Press Release

Artworks Projects is pleased to present the second exhibition in its Salon Series, Yaron Michael Hakim: Anthropophagy. Comprising painting, drawing, and sculpture, this exhibition is the first presentation of Hakim’s latest body of work, which takes the cannibal as a metaphor for cultural appropriation and the dissection of his own Latin-American, Middle-Eastern, European, and adopted identities. The series developed from the artist’s research into the writings of Christopher Columbus, which describe the “monstrous” inhabitants of the new world (fictionalized depictions intended to justify Queen Isabella of Spain’s colonialist, economic agenda). Columbus’ letters took hold in the 16th-century European imagination, producing wild, popular depictions of such cannibals by artists like Sebastian Münster, whose woodblock prints Hakim appropriates and exaggerates. Hakim’s figurative and semi-abstract works linger on the hybridity, inaccuracies, and spectacle of Münster’s so-called cannibals- their figures drawn western art, the depicted use of Renaissance technology, and the alleged horrors they performed. As the artist states, “I am captivated by these images because they begin to ask the question, who is cannibalizing who? I have taken Münster’s prints as a point of departure as a way to explore place and placelessness through colonial history and personal history.” At once formally compelling, abject, and historically layered, Hakim’s work identifies with multiple narratives as a way to find agency in his own personal history.

Yaron Michael Hakim (b. 1980, Bogotá, Colombia) lives and works in Los Angeles. He earned his MFA from the University of California, Irvine and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He has exhibited at LAXART, Los Angeles; Elephant, Los Angeles; and Steve Turner; among other galleries. He will be included in a group show at The Box this September as part of the Pacific Standard Time Initiative.

ARTWORKS PROJECTS was founded by Juliet McIver and Bec Ulrich and is committed to bringing awareness to many of the talented and under-represented artists working in Los Angeles today. Launched in June 2017, the Salon Series features solo presentations of new work in a casual, domestic setting.

For more information or to view the works, please contact info@artworksprojects.com