boi from da wood tryna stay on my marathon while using art & abolition as vehicles to leave behind a legacy of agape love, radical bravery, and unconditional care. I practice humanity - the exploration, understanding, and reflection of our shared humanity. I spend all my time thinking about: how I can contribute to the healing and liberation of all my peoples across the diaspora, how I can empower and protect my city, and how I can honor my God... my momma... my family...my ancestors...and my village - then I try to execute those ruminations in my day to day life. Those executions usually manifest through different types of art, service, connecting people, and resisting imperialism and its many designs - within the lanes my resistance is most effective. While saying these things help people understand to some degree, I have found that the words are never really enough and to know me and know my practice is to experience it by walking with me. I COULD SHOW YOU.. better than I could tell you! & that said... this fellowship and CDM have given me the opportunity to do just that, so welcome!

Image: juice wood, I Could Show You... Installation View. 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Crenshaw Dairy Mart. Photographed by Angel Xotlanihua for Elon Schoenholz Photography.

Oto-Abasi Attah : Don’t Forget to Touch Grass

Presented by The Crenshaw Dairy Mart Fellowship For Abolition and the Advancement of the Creative Economy (CDM-FAACE)

September 9, 2023 - September 15, 2023

The expression, "Don't Forget To Touch Grass", has often been used in pop culture as a reminder to disconnect from technology: to go outside and to imagine activities on a terrain outside of the digital. Oto-Abasi Attah’s practice and eponymous installation, Don’t Forget to Touch Grass, emerges from this space. In a world where people’s lives are mapped out because of what is seen on television and social media, incessantly suggesting to us what we should and should not do, Attah’s practice persists a realization that our differences are what bring us together, and what makes the world a beautiful place is precisely that. "Touching grass" is, hence, a call to action as well as a mantra. A meditation in mindfulness practice. Enjoying where one’s feet land - and making the most of one’s time while they explore their surroundings and discover themselves. Just like flowers, Attah demonstrates, we all want to exist and be as we were created. Attah has imagined a space where people can be the flowers that we are: beautiful entities that are all different, but work together in harmony with the will of existence.

Image: Oto-Abasi Attah, Don’t Forget to Touch Grass. Installation View. 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Crenshaw Dairy Mart. Photo by Elon Schoenholz.

Autumn Breon : Essentials

Presented by The Crenshaw Dairy Mart Fellowship For Abolition and the Advancement of the Creative Economy (CDM-FAACE)

August 26, 2023 - September 1, 2023

Essentials is a group of sculpture and video works that invites the audience to interact with relics from Esoterica. An extraterrestrial location, Esoterica is the next destination for ancestors when they leave Earth. This planet is powered by care and as a result, creativity is plentiful. Even though Esoterica is over three hundred light-years from Inglewood, Esotericans have activated many wormholes in the City of Champions (and throughout the planet). These shortcuts to liberation have been hidden in plain sight for centuries. Humans have misinterpreted these direct connections to Esoterica as quotidian places and objects. For example, the easily distracted homo sapien eye has seen beauty salons as places for gossip, hair upkeep, and beautification. Little did they know that hair braiders and edge layers were actually protecting Black women from delusions like “white supremacy.”   

In direct response to a recent distress signal from planet Earth, a glowing pink monolith from Esoterica appeared on Crenshaw Boulevard. This otherworldly curio has taken the form of a vending machine. The interactive piece invites the viewer to use familiar cues as opportunities to engage with the concept of care. Video diptychs of Black women adorning themselves incorporate both original and archival imagery. Borrowing from the design of double-paneled altarpieces, these diptychs magnify intimate moments of care into images that are larger than life. These videos frame a singular vending machine with objects that Black women requested in response to the following question: What items represent and provide care? The pink vending machine is fully stocked with condoms, tampons, pads, edge control, braiding hair, abortion pill resources, and books. All contents are free of charge. 

Image: Autumn Breon, Essentials. Installation View. 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Crenshaw Dairy Mart. Photo by Elon Schoenholz.

North Star : Healing Generations

Presented by Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery

February 9, 2023 - March 11, 2023

MISSION STATEMENT FROM THE NORTH STAR CREATIVE DIRECTOR PATRISSE CULLORS

 The North Star brand is the latest collaborative endeavor born from the Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery, Patrisse Cullors, Project Director of North Star, and Rita Nazareno, Creative Director of ZACARIAS 1925. The hand-woven line focuses on the movement to free Black women from incarceration. Black women are currently the fastest-growing population being incarcerated. Black women make up 13% of the country’s population but disproportionately represent 44% of women in jail, and 30% of the women’s prison population. Opposed to incarcerated Black men, Black women entering the prison system are frequently left unsupported and isolated. The new line, featuring a poem from previously incarcerated Black literary Nissi Berry, aims to support women in a way the system has not. Profits from each bag sold go directly to the movement to end the incarceration of Black women and put money back into the pockets of previously incarcerated Black female artists. This design of The North Star bag line is inspired by quilts made by enslaved Africans that were crafted to help lead them to freedom while navigating the Underground Railroad. According to “quilt code theory”, designs such as "wagon wheel," "tumbling blocks," and "bear's paw" were secret messages hidden in quilt patterns that helped direct enslaved Africans to freedom.

The official launch of this new carefully crafted bag line with intention will officially launch on February 9th, 2023, in time for the art-savvy Frieze LA crowd and local art community sold exclusively at the Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery. There will be a limited capsule of 40 bags for sale with four design SKUs.

Cedric Mizero: Open Studio

Presented by Crenshaw Dairy Mart Gallery

September 12, 2022 - October 7, 2022

Cedric Mizero is a Rwandan artist and filmmaker whose work is characterized by his investigation of personal and collective memories, design, and aesthetics. The Crenshaw Dairy Mart is pleased to present an intimate selection of works from the series, Protection, for OPEN STUDIO. The series, Protection, is part of a large body of mixed media artworks Mizero has been developing since 2017. 

The works from the series navigate much of the artist’s personal and collective memories anchored in the artist and Rwanda’s relationship to the church. Throughout the series, Mizero utilizes textile in relationship to bodies that become armored through religious iconography such as rosaries and medallions, citing the two as his primary medium in the series. Mizero’s artworks and projects are largely mobilized through community collaborations and conversations with upwards of 100 women artisans and craftworkers in his hometown of Kigali, as well as across Rwanda. These collaborations are a large part of Mizero’s discourse in creating work which is centered in the healing of collective memory in community, as well as building resilience through community efforts. For Mizero’s work, this resilience and healing is created over time and is in conversation with a history of indigenous practices which have centered collective fiber work as a practice towards collective healing. This is largely prevalent in the collective, intricate beading, weaving, embroidery, and embellishments in his sculptures and mixed-media works developed across conversations with his communities. 

As part of Cedric Mizero : OPEN STUDIO, the artist presents an intimate screening of Protection (2021), a short film developed by the artist as part of the residency, Aby Concept.* Cedric Mizero is the director of Umutima / The Heart (Rwanda, 2022), Dreaming My Memory (Rwanda, 2019), and New Life in the Village (Rwanda, 2019). He is the production designer, costume designer and provided artistic direction to Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Neptune Frost (Rwanda / USA, 2021). Cedric Mizero’s work has previously been exhibited at Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Ivory Coast), 180 Strand (London, UK), and Kigali Fashion Week (Kigali, Rwanda) and is currently on view at the Frick Art Museum (Pittsburgh, USA) in collaboration with FashionAFRICANA. 

 *Spiritual Armor: An Interview between Cedric Mizero and Kami Gahiga

abolitionist pod (prototype)

Presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Geffen Contemporary

May 6, 2021 - June 11, 2021

As part of ongoing programming and projects for the #PrayForLA initiative, the Crenshaw Dairy Mart revisits Arundhati Roy’s essay, “The Pandemic is a Portal,” to organize, prototype, and pilot language and vocabulary around an abolitionist imagination and future of what comes after this pandemic, and how systems of mutual aid, community safety and care, healing practices, prayer and accountability may become as subsidized as the evident ways capitalism and the lack of healthcare infrastructure, policing, punishment, and prisons may be divested from. What particularly will be a meaning of returning to “normality” after this pandemic? abolitionist pod (prototype) emerges from this urgency which has preceded the covid-19 pandemic, which has only exacerbated resources beyond their previously existing scarcity.

In abolitionist praxis, Mariame Kaba writes, we have to be given space to breathe and stumble. “There are no soloists in abolitionist praxis - abolition is a group improvisation, working together, learning together, failing together by building ‘a million different little experiments, just building and trying and taking risks and understanding we’re going to have tons of failure.’”

Prototyping an abolitionist imagination for care, reimagined safety and power begins with the propagation of ecologies and ecosystems - an abolitionist imagination is led by self-sustenance and autonomy, for communities, by communities; where, the practice of abolition includes the gathering of collaborators and kin, bringing folks together, to build together, and to step into futures which prioritize healing, compassion, and love. These abolitionist practices are an echo to studies the Crenshaw Dairy Mart co-founders have modeled after Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm Cooperative, the Republic of New Afrika’s “Free the Land!,” and more recently, the Soul Fire Farm.

The first abolitionist pod (prototype) will be able to house anywhere from 700 to 2000 fruits and vegetable plants sourced by Black farmers and gardeners across Los Angeles County for the public to access and harvest food to feed themselves and their families in the Little Tokyo Historic District at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. This library of plants and vegetables will index the larger ecosystem of localized farmers within Los Angeles County, in ways which can implement a language around neighborhood micro-farming and modular farming in localized city blocks. The pods have been designed to autonomously and self-sustainably water all existing plants in the structure as well as recycling water powered by solar cones. These practices are akin to new languages around modular and micro-farming practices; where, in future iterations, these pods will dissect and reverse, hanging from existing buildings, collecting and recycling water from existing building gutters. Ultimately, the abolitionist pod is designed to build community structures around garden tending, in order to imagine the healing capacities of community, gardening with your neighbors, and hands in soil.

Growing is our birthright.

The pod is a prayer, imagining food and farming as a birthright to our lineages, to our ancestries - where there may be an abundance of food, food in plentitude, which may train young gardeners in the same ways reading and books become a part of our education training. We imagine libraries and county buildings as an infrastructural component to the pedagogy of food justice and food abundance - integral to our youths’ and adults’ education. As part of the ongoing endeavours for the abolitionist pods, toolkits for community programming and maintenance will be provided as an ongoing extension to the practice of liberation.

Like dandelions, which propagate through seeds blown in the wind, we imagine the seeds of community autonomy and an abundance of food security propagating through Los Angeles County initiatives by implementations of modular and autonomous garden pods, which in turn fulfill an imagination of community care and safety. The first abolitionist pod will be prototyped using the organic language and form of the geodesic dome, akin to the dandelion itself, where the botanical theatre is ultimately a space for community healing; and, like the dandelion seeds which propagate by being blown in the wind, the walls of the pod are built by shoots of bamboo - a grass which doesn’t propagate by the wind, but underground, in rhizomes. Ultimately, both rooting and propagation systems become emergent strategies for liberation - on the ground, above the ground, and under ground.

We choose abolition as our North Star. Come join us on this journey.

Yes on R! Archives and Legal Conceptions

Part 1: 2011 - 2013

February 29, 2020 - December 29, 2020

Yes on R! Archives and Legal Conceptions examines the early roots of movement and organizing work between three grassroots organizations over the span of ten years which have successfully implemented ballot Measure R on the 2020 Los Angeles, California primary elections ballot.

Curated by Autumn Breon Williams and alexandre ali reza dorriz

Black August

August 7, 2020 - August 31, 2020

THE CRENSHAW DAIRY MART IS pleased TO ANNOUNCE ITS EXHIBITION, “BLACK AUGUST”, WITH A SPECIAL ONLINE STREAMING OF THE 2017 DOCUMENTARY WHOSE STREETS? ON PBS’S INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY PROGRAM POV ALONG WITH CURATED PROGRAMMING FEATURING GUEST ARTISTS LOLA OGBARA, JEN EVERETT, AND ADRIAN OCTAVIUS WALKER. THE FEATURE LENGTH-DOCUMENTARY - CO-DIRECTED BY SABAAH FOLAYAN AND DAMON DAVIS - CHRONICLING THE FERGUSON REBELLION OF 2014 WILL STREAM ON THE PLATFORM FOR 72 HOURS UNTIL SUNDAY, AUGUST 9TH, BEING SIX YEARS FOLLOWING THE MURDER OF 18-YEAR-OLD MICHAEL BROWN BY OFFICER DARREN WILSON, WHO HAS YET TO BE INDICTED FOR HIS CRIME. THE DOCUMENTARY ECHOES THE HISTORY OF VIOLENCE BY THE MILITARIZATION AND SURVEILLANCE UPON BLACK NEIGHBORHOODS, PARTICULARLY SEEN IN STATE AND FEDERAL MANDATED RESPONSES TO THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT UPRISING TODAY. "WHOSE STREETS?" IS ALSO CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TO VIEW ON HULU.

THE FERGUSON REBELLION ARCHIVED IN DAVIS’ FILM FOLLOWS IN THE FOOTSTEPS A HISTORY OF BLACK RESISTANCESAND REBELLIONS WHICH HAVE AROSEIN THE MONTH OF AUGUST, EARNING THE NAME, BLACK AUGUST. AMONGST THOSE - FROM THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION, THE NAT TURNER REBELLION, TO THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON - THE WATTS UPRISING REMAINS THE CLOSEST IN PROXIMAL HISTORY TO THE CRENSHAW DAIRY MART OF INGLEWOOD.

IN CONJUNCTION WITH THIS PREMIERE, DAMON DAVIS HAS CURATED THE WORKS OF CONTEMPORARY BLACK REVOLUTIONARY ARTISTS, LOLA OGBARA, JEN EVERETT, AND ADRIAN OCTAVIUS WALKER FOR CRENSHAW DAIRY MART’S INSTAGRAM AS WELL AS CONDUCTING IG LIVE INTERVIEWS AND TAKEOVERS WITH EACH ARTIST THROUGHOUT THE 72 HOUR PREMIERE.

CURATED BY DAMON DAVIS

CARE NOT CAGES:

Processing a Pandemic

July 2, 2020 - August 6, 2020

CARE NOT CAGES: Processing a Pandemic is an online exhibition that centers fourteen artworks produced by six currently incarcerated artists. All but three of the artworks exhibited on GALLERYPLATFORM.LA were specifically made in response to the global pandemic that, as of June 23rd, at least 48,764 incarcerated individuals have tested positive for. In naming the disproportionate effects on the incarcerated community, this exhibition seeks to highlight a community’s recorded responses to this moment, ensuring their narratives surrounding this pandemic are public, forthright, and asserted on view.

We say Care Not Cages because all forms of incarceration, detention, and imprisonment are a spatial violation of the right to live, and at every instance, a form of torture. In the words of Patrisse Cullors, artist, abolitionist, and co-founder of Black Lives Matter and the Crenshaw Dairy Mart, we are calling for a world that prioritizes abolition. By reimaging care and dignity, we are envisioning a world that benefits all of us, not just the few. A world that denounces cages.

Care Not Cages is a call to action.

In late April of this year, the Crenshaw Dairy Mart released a statement in protest to the pandemic that is racial capitalism, and announced an artist relief fund through an open call, entitled Care Not Cages, juried alongside Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), Justice LA, and For Freedoms. Three awards were distributed, and ten submissions by currently incarcerated artists were received, all of whom were also awarded relief funds. Six of those ten artists' works are being exhibited and sold here as prints. All proceeds from sales of prints in CARE NOT CAGES: Processing a Pandemic will go directly to books or immediate family of the currently incarcerated artists. The pool of sales will be equitably split between the ten aforementioned currently incarcerated artists.

Participating artists include Ras Allen, Mesro the Human Sun, Ronell Draper, Miguel Flores AKA Smoke, Orlando Smith, and Larry White, all of whom have consented to the exhibition and sale of their works online. For more information on each artist, please click on their respective artworks below. The Crenshaw Dairy Mart will continue its commitment to abolition, ancestry, and healing, in pandemic, in Uprising, in unrest.

CARE NOT CAGES: Processing a Pandemic is curated by Ana Briz, independent researcher, writer, and curator, and alexandre ali reza dorriz, artist, writer, and co-founder of the Crenshaw Dairy Mart.

Care Not Cages

April 2020

IN APRIL, WE CAME TO YOU WITH A CALL, AMIDST PANDEMIC, TO ABOLISH WHITE SUPREMACY, POLICING, AND CAGES, AND TO HEAL OUR COMMUNITIES IN PROTECTION OF OUR BODIES, THIS VESSEL, AND THIS EARTH WE CALL HOME. THE WIDE RANGE OF INSPIRING AND DYNAMIC WORKS MADE IN RESPONSE TO THE CARE NOT CAGES RELIEF FUND OPEN CALL - AS MORE THAN A CONCEPT BUT AS WE SEE IN THIS UPRISING FOR BLACK LIBERATION, A POTENT AND DEVELOPING FUTURE FOR US AS ANCESTORS TO PROVIDE TO GENERATIONS TO COME - MADE FOR US AN ESPECIALLY CHALLENGING SELECTION PROCESS AMONGST NEARLY 60 APPLICANTS. OUR JURY PANEL COMPRISED OF MEMBERS FROM FOR FREEDOMS, CALIFORNIANS UNITED FOR A RESPONSIBLE BUDGET (CURB), JUSTICE LA AND NOÉ OLIVAS AND ALEXANDRE DORRIZ FROM OUR TEAM AT THE MART.

TODAY, WE ARE DEEPLY, DEEPLY HUMBLED TO ANNOUNCE TO YOU THAT IN ADDITION TO THE THREE AWARDS WE HAD INITIALLY OFFERED OF $1,500, $1,000, AND $500, WE RECEIVED SUBMISSIONS BY EIGHT CURRENTLY INCARCERATED ARTISTS - ALL OF WHOM WILL ALSO BE AWARDED RELIEF FUNDS OF $250 EACH, PAID TOWARDS THEIR BOOKS OR DIRECTLY TO THEIR FAMILY MEMBERS, AND HAVE EACH CONSENTED TO THE EXHIBITION OF THEIR WORKS ONLINE.