Artist Angela Nguyen's rug criticizes Los Angeles infrastructure and transportation

The question “Where do we go from here?” It is the center of this entire carpet. It's a saying that reflects how to get around Los Angeles. Where do we go from here when it comes to improving our public transportation infrastructure? Where do we go from here when it comes to wanting to get from point A to point B? The question “Where do we go from here?” It can also resonate with everything that is happening in the world. How do you move in life? Those few words represent moving through the city, unconsciously and philosophically, but also physically.

My partner doesn't have a car and one of his greatest values ​​(he's lived in Los Angeles for 12 years) is taking public transportation everywhere. I thought about him and I thought about the trials and tribulations he faces moving around Los Angeles. I thought about the working class experience of people commuting through Los Angeles. I thought about creating something that felt like a critique but was humorous and satirical. I love incorporating humor into my work; I think it translates better with the audience. And besides that, I love fun things.

Every time I work on a piece, once I have a theme or an overarching narrative, I start writing in my notes app. I make a list of as many things as humanly possible and then try to connect them. My work is word vomit, or brain vomit, because there are so many things I'm thinking about that I want to cover. For this paper, I started with a huge list of bullet points:

• “Live and Die in LA”
• Kevin Bacon Walk of Fame Star
• Hideo Nomo Dodgers
• hollywood tour van
• “Double compensation”
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Gaylord Apartments
• Meter
• Sepulveda Boulevard.
• Impossible parking signs
• highway 101
• Plane over LAX
• electric vehicle signs
• “The Flintstones”, using their feet to drive
• La Sombrita – “shadow” and “luminous structure”
• GM Car Conspiracy
• New Boyle Heights Bridge: Bike Path to Nowhere
• Gas prices skyrocket
• Review that the Los Angeles Metro is the absolute worst
• Los Angeles City Review Full of 'Fake People'

I wanted to start with the iconography of Los Angeles or the iconography of Hollywood, because it's fundamental to the way we see the city, and then I wanted to move on to the way we see the city as residents, like the Gaylord Apartments: I live in Koreatown, and that is a basic element. As a driver traveling around Los Angeles, it's always difficult to park, so I included a really long and difficult parking sign. Then I wanted to move on to a greater critique, so I included La Sombrita, that structure of shadow and light that LADOT implemented, which they gave a lot of importance in the city, and they ended up revealing that it was Just a damn shadow. There is no bench, no resting place for people waiting for the bus or for those without accommodation. I also included a short snippet from an article highlighting the new Boyle Heights Bridge, which includes a bike lane to nowhere, and the review that Los Angeles is full of the fakest people, which I don't believe at all .

All these images are woven with wool. I started doing locks four or five years ago. Very often we see people learning to weave tufts to recreate something else and produce. The practice is strangely rooted in industry and speed and getting it done faster for production: Western political economy, capitalism, whatever you want to call it. I want to counteract that. I want to make the work much slower and more patient. When it comes to this piece, it's interesting because sometimes I feel like Los Angeles is a very fast-moving city, especially when you're in your car and you're getting places, and I felt like I wanted to take the time to just create something. slowly and patiently reflecting the times in which we exist was truly rewarding. This is my densest piece to date, and it's because I'm an Angeleno and I have a lot to say about the city.

Angela Anh Nguyen is a Los Angeles-based fiber artist whose work satirizes the chaos of America's culture wars. Working primarily with gun-tufted textiles, her pieces are a wry ode to the intricate rhythm of life, often exaggerated and never serious on the surface.