In Conversation: Edgar Arceneaux, Dorit Cypis, Sowon Kwon, and Thomas Lawson on Michael Asher

Join Edgar Arceneaux, Dorit Cypis, Sowon Kwon, and Thomas Lawson as they discuss Michael Asher's art and legacy in the Ahmanson Auditorium at MOCA Grand Avenue.

Born in 1972, Los Angeles-based artist, director, writer, and organizer Edgar Arceneaux received a BFA from the Art Center College of Design and a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Arceneaux constructs drawings, installations, video and film works as complex arrangements of association that examine adjacencies and points of contact between implausible relations. Arceneaux received the prestigious Mike Kelley Foundation Award in 2019 and the LACE Jackie Apple Award in 2026. Edgar’s upcoming exhibition, WE ARE GODS, opens at Vielmetter Los Angeles in May 2026.

Born in Tel-Aviv, Israel and raised in Montreal, Canada, Dorit Cypis is an artist with extended skills in education and conflict mediation. Cypis’s artwork, weaves performance, photography, and immersive media installations with innovative approaches to audience engagement, and has been exhibited at museums, galleries, and civic spaces, including the Whitney Museum, Musee des Beaux Art/Bruxelles, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Cypis is committed to integrating creative expression with public social change initiatives to inspire people within and beyond the art world, including Kulture Klub Collaborative, artists and homeless youth working together to bridge survival and inspiration. In 2016, Cypis founded PeoplesLab, a platform for training, mediation, and dialogue facilitation.

Sowon Kwon works in a range of media including sculptural and video installations, animation, drawing, printmaking, and books. Her projects explore coincidence, historical memory, portraiture, and the interplay between making and writing. She has had solo exhibitions at Gallery Simon, Seoul; The Kitchen, NY; BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA; and the Whitney Museum and her work has also been featured in many group exhibitions in the US and abroad. She currently teaches in the Graduate Fine Arts Program at Parsons/The New School and The Cooper Union, and is a regular contributor to 4 Columns.

Born in 1951, in Glasgow, Scotland, Thomas Lawson is an artist, writer, magazine editor and was the Dean of the School of Art at California Institute of the Arts from 1991 to 2022.