ICA LA is proud to be located in the Arts District of DTLA, a neighborhood artists have called home for decades. The area has been experiencing enormous change over the past several years, and in an effort to maintain the Arts District as a neighborhood for art and artists, we want to share an exciting opportunity to become our neighbor! If you've visited the museum over the past year, you may have noticed the construction of a large residential development on the corner of Alameda and Industrial Streets. The AVA Arts District Apartments are near completion and will welcome their first tenants this summer. 53 of the new AVA apartments—including studio, one, two, and three bedroom apartments—will be available at affordable and reduced costs, determined according to the area median income (AMI). Applications for these apartments will be accepted on a first come, first served basis, so we are spreading the word to our community in the hope that these apartments will be filled with artists and arts workers.

If you or someone you know is interested, visit the links below to learn about the eligibility requirements for the two programs (50% AMI and 150% AMI), rent amounts, and how to apply. The link will take you to a flyer with a QR code to scan to apply for the waitlist, the first step in the application process. The waitlist to apply opens MONDAY, MAY 15 at 9am PST.

These are the FINAL DAYS to see the Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork exhibitions, which close to the public on Sunday, May 14. Don’t miss out on these two extraordinary shows, as well as Christine Sun Kim’s Bounce Back mural on the ICA LA façade, which will remain on view through the summer.

We hope to see you this weekend,
Team ICA LA

Learn about AVA Arts District

How to Apply

Closing Sunday, May 14

Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency

Milford Graves: Fundamental Frequency is dedicated to the life and work of the late interdisciplinary artist Milford Graves (1941–2021, born in Jamaica, Queens), whose revolutionary experiments—spanning music, medicine, movement, and art—explore the cosmic relationship between rhythms and the universe. Instrumental in the Free Jazz movement, Graves is best known as a percussionist, yet he applied his interest in rhythm far beyond the boundaries of music. A true polymath and innovator, Graves also trained as a cardiac technician to better understand the connection between the drum beat and the heartbeat; invented a martial art form called “Yara,” an improvisational practice loosely based on the movements of the praying mantis, the Lindy Hop, and African ritual dance; operated a community garden as a skilled botanist and herbalist; and taught generations of students as an influential professor in the Black Music Division at Bennington College. 

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork

Marking the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork features a new sound-based installation titled Into/Loving/Against/Lost in the Loop (2023). Building on Kiyomi Gork’s (b. 1982, Long Beach, CA) ongoing explorations into sound as architecture, the installation takes on the form of a maze-like environment that uses sculpture and sound to confront the viewer with their own embodied experience. Placed at the center of the installation’s maze is a series of ultra-directional speakers that process live audio from the surrounding galleries, which is then generated into an electronic beat. As soundwaves vibrate through the body, the rhythmic pulse of the beat orients the viewer in a collective audio experience. In constructing a feedback loop of its own, the work underscores how the phenomenon of hearing itself is a feedback loop—or in Kiyomi Gork’s words, “What you hear affects how you move and how you move affects how you hear.” In blurring the distinction between audience, performer, audio, and architecture, Into/Loving/Against/Lost in the Loop reveals the structures of control and agency underlying the listening experience to create a heightened awareness of the dynamics of perception.