LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Hammer Museum announced that Akinsanya Kambon will receive the $100,000 Mohn Award honoring artistic excellence, in conjunction with Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living. The museum will also produce a monograph of Kambon’s work as part of the Mohn Award. Pippa Garner will receive the Career Achievement Award honoring brilliance and resilience, and Jackie Amézquita will receive the Public Recognition Award, as chosen by visitors to the Made in L.A. 2023 exhibition. Garner and Amézquita will each receive $25,000.
Funded by Los Angeles philanthropists and art collectors Jarl and Pamela Mohn, the Mohn Awards have been given to artists with each edition of the Made in L.A. biennial, which began in 2012.
Hammer Museum Director Ann Philbin said, “Akinsanya Kambon’s powerful ceramic sculptures are imbued with the stories of disturbing histories of colonization and subjugation. He is well overdue for this recognition, and I am so pleased he is receiving the 2023 Mohn Award. Likewise, Pippa Garner is immensely deserving of the Career Achievement Award as an artist who has been making provocative work for many decades. And there’s no arguing with the many visitors to Made in L.A. who voted for Jackie Amézquita—her work is an ambitious and powerful portrait of Los Angeles. I am incredibly grateful to Jarl and Pamela Mohn for their steadfast support of the Hammer and the artists of Los Angeles, through their funding of the Mohn Awards and their ongoing support for the Made in L.A. biennial.”
A jury of professional curators selected the Mohn Award and the Career Achievement Award. This year’s jury includes Essence Harden, visual arts curator and program manager at the California African American Museum; Ryan Inouye, Kathe and Jim Patrinos co-curator of the 59th Carnegie International and curator, International Art, at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; and Carla Acevedo-Yates, The Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the MCA Chicago.
In a joint statement about the Mohn Award winner, the jury said, “Akinsanya Kambon has developed a distinctive visual language that narrates episodes of violence, liberation, and revolution. His commitment to storytelling through form connects histories that span cities and continents through a Black diasporic and anti-imperialist lens. Through intricate ceramic vessels and wall reliefs that hold an intense emotional charge, the artist compels us to hold these complex histories close to the present as a call for radical social change and justice.”
In reference to the Career Achievement Award, the jury wrote, “Pippa Garner does not make distinctions between art and life, demonstrating a way of living and moving through the world in which the body is a site of transformation, pleasure, transgression, and play. Her wry and inventive sculptures, drawings, videos, and performances subvert social norms and the language of consumerism. This Career Achievement Award recognizes Garner’s decades-long practice that has cleared space for generations of artists working today.”
The Public Recognition Award was determined by visitors to the Hammer Museum. More than 60,000 people visited the exhibition in its first two months and had the opportunity to vote for their favorite artist in the biennial.
Remarking on Jackie Amézquita’s popular vote award, Made in L.A. 2023 co-curator Pablo José Ramírez stated: “Jackie is an artist committed to sharing and nurturing her diasporic experience as a Guatemalan immigrant, reverberating vigorously with a variety of audiences in Los Angeles and beyond. In her practice, Amézquita uses organic materials that change, grow and decompose, creating sophisticated works that speak to the practice of performance art, or minimalism as much as they do to the cultures and social histories they bear witness. The thousands of visitors to Made in LA 2023: Acts of Living decided the Public Recognition Award through their vote, and we were thrilled to learn about this result.”
Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living is on view at the Hammer Museum through December 31, 2023.
In conjunction with exhibition, the Hammer produced short documentaries about Akinsanya Kambon and Jackie Amézquita, along with eight other artists featured in the exhibition.
THE MOHN AWARD
The Mohn Award is among the largest art prizes in the world. The award, along with the Career Achievement Award and Public Recognition Award, is dedicated to recognizing the work of emerging and under-recognized artists based in greater Los Angeles. In 2020, Kandis Williams received the Mohn Award, Monica Majoli received the Career Achievement Award, and MR. WASH received the Public Recognition Award. In 2018, Lauren Halsey received the Mohn Award, Daniel Joseph Martinez received the Career Achievement Award, and EJ Hill received the Public Recognition Award. In 2016, dancer Adam Linder received the Mohn Award, Wadada Leo Smith received the Career Achievement Award, and Kenzi Shiokava received the Public Recognition Award. In 2014, Alice Könitz received the Mohn Award, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess and Michael Frimkess received the Career Achievement Award, and Jennifer Moon received the Public Recognition Award. And in 2012 Meleko Mokgosi received the Mohn Award, which was selected by both a professional jury and the public.
THE AWARD RECIPIENTS
Akinsanya Kambon was born in 1946 in Sacramento. Akinsanya Kambon earned a BA and an MA from California State University, Fresno, in 1974 and 1976, respectively. Solo exhibitions include those at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York (2022); Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento (2020); Pan African Art Gallery & Studio, Long Beach, California (1991); and the Oak Park School of Afro-American Thought, Sacramento City College (1969). Recent group exhibitions include those at Oakland Museum of California (2016) and Joyce Gordon Gallery, Oakland (2016). He is the recipient of awards from the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (2022); City of Long Beach (1996, 1994); County of Los Angeles (1994); and California Wellness Foundation, Violence Prevention Initiative (1993).
Pippa Garner was born in 1942 in Evanston, Illinois. Pippa received a BFA from ArtCenter College of Design in 1970. Recent solo exhibitions include those at Kunsthalle Zürich (2023); Kunstverein München, Munich (2022); JOAN, Los Angeles (2021); Jeffrey Stark, New York (2021); Stars, Los Angeles (2021); O-Town House, Los Angeles (2019); and Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles (2019, 2017). Garner has performed widely, including at Other Places Art Fair, San Pedro, California (2018); Dinner Theater at Leroy’s, Los Angeles (2018); Gallery at Michael’s, Santa Monica (2017); New Langton Arts, San Francisco (1985); Lhasa Club, Los Angeles (1983); Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1980); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1980); 80 Langton Street, San Francisco (1979); La Mamelle, Inc., San Francisco, broadcast on KTSF-TV (1979); and Vanguard Gallery, Los Angeles (1979).
Jackie Amézquita was born in 1985 in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Her multidisciplinary practice converges a diasporic family history, with personal experiences as a formerly undocumented immigrant in the US and unweaving collectively shared social memory. Sourcing natural materials from significant historical migration sites and drawing from indigenous mythologies, Amézquita holds space for communal grieving and human connection; giving birth to new modes of resistance and challenging systematic oppression, marginalization, and exploitation. Amézquita holds an AA in Visual Communications from LAVC, a BFA from ArtCenter College of Design, and a MFA from UCLA. Amézquita has exhibited with The Hammer Museum, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) CA, LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) CA, 18th St Art Center CA, The Armory Center of the Arts CA, Vincent Price Art Museum CA, The Annenberg Space for Photography CA, Human Resources Los Angeles CA, MAD (Museum of Art and Design) NY, amongst others. She is the recipient of the Mohn Land Award (2023), Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts Los Angeles Art Fund (2022), and National Performance Network Fund (2022). Amézquita has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, hyperallergic, Walker Art Center magazine, and many other publications. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California—the unceded land of the Tongva people.
JARL MOHN
Jarl and Pamela Mohn are art collectors and philanthropists committed to supporting emerging L.A. artists. Professionally, Jarl Mohn is president emeritus of NPR, having served as president and CEO from 2014 to 2019. Prior to that Mohn divided his time between being a corporate director and advisor to a number of media companies, making direct early-stage angel and seed investments in digital media/technology ventures, and managing The Mohn Family Foundation—the philanthropic entity that he and his wife created in 2000. In addition to supporting arts initiatives, the Mohn Family Foundation funded the Mohn Broadcast Center for KPCC, a significant contribution to Public Radio in Southern California. Mohn is the former chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, and the former chair of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Previously he was the founding president and CEO of Liberty Digital, a public company that invested in the internet and digital media. Prior to Liberty Digital, Mohn created E! Entertainment Television, serving as its president and CEO from January 1990 to December 1998. From 1986 to 1990, Mohn was executive vice president and general manager of MTV and VH1, where he led the transformation from music videos to long-form programming. Prior to his career in television, Mohn had a 19-year career in radio. He began as a disc jockey and rose through the ranks as a programmer, general manager, and then owner of a group of radio stations.
Originally from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Mohn attended Philadelphia’s Temple University where he studied mathematics and philosophy. He currently lives in Brentwood with his wife. Jarl and Pamela Mohn's commitment to the awards began with the first six cycles of Made in L.A., and with this gift continues beyond.
MADE IN L.A.
The Hammer’s biennial exhibition series Made in L.A. focuses exclusively on artists from Los Angeles with a primary focus on emerging artists. The Los Angeles biennial debuts new installations, videos, films, sculptures, performances, and paintings commissioned specifically for the exhibition and offers insight into the current trends and practices coming out of Los Angeles, one of the most active and energetic art communities in the world. Made in L.A. began in 2012 with a second iteration in 2014 and a third in 2016, and followed the tradition of the Hammer Invitational exhibitions, which occurred every two years and included Snapshot (2001), International Paper (2003), Thing (2005), Eden’s Edge (2007), Nine Lives (2009), and All of this and nothing (2011).
Made in L.A. 2012 was organized by a team of curators from the Hammer Museum and LAXART: Hammer senior curator Anne Ellegood, Hammer curator Ali Subotnick, LAXART director and chief curator Lauri Firstenberg, LAXART associate director and senior curator Cesar Garcia, and LAXART curator-at-large Malik Gaines.
Made in L.A. 2014 was co-curated by Hammer chief curator Connie Butler and Los Angeles-based independent curator Michael Ned Holte.
Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only was cocurated by Hammer curator Aram Moshayedi and Hamza Walker, former director of education and associate curator at the Renaissance Society in Chicago and currently director of LAXART in Los Angeles.
Made in L.A. 2018 was organized by Anne Ellegood, senior curator, and Erin Christovale, assistant curator, with MacKenzie Stevens, curatorial associate. Performances are coordinated by Vanessa Arizmendi, curatorial assistant.
Made in L.A. 2020 was organized by independent curators Myriam Ben Salah and Lauren Mackler, with the Hammer’s Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi, assistant curator of performance. Made in L.A. 2020 was organized by the Hammer Museum in partnership with The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
