Based in Los Angeles, Halsey’s work spans sculpture, installation, and architecture, including site-specific projects, particularly in the South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles. She combines found, fabricated, and handmade objects, with an iconography inspired by Afrofuturism and funk, as well as the signs and symbols that populate her local environments in LA. Her work maintains a sense of civic urgency and free-flowing imagination, reflecting the lives of the people and places around her and addressing the crucial issues confronting people of color, queer populations, and the working class. Critiques of gentrification and disenfranchisement are accompanied by real-world proposals as well as a celebration of on-the-ground aesthetics. Halsey creates a visionary form of culture that is at once radical and collaborative.

Lauren Halsey is a recipient of the Seattle Art Museum’s Gwendolyn Knight | Jacob Lawrence Prize. This exhibition of her work will open winter 2021.

Funding for the prize and exhibition is provided by the Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence and Jacob Lawrence Endowment and generous support from the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation.