LOS ANGELES, CA.- On October 5 the Hammer Museum at UCLA will open the seventh edition of its acclaimed biennial, Made in L.A., which has become one of the most influential exhibitions of contemporary art in the United States. The biennial highlights the practices of artists working throughout the greater Los Angeles area, with an emphasis on emerging and under-recognized artists. Made in L.A. 2025 features 28 participants working across many disciplines—film, painting, theater, choreography, photography, sculpture, mixed-media installation, sound, and video—and is organized by Essence Harden and Paulina Pobocha.

As a companion to Made in L.A. 2025, the Hammer presents Alake Shilling’s Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A. (2025), a towering 25-foot inflatable sculpture produced in partnership with the Art Production Fund. The artwork occupies the museum's outdoor sculpture pedestal at Wilshire Boulevard and Glendon Avenue through the run of Made in L.A. 2025, which closes March 1, 2026.

Hammer Museum Director Zoë Ryan said, “Over the last 13 years Made in L.A. has become an essential platform for demonstrating the breadth and depth of the arts communities that make up Los Angeles. This exhibition is an opportunity to showcase these brilliant artists and create a moment for Angelenos to come together and celebrate the creative excellence that originates from this city.”

In a joint statement, curators Harden and Pobocha said, “From the start, our intention was to remain open to the artists and their processes, allowing the exhibition to unfold through their ideas rather than a predetermined theme. The result is an exhibition shaped by the asymmetries of Los Angeles itself—its dissonances and resonances, its contradictions and kinships, its capacity to reinvent while holding fast to history.”

The exhibition comprises mostly new works coming directly out of artists’ L.A. studios and offers insight into one of the most dynamic and energetic art communities in the world. Harden and Pobocha spent nearly a year visiting studios, artist-run venues, commercial galleries, and museums across Los Angeles County. Their final selection brings together artists of different generations and disciplines whose work engages Los Angeles as a dialogical site, where the city’s geography and layered histories serve as catalysts for creation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 340-page catalogue that explores the practice of each participant through artist interviews and essays by contributing writers.

MADE IN L.A. EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

Exhibition highlights include:

• Murals that engage the Los Angeles urban environment, including the recreation of a monumental mural Eye on ’84 (1984) by the late Alonzo Davis for the museum lobby and a contemporary mural-scaled installation by Patrick Martinez.

• Paintings by Greg Breda, Ali Eyal, Hanna Hur, Kristy Luck, and Beaux Mendes that expand the parameters of painting from within, underscoring the genre’s continued relevance.

• Work by Carl Cheng and Pat O’Neill—who have been working and exhibiting in L.A. for more than sixty years—made largely from industrial materials and cast-offs from the aerospace industry, that signal the importance of place on the one hand, and the passage of time on the other. When these artworks were made, they captured the possibilities science and technology held for the future; in the present they remind us of all which never came to pass.

• Sculptures that bring a contemporary approach to traditional art media by Alake Shilling and Brian Rochefort—who carry forward the rich tradition of ceramics in L.A.

• A presentation by John Knight, whose incisive, site-responsive practice reveals the socioeconomic and racial dynamics embedded in the built environment, resonating with the work of Gabriela Ruiz and Freddy Villalobos, whose works take stock of the race and gender-based, economic, generational inequities that determine which public “public” space should accommodate.

• Experimental video art and film by Bruce Yonemoto, a pioneer in the field, as well as Na Mira, Mike Stoltz, and Nicole-Antonia Spagnola, each innovating with video, projection, and archival footage.

• Artworks by David Alekhuogie, Widline Cadet, and Peter Tomka that recast the photographic image as painting, sculpture, or performance.

• The performing arts, with the inclusion of playwright and filmmaker Leilah Weinraub, who will premiere a stage play produced for the exhibition in collaboration with New Theater Hollywood (Max Pitegoff and Calla Henkel), and choreographer Will Rawls, who will stage a monthly site-specific performance traversing the Hammer’s indoor and outdoor spaces.

• An installation by Black House Radio (Michael Donte), presenting an environment that functions as both archive and gathering-place, treating house music—rooted in Black queer culture—as a fugitive practice of preservation that offers warmth and rhythm in moments of rupture.

• Installations by Amanda Ross-Ho and Kelly Wall that recontextualize everyday objects through shifts in material, scale, and display.