Hammer Museum Announces 27 Artists for Made in L.A. 2025 Biennial

On View October 5, 2025 – January 4, 2026

 

(Los Angeles, CA) — The Hammer Museum at UCLA announced today the 27 artists participating in the upcoming edition of its acclaimed Made in L.A. biennial, opening this fall. This is the seventh iteration of the Hammer’s biennial, highlighting the practices of artists working throughout the greater Los Angeles area. Organized by curators Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha, the exhibition is on view October 5, 2025 – January 4, 2026.

 

Hammer Museum director Zoë Ryan said, “Every two years, the Made in L.A. biennial offers a chance for local and international audiences to celebrate the incredible work being made by artists in this city. Los Angeles is still grappling with the terrible fires of the last few weeks but, as we look ahead to the fall, I hope this biennial can demonstrate the resilience of artists and this city.”

 

In a joint statement, curators Harden and Pobocha said, “From the outset of this process, our primary objective was to look at art, and to see as much of it as possible. We wanted to learn from artists and distill an exhibition from those experiences. While there are as many ideas circulating through the show as there are materials, an inquiry into one’s relationship to the city of Los Angeles animates much of the work we will present. Neither myth nor monolith, this city is many things to many people, and its cacophonous disorder is, perhaps, its most distinguishing feature.”

 

Harden and Pobocha have spent the past year visiting studios, artist-run venues, commercial galleries, and museums across Los Angeles County. Their final selection comprises a multigenerational group of artists making work across media, including painting, sculpture, video, installation, music, and performance. Painters Greg Breda, Ali Eyal, Hanna Hur, Beaux Mendes, Patrick Martinez, and others will show work that expertly deploys the medium to expand the parameters of genre—whether history painting or geometric abstraction—sometimes beyond recognition. Carl Cheng and Pat O’Neill, both of whom have been working in L.A. for more than sixty years, will be represented by their lesser-known works that underscore their innovative explorations of sculptural material. 

 

The exhibition will also include a presentation by John Knight, continuing his decades-long interrogation of the built environment as an ideological space. Architecture and domesticity are central actors in the practices of both Jerald Cooper and Michael Donte (Black House Radio), who look at its potential to create community—past and present. Artists Widline Cadet, Na Mira, and Mike Stoltz will present experimental film and video that engage spatial as well as optical registers. Playwright and filmmaker Leilah Weinraub will premiere a stage play produced for the exhibition, in collaboration with New Theater Hollywood (Max Pitegoff and Calla Henkel). Choreographer Will Rawls, whose beautiful compositions belie the tensions undergirding contemporary life, will prepare a new work that reflects upon the tumult experienced across the city during the past year.

 

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS -27

David Alekhuogie (b. 1986, Los Angeles)

Black House Radio / Michael Donte (est. 2023)

Greg Breda (b. 1959, Los Angeles)

Widline Cadet (b. 1992, Pétion-Ville, Ayiti, Haiti)

Carl Cheng (b. 1942, San Francisco)

Jerald “Coop” Cooper (b. 1983, Cincinnati)

Ali Eyal (b. 1994, Baghdad, Iraq)

Hanna Hur (b. 1985, Toronto)

John Knight (b. 1945, Los Angeles)

Kristy Luck (b. 1985, Woodstock, IL)

Patrick Martinez (b. 1980, Pasadena)

Beaux Mendes (b. 1987, New York)

Na Mira (b. 1982, Lawrence, KS)

New Theater Hollywood / Max Pitegoff and

Calla Henkel (est. 2024)

Pat O’Neill (b. 1939, Los Angeles)

Will Rawls (b. 1978, Boston)

Brian Rochefort (b. 1985, Lincoln, NE)

Amanda Ross-Ho (b. 1975, Chicago)

Gabriela Ruiz (b. 1991, San Fernando Valley)

Alake Shilling (b. 1993, Los Angeles)

Nicole-Antonia Spagnola (b. 1991, Los Angeles)

Mike Stoltz (b. 1981, Miami)

Peter Tomka (b. 1989, Des Moines)

Freddy Villalobos (b. 1989, Los Angeles)

Kelly Wall (b. 1990, Los Angeles)

Leilah Weinraub (b. 1979, Los Angeles)

Bruce Yonemoto (b. 1949, San Jose)

 

 

ABOUT MADE IN L.A.

The Hammer’s biennial exhibition series Made in L.A. focuses exclusively on artists from Los Angeles. The biennial debuts new installations, videos, films, sculptures, performances, and paintings commissioned specifically for the exhibition and offers insight into the current trends and practices coming out of Los Angeles, one of the most active and energetic art communities in the world. Made in L.A. began in 2012 and is now in its seventh iteration. It followed in the tradition of Hammer Invitational exhibitions, which occurred every two years and included Snapshot (2001), International Paper (2003), Thing (2005), Eden’s Edge (2007), Nine Lives (2009), and All of this and nothing (2011).

 

Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living was organized by curators Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramirez, with Ashton Cooper, Luce Curatorial Fellow.

Made in L.A. 2020: a version was organized by independent curators Myriam Ben Salah and Lauren Mackler, with the Hammer’s Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi, assistant curator of performance. Made in L.A. 2020 was organized by the Hammer Museum in partnership with The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Made in L.A. 2018 was organized by Anne Ellegood, senior curator, and Erin Christovale, assistant curator, with MacKenzie Stevens, curatorial associate. Performances were coordinated by Vanessa Arizmendi, curatorial assistant.

Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only was cocurated by Hammer curator Aram Moshayedi and Hamza Walker, former director of education and associate curator at the Renaissance Society in Chicago and

currently director of The Brick in Los Angeles.

Made in L.A. 2014 was cocurated by Hammer chief curator Connie Butler and Los Angeles-based independent curator Michael Ned Holte.

Made in L.A. 2012 was organized by a team of curators from the Hammer Museum and LAXART: Hammer senior curator Anne Ellegood, Hammer curator Ali Subotnick, LAXART director and chief curator Lauri Firstenberg, LAXART associate director and senior curator Cesar Garcia, and LAXART curator-at-large Malik Gaines.

 

ABOUT THE HAMMER MUSEUM

The Hammer Museum is part of the School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA, and offers exhibitions and collections that span classic to contemporary art. It holds more than 50,000 works in its collection, including one of the finest collections of works on paper in the nation, the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. Through a wide-ranging, international exhibition program and the Made in L.A. biennial, the Hammer highlights contemporary art since the 1960s, especially the work of emerging and under - recognized artists. The exhibitions, permanent collections, and nearly 300 public programs annually—4 including film screenings, lectures, symposia, readings, music performances, and workshops for families—are all free to the public.

https://hammer.ucla.edu