Multicultural View
I started Call and Response in March 2020 when the world shut down. Over 500 artists across six continents have participated in 20+ rounds. Random pairings. No fees. No gatekeepers deciding who gets to collaborate.
This round happened during ICE raids in Los Angeles. During escalating racism and xenophobia. During a political moment that treats multiculturalism as threat rather than reality.
Artists from different cultural backgrounds—Los Angeles to India to Georgia to Belgium—responded to each other across borders and time zones. The theme asked them to explore what "multicultural" actually means when you're living it, making art through it, building relationships across it. Not the sanitized diversity-brochure version. The messy, complicated, urgent reality of cultural exchange under political attack.
Some collaborations addressed heritage directly—ancestral symbols, migration stories, language barriers that became creative opportunities. Others explored what happens when different cultural perspectives collide in visual conversation. The work reveals both connection and friction, both shared humanity and profound difference. That's the point. Multiculturalism isn't about erasing difference—it's about what we create together because of it.
During their collaboration, one artist witnessed an ICE raid while creating work. Another pair navigated a plane crash that killed 206 people in one artist's country. The political and personal don't wait for convenient timing. Artists made work anyway, holding grief and beauty simultaneously, refusing to let terror silence creative exchange.
This exhibition documents what happened when artists had two weeks to respond to each other across cultural boundaries. Every collaboration is an act of resistance against the forces trying to isolate us, build walls between us, make us fear each other. Art created across difference proves connection is possible. That matters right now.
*These exchanges took place over two weeks. One artist creates work and sends a digital image to their partner, who responds in any medium. Back and forth—each artist getting 24 hours per turn, though most worked faster. The result: 20+ artworks created through rapid creative dialogue between two artists who had never met. The resulting documentation shares the artwork in the order it was created and tells a story of their thought process.
