Karla Diaz - Projects - Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

Karla Diaz
Nana Hila and all My Chiefs II, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 60 in (121.9 x 152.4 cm)

As a child, artist Karla Diaz would often get in trouble for drawing on walls. “Wait ‘til your mother gets home!” her aunt would exclaim.

Diaz still loves to draw and paint. Karla Diaz: Wait ‘til Your Mother Gets Home features recent works on paper and canvas that focus on American Mexican identity from the 1970s to the present, emphasizing a cultural context of social upheaval and justice through the artist’s explorations of recollection and imagination. The exhibition consists of 37 new and recent works on paper and paintings, along with an installation that commemorates Rubén Salazar, the civil rights activist and Los Angeles Times reporter murdered in 1970.

Diaz’s vivid, narrative paintings and works on paper depict portraits and landscapes of people and places that inform her memories growing up in Los Angeles and México.

View 18th Street Arts Center

Selected Works

Selected Works Thumbnails

Installation view of Karla Diaz: Wait ‘til Your Mother Gets Home, on view from February 17 - June 22, 2024

Installation view of Karla Diaz: Wait ‘til Your Mother Gets Home, on view from February 17 - June 22, 2024

Installation view of Karla Diaz: Wait ‘til Your Mother Gets Home, on view from February 17 - June 22, 2024

Press

LA TIMES

THESE POP-UPS, DROPS AND ART EVENTS GOT YOU COVERED FOR SPRING March 7, 2024

“Wait ’til Your Mother Gets Home,” which is on display at 18th Street Arts Gallery’s Propeller Gallery, is an exploration of American Mexican identity from the 1970s through today via the paper and canvas work of artist Karla Diaz. Called her first institutional solo exhibition in Greater L.A., the exhibition features 37 of the writer, teacher and multidisciplinary artist’s new and recent works. At the heart of the exhibition is “The Silver Dollar” (2021), a work on paper that commemorates Ruben Salazar, the L.A. Times reporter and columnist — the city’s leading Latino media voice — who was killed in August 1970 when a sheriff’s deputy shot a projectile into East L.A. bar the Silver Dollar.

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HYPERALLERGIC

"KARLA DIAZ: WAIT 'TIL YOUR MOTHER GETS HOME" CHOSEN AS HYPERALLERGIC'S 10 SHOWS TO SEE IN LOS ANGELES THIS MARCH February 27, 2024

Just as LA celebrates its annual fair week, the pinnacle of the commercial art ecosystem, several shows across the city take a different approach, offering alternative creative visions and celebrating the abject, the margins, the forgotten.

With a vibrant palette and crisp lines reminiscent of comic books, Diaz’s paintings combine childhood recollections of Mexico and LA, domestic family scenes, pop culture, fantasy, and dreams with a focus on social justice, a crucial part of Slanguage, the community art space she co-founded with her husband, Mario Ybarra Jr., in 2002.

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ART DAILY

SURREAL BLEND OF DREAMS AND DAILY LIFE CONVERGE IN PAINTINGS AND WORKS ON PAPER BY KARLA DIAZ February 24, 2024

18th Street Arts Center is now showing Karla Diaz: Wait ‘til Your Mother Gets Home, the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in the Los Angeles area. The exhibition consists of 37 new and recent works on paper and paintings, along with an installation that commemorates Rubén Salazar, the civil rights activist and Los Angeles Times reporter murdered in 1970.

The title of the exhibition, “wait ‘til your mother gets home,” is a familiar expression Diaz heard frequently from her aunt, who stayed with her after school as a young girl. Toggling between the domestic sphere and the world at large, the phrase suggests a conflation of past and future that is familiar to Diaz. Her artworks operate simultaneously in multiple worlds, those of her dreams as well as the everyday.

View Art Daily