As Los Angeles Art Week 2026 trickles through the city, public art shines. Locals and visitors fill parks, cafés, wellness spaces, and neighborhood spots, hoping for an artful experience. At the main fair, Frieze Los Angeles, and the local galleries, too, public works still aren’t to be missed. A regular favorite of Whitewall’s is Art Production Fund and its annual public art activation.
In 2023, Art Production Fund began a partnership with Frieze Los Angeles to present “Frieze Projects”—the fair’s public program of site-specific commissions. This year, for its fourth presentation, the organization debuts “Body & Soul.” Presented at the Santa Monica Airport and surrounding areas, its not-for-profit performances and installations are rooted in embodiment, ritual, material memory, and communal.
Art Production Fund: Expanding Public Space
Kelly Wall, Everything Must Go, courtesy of the artist.
Founded in 2000, Art Production Fund has built a reputation for ambitious, site-responsive works that extend contemporary art into unexpected terrains. From desert landmarks like Prada Marfa by Elmgreen & Dragset toSeven Magic Mountains by Ugo Rondinone, and monumental urban interventions such as Seated Ballerina by Jeff Koons, the organization has consistently championed projects that meet audiences where they are.
Over the past few years, this partnership with Frieze Los Angeles has become a great West Coast platform, offering artists a unique opportunity to create new work—in dialogue with the fair and beyond it.
In Motion: “Body & Soul”
Sketch by Amanda Ross-Ho, courtesy of the artist.
At the heart of “Body & Soul” is a meditation on physical presence—the body as labor, ritual, vessel, and symbol. Amanda Ross-Ho presents Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE) (2026), a durational performance in which a 16-foot inflatable Earth is manually rolled across a soccer field.
Artwork by Polly Borland, courtesy of the Artist and UAP – Urban Art Projects.
Nearby, Polly Borland unveils BOD (2023), her largest sculpture to date. Cast in aluminum and towering at seven feet tall, the work translates her longstanding explorations of the body in photography and textiles into monumental form, both vulnerable and imposing.
Ritual, Participation, and Memory
Cosmas & Damian Brown, courtesy of the artist.
Cosmas & Damian Brown, courtesy of the artist.
Participation emerges as another throughline. Twin artists Cosmas & Damian Brown debut Fountain: Sources of Light (2026)—an interactive installation composed of ceramic heads, incense smoke, and rearrangeable metal vessels. As visitors move the elements, the fountain’s sonic and atmospheric qualities shift, creating a living sculpture shaped by collective touch.
Sketch by Shana Hoehn, courtesy of the artist.
Elsewhere, Shana Hoehn presents Deadfall (2026), her first large-scale public sculpture carved from an urban forest-sourced tree. The figures embedded within the wood evoke cycles of decay and transformation, inviting quiet contemplation amid the fair’s kinetic energy.
Material Histories and Urban Interventions
Work in progress by Kohshin Finley, photo by Kohshin Finley.
Self-portrait by Kohshin Finley.
Materiality also grounds the program in tactile histories. Kohshin Finley exhibits stoneware vessels that channel personal memory and ancestral craft traditions through scale and surface. Meanwhile, Dan John Anderson shows Threshold (2025) and Terra Seer (2025), sculptural works combining stained glass and cast bronze, where light and shadow become active compositional forces.
Beyond the fairgrounds, Kelly Wall reanimates a dormant Westwood Village newsstand with Everything Must Go (2026). Glass “magazine” covers fill the structure at the start of the week, gradually disappearing—a meditation on ephemerality, obsolescence, and the fragility of public information.
What to Know About “Body & Soul” at Frieze LA
When & Where: On view February 26–March 1, 2026 at Santa Monica Airport during Frieze Los Angeles, with select works extending beyond the fairgrounds.
Admission: Free and open to the public.
Who: Los Angeles–based artists Dan John Anderson, Polly Borland, Cosmas & Damian Brown, Kohshin Finley, Shana Hoehn, Amanda Ross-Ho, and Kelly Wall.
What: Site-specific installations and performances exploring the human form—across labor, ritual, memory, and metaphysical presence.
Don’t Miss: Amanda Ross-Ho’s 16-foot inflatable Earth in continuous motion; Cosmas & Damian Brown’s interactive fountain (plus a youth Art Sundae workshop on February 28, 10am–1pm); and Kelly Wall’s off-site Westwood Village newsstand installation (1101 S Westwood Blvd, open daily 5:48–8pm).
Presented in partnership with Art Production Fund, “Body & Soul” positions Frieze Projects as a citywide platform for ambitious, artist-led public work—well beyond the fair tent.
