Re-telling the past

Edgar Arceneaux (b. 1972, Los Angeles) is an Los Angeles based artist working in the media of drawing, sculpture, and performance, whose works often explore connections between historical events and present-day truths. He played a seminal role in the creation of the Watts House Project, a redevelopment initiative to remodel a series of houses around the Watts Towers, serving as director from 1999 to 2012. His work has been featured at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Performa 15, New York; and the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, San Francisco; S.J. Quinney School of Law, Salt Lake City, among other venues. 

Nayan Shah's research examines historical struggles over bodies, space and the exercise of state power from the mid- 19th to the 21st century.His scholarship advances our understanding of comparative race and ethnic studies, LGBTQ studies, and to the history of migration, public health, law, and incarceration. Shah is the author of two award-winning books - Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality and the Law in the North American West (University of California Press, 2011) and Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown (University of California Press, 2001).