This year during Frieze Los Angeles, Art Production Fund curated a suite of public works for Frieze Projects. Artists Lita Albuquerque, Jackie Amézquita, Claire Chambless, Joel Gaitan, Madeline Hollander, Greg Ito, Ozzie Juarez, and Dominique Moody were commissioned to create installations, interactive sculptures, and experiences that engaged fairgoers in surprising ways. Whitewall asked each artist to share how their own personal histories shaped their perspective of Los Angeles.
Madeline Hollander: Day Flight
Madeline Hollander, photo by Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of Frieze and CKA.
“Day Flight” explores the skies of Los Angeles through a series of daily flights, choreographed in collaboration with Santa Monica Flyers, that explore the intersection of movement, landscape, and climate change. Taking off from Santa Monica Airport, the flights pass over areas affected by recent wildfires, offering a unique and reflective perspective on our evolving environment.
Jackie Amézquita: trazos de energía entre trayectorias fugaces
Jackie Amézquita, photo by Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of Frieze and CKA.
Large-scale interactive paintings at the Santa Monica Airport campus reimagine migration data graphs as a vibrant social gathering map. Amézquita uses traditional woven mats and natural materials to explore themes of movement, adaptation, and community.
WHITEWALL: What space, place, landscape, or memory inspired your project?
JACKIE AMÉZQUITA: Two things have inspired trazos de energia entre trajectorias fugaces. One is Santa Monica’s history, which traces back to the native communities that inhabited the land before colonization. And two are memories of my six-day trek to Nakbe, one of the largest Mayan cities in the region of Guatemala. It took a little over a year to plan this journey. During my time there, we had conversations about shivalva (the underworld), the living world, the cosmos, and how as humans, we are interconnected to these realms.
WW: What is your relationship with the city of Los Angeles?
JA: I arrived in Los Angeles in 2003. Los Angeles has been my home for over 20 years. I have traveled outside of Los Angeles but always gravitate back here. I have never felt like I wanted to live anywhere else. Listening to people speaking Spanish, the Latin neighborhoods where I can find part of my home country make me feel at home. It’s here where I have grown as a person and as an artist.
“I have never felt like I wanted to live anywhere else,”
—Jackie Amézquita
WW: As this is a public project, what do you hope viewers, participants, and visitors experience?
JA: I want people to experience mobility not only as an act of human migration but also as a geographical occurrence. Earth shifts, land masses diverge, converge, and transform depending on how they move in relation to each other. How these geological movements have created other continents and migrated into different zones has influenced the way we navigate.
Greg Ito: A Time to Blossom
Greg Ito, photo by Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of Frieze and CKA.
Ito’s monumental inflatable sculpture presents a golden alarm clock adorned with vivid orange blossoms, symbolizing hope and strength. This striking piece encourages reflection on the value of time, inspiring perseverance and reminding viewers to invest in what truly nurtures growth and renewal.
WHITEWALL: What space, place, landscape, or memory inspired your project?
GREG ITO: My project is deeply inspired by the Japanese American community I grew up in on the Westside of Los Angeles, not far from the Frieze LA fair location at the Santa Monica Airport. This community was shaped by a shared but often unspoken history – everyone’s family had been impacted by the internment camps during WWII, yet it wasn’t something we dwelled on in conversation. Instead, that history lived in us, passed down through our DNA, shaping how we moved through the world.
Rather than focusing on the past, our community prioritized the present – building bonds, supporting one another, and working together. It was about resilience, not just survival. We carried our history forward not as a weight but as a foundation for the future. This sense of collective strength and forward momentum is at the heart of my work. I’m interested in how memory and place intersect, how inherited histories shape creative expression, and how art can activate spaces in ways that honor the past while forging new possibilities for the next generation.
WW: What is your relationship with the city of Los Angeles?
GI: Los Angeles isn’t just where I live; it’s who I am. As a fourth-generation Japanese American and a fourth-generation Angeleno, my family has called this city home for over a century. It’s where our roots run deep, where generations before me built their lives, and where I choose to continue growing my own family for the future. The city isn’t just a backdrop; it’s embedded in my bloodline, in the landscape, in the energy that flows through its streets.
“Los Angeles isn’t just where I live; it’s who I am,”
—Greg Ito
My wife is also from LA – Pasadena specifically, and her family has been here for generations, too. Together, we are LA. This city has shaped us, and in turn, we contribute to its ever-evolving story. We love Los Angeles with our whole spirits, honoring its past while building a future within it. It’s more than just home, it’s a legacy we carry forward.
WW: As this is a public project, what do you hope viewers, participants, visitors experience?
GI: With my sculpture, A Time to Bloom, I want viewers to experience a sense of joy, curiosity, and reflection. This large-scale inflatable, positioned outside the fair, is a playful yet deeply symbolic gesture – an invitation to consider resilience, growth, and hope for the future. The golden alarm clock, with vibrant orange flowers bursting from its crown, is a reminder that time is precious and that, with time, anything can heal.
I hope people smile when they see it, feel compelled to interact with it, and tap into a sense of play that often gets lost in everyday life. Beyond the immediate joy it brings, I want the symbolism to linger – a subconscious transformation that sparks conversations about the future we want to build. This piece is an offering, both to Los Angeles and to those who have traveled here to experience the city’s creative energy. It’s my way of contributing to that energy, sharing something hopeful, and reminding us all that beauty and possibility are always within reach.
Ozzie Juarez: Pásale! Pásale! Todo Barato!
Ozzie Juarez, photo by Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of Frieze and CKA.
Originating from South Central Los Angeles, the installation uses murals, architectural elements, and live performances to explore cultural identity among urban change. His work, inspired by the spirit of swap meets and tianguis, offers a vibrant celebration of communal life.
Joel Gaitan: It’s My House And I Live Here
Joel Gaitan, photo by Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of Frieze and CKA.
Inspired by his Nicaraguan and Miami heritage, Gaitan explores home and identity with his captivating installation, transforming the central pathway into a welcoming space. Featuring terracotta roofing, ceramic decorated windows, and a balcony filled with plants, the architecture and personal touch invite viewers to make themselves comfortable.
WHITEWALL: What space, place, landscape, or memory inspired your project?
JOEL GAITAN: Born and raised in Miami to Nicaraguan parents, I was inspired by the colorful homes and architecture of both places to create “It’s My House And I Live Here,” meant to be read as if singing the Diana Ross song.
The ceramics within the installation echo the sculptures commonly found in Central American households, serving as a reminder of our roots and deep connection to the land.
WW: What is your relationship with the city of Los Angeles?
JG: Although I am not from here, I deeply appreciate the vibrant Central American community shared by both Miami and LA. It creates a sense of familiarity and belonging, making these cities feel like a home away from home. Even something as simple as spotting a Central American restaurant in LA brings me comfort and nostalgia, connecting me to my roots. It’s a reminder that home isn’t just a place; it’s a feeling carried through culture, food, and community.
WW: As this is a public project, what do you hope viewers, participants, and visitors experience?
JG: This installation invites viewers to reflect on their own definition of home, encompassing both the beautiful and painful moments. It explores the idea of home as ever-changing, shaped by memories, experiences, hardships, and new beginnings. Home is not defined by a physical structure but by the experiences and stories we carry with us. Through this installation, visitors are encouraged to see home as a fluid concept, continuously redefined by the pieces of life that shape our sense of belonging.
Claire Chambless: Player, Non-Player
Claire Chambless, photo by Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of Frieze and CKA.
Claire Chambless, photo by Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of Frieze and CKA.
This creative interactive sculpture includes golden eggs filled with miniature sculptures hidden around the fair. The search for the eggs encourages unique perspectives while creating a thought-provoking dialogue on feminism.
WHITEWALL: What space, place, landscape, or memory inspired your project?
CLAIRE CHAMBLESS: “Player, Non-Player” is site-specific to Frieze, Los Angeles. The golden eggs and talismans inside question the way artworks are acquired and circulated. What are the barriers to access? The relational sculpture offers an alternative model that expands access to fine art. If you find it, you keep it.
WW: What is your relationship with the city of Los Angeles?
CC: I’m originally from Georgia and moved to Los Angeles seven years ago. In those years, the city has come to feel like home, largely because of the friendships I’ve found in the art community. The talismans inside Player and Non-Player’s golden eggs all signify security, home, and belonging. The sculptures are symbolic gestures, passing along the sense of belonging I’ve found here to whomever finds one.
WW: As this is a public project, what do you hope viewers, participants, visitors experience?
CC: I hope viewers experience the thrill of searching for a charismatic object. I hope they are excited by the opportunity to collect art, regardless of their purchasing power.
Lita Albuquerque: Turbulence
Lita Albuquerque, photo by Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of Frieze and CKA.
Pioneering Land Art and Light & Space artist Lita Albuquerque, known for her work in the 1960s and ’70s, presents Turbulence, featuring a boulder coated in ultramarine blue atop decomposed granite. The piece reflects on the fleeting connection between humanity and nature, with blue serving as a link between earth and cosmos, transforming light into matter.
WHITEWALL: What space, place, landscape, or memory inspired your project?
LITA ALBUQUERQUE: The inspiration for Turbulence came right after the fires, looking for the perfect boulder. On multiple trips to the quarry in the high desert about four hours outside of LA, going down into the bowels of the earth, surrounded by tonnage of what surrounded me, I began to think about the mass of the earth, the weight of the entire planet, how it inverts into weight being inconsequential when it is suspended in space and the cosmos. I was thinking about the quarry and taking a piece of stone out of the mountain and it being a rock and how it transitions from that into sculpture- I remain interested and perplexed in this liminal space between these matters of being that create a territory where the sublime can enter.
WW: What is your relationship with the city of Los Angeles?
LA: My relationship to the city of Los Angeles is intertwined with growing up as a child in a similar landscape in Carthage, Tunisia, in North Africa, where the land and the landscape had a powerful imprint on me. I experience Los Angeles as a garden city embraced by the mountains on one side, and the ocean on the other, with the openness to the desert beyond. That kind of geography is what inspires me to do works on the land. My relationship with the city of Los Angeles then extends out to the many years living here, starting in the seventies and the art scene that was happening in Venice – the circle grew bigger as I started teaching and most notably on the core faculty of the Graduate Art Program at Art Center College of Design, where I experienced decades of young artists developing and becoming part of the community. So, on one hand, it is the nature I am in relation with, and the other with the art community that is ever growing and evolving.
WW: As this is a public project, what do you hope viewers, participants, visitors experience?
LA: I am excited anytime an ephemeral work of mine can be experienced by the public, and Turbulence commissioned by Art Production Fund at Frieze was certainly a moment for the public to be able to experience a work that is at once ephemeral and permanent, a sculpture that weighs a deceiving 6000 pounds, yet with a simple ephemeral gesture, transforms into weightlessness. In the past, my works were done in remote sites around the world, and only a handful of people got to be with them and most now only know of them through photographs, so to be able to be there and receive viewer’s responses has been a real reward. I feel that Turbulence participated in the process of its own making and existing with the public itself and in so doing engaged the viewer in a reciprocal dance.
Dominique Moody: Nomad
Dominique Moody, photo by Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy of Frieze and CKA.
Evolving from a dream into a fully functioning installation, Moody explores a mobile artist residency housed in a truck and trailer. Inspired by found objects and the nomadic legacy of Moody’s family, the project embodies the acronym Narrative, Odyssey, Manifesting, Artistic, Dreams.
WHITEWALL: What space, place, landscape, or memory inspired your project?
DOMINIQUE MOODY: In many ways, every home and place that I’ve ever lived has helped to shape the NOMAD. Because essentially, the nomad is a place of memory. Where each object illustrates my story.
WW: What is your relationship with the city of Los Angeles?
DM: For more than 30 years, I have found kinship in LA from a creative community that embraced the language of assemblage. I fell at home here in the midst of the Watts Towers, the Jacaranda trees, and the vibrancy of its cultural communities. I love the diversity of the city through its people and its landscapes. But I also recognize the pain and sorrow that exist here as well, and that propels me to create artwork that reflects the whole spectrum of our lives.
“The way we think of home through memory holds a common thread,”
—Dominque Moody
WW: As this is a public project, what do you hope viewers, participants, visitors experience?
DM: NOMAD is an intimate story with an epic legacy! It speaks to our everyday lives and celebrates the ordinary as extraordinary, and therefore, people find something familiar in the experience. Home is a universal idea, and although it takes shape in many forms, the way we think of home through memory holds a common thread.
