LOS ANGELES — In the popular imagination, Orange County epitomizes a vision of California characterized by sun, surf, and suburban living. Located along a stretch of the Pacific Coast just southeast of LA County, the region is synonymous with a kind of mid-century SoCal utopianism of neatly manicured lawns, bucolic beach towns, and family-oriented amusement parks like Disneyland.
The true history of Orange County, however, is much more complex and contested than this placid veneer would suggest. Welcome, a new exhibition on view at the Grand Central Art Center (GCAC) in Santa Ana through January, presents facets and fragments of this history in evocative ways, avoiding the didactic in favor of the poetic. The show presents the collaborative work of Chicago-based artists Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz, who were invited to participate in GCAC’s artists-in-residence program by the Center’s director and chief curator, John Spiak, in 2019.
“He encouraged us not to have a plan, to come here and learn the context of the place,” Schmalz told Hyperallergic over a zoom call last week. “He was familiar with our research-driven process. We start somewhere and come out somewhere different.”
Over the past four years, the pair has made several visits to the area, poring through archives, meeting and interviewing members of the community, and driving, often without a set destination or purpose, in “an attempt to find the soul of a place … not determined by a guidebook,” said Schmalz.
The artists explored several historical threads before settling on agriculture as a key theme, looking at how the region’s role as an agricultural hub intersects with immigration, race, labor, land use, and urbanism, issues that have shaped the OC over the course of its history and continue to do so.
As soon as they walk into the exhibition, visitors encounter “Hybrid” (all works 2023), a large mound covered in green astroturf. In the center is an image of two hands delicately pollinating a flower, creating a new hybrid variant. The image, a print of a painting by Bielak based on an archival photograph from an agriculture magazine, is surrounded by a crisp, white picket fence, suggesting a mannered conception of nature shaped by human intervention.
This notion of hybridity or heterogeneity is explored in three paintings by Bielak that are mounted on the wall, separated from visitors by a wooden fence. “Restricted Area” depicts a Vietnamese refugee urinating on a sign that reads “Restricted Area – Local Réservé” in English and French, based on a photo from the Southeast Asian Archive at the University of California at Irvine located just south of Santa Ana. On the back of the photograph is an inscription that reads “My friend Lieutenant Tran Qui Hung, making fun of our signs.” In the mid-1970s, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, located on the coast about 40 miles north of San Diego, was a major center for Vietnamese refugees, many of whom settled in Orange County, which boasts a Vietnamese-American population of 190,000. “Field” depicts a Japanese-American farmer working in the field, adding another layer to the region’s multi-racial background. “Fumigation” is an odd image of a tree being covered with a fumigation tent, illustrating another measure of dominance employed over the natural world to secure regulated abundance. The paintings beckon to viewers with inset LED lights, even as that welcome is thwarted by the fence.
Domination and control are evident in the master plan of UC Irvine, which was designed by architect William Pereira in the early 1960s. In Pereira’s plan, a series of Brutalist buildings surround a central, circular space that is recessed into the earth, with the intention that students could be penned in during protests. Bielak and Schmalz overlaid a visual poem onto a vinyl printout of the plan, which is installed onto the wall and floor of the gallery, The text mixes different forms of greeting, from refusal to acceptance. Schmalz likens it to a “welcome letter to a new arrival..the language kept coming back to conditionality, safety, and menace.”
In addition to their archival research, the artists spent time meeting with members of the local community, including students from Valley High School choir. The short video work “Xeno/Mosquito” features Abraham Hernandez, a former student at Valley High, playing an original composition on tuba in the deserted Orange County civic center plaza. The urban alienation of the harsh, paved-over landscape gives way to jubilant individual expression.
Two audio pieces play intermittently throughout the space, featuring the voices of students from the Valley High School choir led by Amy Beltran.
“From thousands of documents, we chose two phrases that tied elements together in a way that was evocative and not overdetermined,” Schmalz said. “Am I an American” features text taken from a Ku Klux Klan flier passed out in Santa Ana in the early 1920s, a stinging reminder of the role that white nationalism has played — and continues to play — here. “Never Never” repeats the words “never never, free forever,” taken from a protest for fair housing in the 1970s. Taken together, they reflect the fragmented history of exclusion, migration, and the struggles for social justice that have taken place here.
Bielak and Schmalz stress that although their work is rooted in a deep exploration of archival material and community engagement, they are not creating a pedagogical history exhibition. Perhaps that’s what makes their project feel more engaging and open to interpretation than most research-driven contemporary art shows.
“Research informs what we do, but we want to develop something palpable … Ultimately we’re interested in making art. What we generate is something people feel,” Bielak explained. “The work in the show has a lot of resonance across the country, and the limits of ‘welcome’ are hauntingly relevant globally as well as in the OC.”
