In Conversation: Christina Quarles, Sasha Bonét & Anne Ellegood

Why It Matters

The exhibition and dialogue illustrate how contemporary art can document and influence public understanding of climate‑driven displacement, reinforcing Los Angeles' cultural resilience and prompting broader conversations about migration and environmental policy.

Key Takeaways

• Quarles' exhibition responds to personal loss from LA wildfires.
• Proximity of gallery underscores themes of home and displacement.
• Paintings explore migration, climate crisis, and community resilience.
• Sasha Bonet links artistic practice to making meaning through hand.
• Staying in LA highlights commitment to place amid environmental upheaval.

Summary

The Hower and Breth Los Angeles conversation centered on painter Christina Quarles and her new show "Destiny is a Rose," a first solo exhibition in her hometown. The event, attended by writer Sasha Bonet and curator Anne Elgood, framed the work as a direct response to the devastating wildfires that destroyed Quarles’ home twice, forcing her family into temporary housing and a new live‑work studio just minutes from the gallery. Key insights emerged around displacement, migration and climate anxiety. Quarles described the paintings as visual rituals born from a ruptured sense of place, while Bonet emphasized that painting is an attempt to make meaning through the hand. The dialogue linked personal trauma to broader patterns of environmental migration, ICE raids, and the shifting communal bonds in Los Angeles. Notable moments included Quarles noting that her studio sits beneath her family’s living quarters, allowing the sounds of her children to become part of the creative process, and Bonet quoting Nina Simone: "the artist's role is to reflect the times." The participants also highlighted the Black diaspora’s historic westward migration and its contemporary echo in climate‑driven relocation. The conversation underscores how contemporary art can serve as a barometer for societal upheaval, offering both a record of collective loss and a catalyst for community resilience. By staying in Los Angeles and exhibiting locally, Quarles reinforces the city’s cultural continuity amid environmental crises, prompting collectors, institutions and policymakers to reckon with the human cost of climate change.

Original Description

On the occasion of ‘Christina Quarles. The Ground Glows Black,’ the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery in Los Angeles, we hosted a conversation with Christina Quarles, writer, critic and editor, Sasha Bonét, and Curator and Executive Director at ICA LA, Anne Ellegood. The group discussed Quarles’ latest body of work, which she created in the wake of the wildfires in Altadena.

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Hauser & Wirth is an international contemporary and modern art gallery with spaces in Zurich, London, Somerset, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Gstaad, St. Moritz, Monaco, Menorca, Paris and Basel.

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