The Library, in partnership with the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, has established a residency program, Los Angeles Public Library Creators in Residence, designed to engage creative Angelenos from a multitude of disciplines. The program supports local interdisciplinary creators and inspires new work informed or enhanced by the Los Angeles Public Library’s collections and services, while also highlighting the impact of the library as a creative haven.
Creator Shing Yin Khor has created four mixed media maps on wood, and one marionette, inspired by the Los Angeles Public Library’s collections, staff, and resources.
From the Creator: This project transformed the moment I began talking to people. I thought I was making something about data and map-making, but I ended up with a project about the lovely compulsions of human curiosity and experience. The maps in this gallery represent a series of love letters to specific interests: outreach librarian Nydya Mora's documentation of Virgin of Guadalupe murals, photographer Louis Jacinto's LA punk photos in the LAPL collection, Robyn Myers' long tenure with the library as a facilities manager, and my own bookmobile research rabbit holes. The most compelling thing about the process was not the data plotted on the maps, but the collective hundreds of years of institutional knowledge and passions I was given access to. The project evolved in conversations with and direction from Todd Lerew and Christina Rice, who were also fundamentally creative collaborators and co-curators, and is planted on load-bearing research and work by librarian James Sherman and Tiffney Sanford, library historian and clerk at the Valley Plaza Branch Library. I painted four maps and built one marionette, but this exhibit is curated with the intention of showing you the sprawling process of giddily meandering through archives, and interviews, and annual reports, and special collections. I hope that you, too, find something to chase down a rabbit hole.
Shing Yin Khor is a multidisciplinary graphic novelist, analog game designer, and installation artist exploring mythic Americana and new human rituals, at the intersection of race, gender, immigrant stories, and queerness. They are the author of The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66, one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year in 2019, and The Legend of Auntie Po, a 2022 Eisner Award-winner and a National Book Award finalist. Their games and immersive installations, such as the live mail game Remember August, which won the 2022 Indiecade Tabletop Award, and the guerrilla art performance The Gentle Oraclebird, create delightful interruptions in everyday life.
Shing Yin Khor is part of the 2023/2024 Los Angeles Public Library Creators in Residence cohort, along with Creator Andy Crocker.