Cauleen Smith: Give It Or Leave It

LACMA presents “Give It Or Leave It,’’ a traveling solo exhibition of film, video and sculpture by Los Angeles-based artist Cauleen Smith. The artist’s interdisciplinary practice is mainly informed by mid-20th-century experimental film. In the exhibition, viewers will find a series of experimental portraits of different sites related to spirituality, creativity, and utopianism. For this series of works, Smith conducted most of her research at Alice Coltrane’s ashram in California, and in history, after restaging a photograph of 9 dapper black men taken by Bill Ray in 1966 at the Watts Towers. “Give It Or Leave It’’ also presents additional archival research exploring the 19th-century black spiritualist Rebecca Cox Jackson.