CarWash Collective and Emily Mast, Pool

Pool will open with a performance on Saturday, May 14 from 6 to 8pm. The installation will remain on view through June 11. 

Pool is a performance and installation developed as a collaboration between CarWash Collective (Jennifer Minniti and Beverly Semmes) and Emily Mast in conjunction with the exhibition Witch Hunt, previously on view at the Hammer Museum and the ICA LA. The performance will showcase a new collection of CarWash garments based on Semmes’s Feminist Responsibility Project, a series of mixed media works that were on display at the Hammer Museum as part of that exhibition. As a performance, installation, and collection of objects and garments, Pool addresses themes of exposure, concealment, reflection and distortion in relation to gender, sexuality and the self.

Performers:

Gregory Barnett
Eunjin Choi
Jessica Hemingway
Micah Moch
Darrian O’Reilly

With a live music set by Ghorba

Image: Beverly Semmes, Silver Hat, 2018. Ink and acrylic over photograph printed on canvas. Courtesy of the artist, Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, and Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles.

Emily Mast makes multi-compositional performance projects that engage visual art, theater and dance. Mast has shown her work at venues like the Picasso Museum, Barcelona, Spain (2019); Theatre des Champs Elysees, Paris (2019); LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2018 & 2019); Human Resources, Los Angeles (2018); FRAC Occitanie Montpellier, France (2017); Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria (2017); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2017); Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2016); Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel (2015); Mona Bismarck American Center, Paris (2015); Silencio, Paris (2015); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2014); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space, New York (2013); REDCAT, Los Angeles (2012 & 2016) and Performa, New York (2009).

Jennifer Minniti is an American designer who experiences fashion as cultural messaging through clothes. Her work challenges the thematic complexities of identity, gender and cultural capital. Exhibiting under the label CarWash Collective with artist Beverly Semmes since 2013, her work is known for its provocative expressions of color and asymmetry, evoking an emotional response from her audience. In 2011, Minniti was named Chair of Pratt Institute’s Fashion Department. Today, she is a practicing designer, curator, educator and consultant, teaching undergraduate courses across a broad spectrum, encompassing contemporary fashion theory and collection. She has drawn on her own experience to create collaborative learning environments within institutional fashion programs, empowering the next generation of designers and scholars.

Beverly Semmes is a New York-based artist who works primarily in painting and sculpture. Semmes has had dozens of solo exhibitions at institutions such as MoMA PS1, ICA Philadelphia, SculptureCenter, the MCA Chicago, the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Tang Teaching Museum. She received an MFA in Sculpture from the Yale School of Art and has also studied at the New York Studio School, the Boston Museum School, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her installation in the Hammer Museum’s exhibition titled Witch Hunt is on view through January 9, 2022.

This production is generously supported by the Kaleta A. Doolin Foundation and a grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Video documentation of Pool performance on May 14, 2022
4:49 min
Performers: Gregory Barnett, Eunjin Choi, Jessica Hemingway, Micah Moch, Darrian O’Reilly
Sound: Ghorba
Choreography and set design: Emily Mast
Garments: CarWash Collective (Jennifer Minniti & Beverly Semmes)
Video edit: Hannah Kirby