Seeds and a dish with chicken and berries on a decorative table

David Horvitz performs at Soup & Tart: Los Angeles, June 8, 2023.

Active Cultures is a public arts nonprofit in Los Angeles that explores the intersection of art, food, and ecologies through artist-led projects and programs.

Upcoming Projects

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Meech Boakye: watering

A screening and foraged gathering

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Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa, A Film Screening, Conversation, and Celebration

With Xenia Tupas

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Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa, The Symposium

With Josen Masangkay Diaz, Joy Sales, and Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns.

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FEATURED PROJECT

The Banana Leaf is a Container Technology

During this year’s fall equinox, artist Paige Emery created a Filipinx Kamayan feast in collaboration with chef Ria Dolly Barbosa, amidst the olive grove of Arlington Garden. As part of the ECOTONES series, the program offered a spread of food and flowers served on banana leaves, where we were seated on the earth and eating by hand—as Emery invited us to gather under the changing season’s sun and experience ecopoetic rituals interspersed throughout the course of the afternoon.

Paige Emery: The Banana Leaf is a Container Technology, 2024, produced by Active Cultures and The Brick at Arlington Garden Pasadena. Photo by Jessica Howes.

Watering is a communal hydration ritual, a gatheri

Watering is a communal hydration ritual, a gathering facilitated by artist Meech Boakye that considers hydration as a medium for collective healing.

For the second in a series co-presented by Active Cultures and The Brick, the gathering centers on a screening of Jumana Manna’s Foragers (2022), a film that explores the restricted practices of foraging wild edible plants in Palestine under Israeli law. This program invites participants to question how ecological conservation can be weaponized as a political tool for displacement.

💧 Link in bio for full details and to RSVP!

@ghostyboi
@thebrick_la
@jumanamanna

Support for this program series is provided by Kim and Keith Allen-Niesen, The Maurice Marciano Family Foundation, and Olivia Marciano.

For the fall equinox, artist Paige Emery created a

For the fall equinox, artist Paige Emery created a Kamayan feast amidst the olive grove of Arlington Garden, inviting us to gather under the changing season’s sun and experience ecopoetic rituals interspersed through the course of the afternoon.

Thank you to Paige, chef Ria Dolly Barbosa, The Brick, and Arlington Garden for their partnership and care in producing the first program in the ECOTONES series. We are so grateful to our community for a moving afternoon around the Kayaman.

Check out Paige’s recent writing for MOLD to learn more about this facet of her practice — link in our bio!

@paigeemery_
@riadollybarbosa
@thebrick_la
@arlingtonpasadena

Photos by @jessicahowes_

We are hiring a part-time Curator—come work with

During this year’s fall equinox, artist Paige Em

During this year’s fall equinox, artist Paige Emery will create a Filipinx Kamayan feast in collaboration with Los Angeles chef Ria Dolly Barbosa, amidst the olive grove of Arlington Garden.

For the first in a series co-presented by Active Cultures and The Brick, the program offers a spread of food and flowers served on banana leaves, where we will be seated on the earth and eating by hand—as Emery invites us to gather under the changing season’s sun and experience ecopoetic rituals interspersed throughout the course of the afternoon.

🌱 Link in bio for full details and to RSVP!

@paigeemery_
@riadollybarbosa
@thebrick_la
@arlingtonpasadena

Support for this program series is provided by Kim and Keith Allen-Niesen, The Maurice Marciano Family Foundation, and Olivia Marciano.

Image: Paige Emery preparing Kamayan at Bulalayaw Village. October 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

We’re looking for a Project Manager to join the

We’re looking for a Project Manager to join the team in support of Ami Lien and Enzo Camacho’s Langit Lupa—the artist duo’s first major project in Los Angeles and California—with a focus on their work with Filipinx migrant and activist grassroots groups in our city.

Working closely with AC and the lead artists, the Project Manager will be responsible for supporting the project with a focus on community engagement, artist support, and facilitating our work with local partners.

Full job description and link to apply in our bio!⁠

Image: Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien, Langit Lupa (Heaven and Earth), 2023. Film still. Courtesy of the artists.

Announcing ECOTONES Presented alongside the exhibi

Announcing ECOTONES
Presented alongside the exhibition Life on Earth: Art and Ecofeminism at The Brick

This fall we are thrilled to partner with @thebrick_la to present a collaboratively organized series: four public programs will be led by an artist or artist-collective to explore local agriculture, foraging, food and herbalism as ritual, and biodiversity.

September | ritual paintings and a kamayan feast with Paige Emery
October | film screening and foraged food with Meech Boakye
November | SPROUTIME kids workshop with Leslie Labowitz-Starus
December | gathering with Mexico-based colectivo amasijo

Taking place in conjunction with the Getty Foundation’s ambitious initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide, ECOTONES will be part of a region-spanning cultural moment, reaching vast audiences interested in the intersection of art, food, feminism, and sustainability. For more info visit the-brick.org and active-cultures.org

@thebrick_la @cat.taft.cat @paigeemery_ @arlingtonpasadena @ghostyboi @leslieartlab @colectivo_amasijo @pstinla

Active Cultures’ programs this year are made possible through the generous support of its Board of Directors; the Gatherers Annual Fund; the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition; the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture as part of Creative Recovery LA, an initiative funded by the American Rescue Plan; the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture; and the California Arts Council.

Images courtesy of Paige Emery, Meech Boakye, Leslie Labowitz Starus, and colectivo amasijo

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