Art @ Tongva Launches Tonight with The Wonder Room

The 2018 Art @ Tongva season kicks off tonight at 7:30 with The Wonder Room, featuring  César Castro and Cambalache, masters of Son Jarocho, and multi-award-winning Santa Monica artist Kate Johnson’s remarkable projections on the foliage canopy of the park’s famous, century-old Moreton Bay Fig tree, Morty.

This is the fifth annual edition of The Wonder Room, a free evening of performances and visual artwork by an multidisciplinary group of artists who synchronously activate the intimate “rooms” of Tongva Park. This year features another powerful and diverse group of local contemporary art makers creatively integrated into an artistic adventure that audience members can stroll through and discover at their own pace, in their own order.

Visual and performance artist Emily Mast, in collaboration with the award-winning composer and arranger Alan Chan, will present ASHES IN I’S, bringing performers and audience together in a shared sensory event. Visual artist Beatriz Cortez, recently selected for the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A., will share her interactive and cosmic sculptural work while a trio of dancers perform Choreographer Crystal Sepulveda’s playful interventions.

The program highlights Tongva Park’s unusual geography of gardens, winding paths, and urban vistas, re-imagining the small, exquisite spaces of the park designed by James Corner Field Operations, the creative geniuses behind the High Line in New York.

Art @ Tongva is a series of intimate and informal events in Tongva Park running since 2014. In addition to The Wonder Room, this year’s season includes performance theater by the company The Wildnerness on April 25th, an interactive audio-theater experience, Among Us, on April 7th & 8th and May 12th & 13th, and an evening of art and performances by contemporary indigenous artists on May 30th. Art @ Tongva is co-produced by Santa Monica Cultural Affairs and Dyson & Womack.