Installation view of Fictions of Display, June 29, 2025–January 4, 2026, at MOCA Grand Avenue. Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). Photo by Jeff McLane.
This event has been rescheduled from September 2025.Visual artist, author, and playwright Asher Hartman joins us for a somatic walkthrough of Fictions of Display.
Asher Hartmanis a visual artist, writer, director, and maker of live performances. His works, which combine strategies of theater and performance art, grapple with social and political issues in an era of chronic crisis. His works are dense, visual, poetic embodied texts, infused with clown and cringe humor, evidence of trance and psychic journeying, set in engulfing installations designed to disorient, unnerve, and elicit strong feeling. Hartman is the director and founder of Gawdafful National Theater, a group of visual artists, actors, and performance artists with whom he has created since 2010.
Recent projects includeThe Mommy Leaks the Floor, New Theater Hollywood (2025);Blessed with Switchwith Jasmine Orpilla (The TBA Festival at PICA, 2025; Centre Pompidou, Paris; UCI and The Art of Performance, 2024);It’s Better to Start Out Uglyat JOAN (Los Angeles, 2023) and The Lab, (San Francisco, 2023) andAfter I seen that figure I don’t have no consciousness about it(Alto Beta, Los Angeles, 2023). Other recent Gawdafful performances includeThe Dope Elf, Yale Union, Portland, Oregon (2019) revised asOrganized Around the Erotics of Doing You Inat The Lab (2021) and six Gawdafful films available on The Lab's website.
This program is organized by Justen Leroy, Director of Public Programs and Community Outreach.