"The work of art created as a labor of love may sound cynical, yet it is made in good faith and contains a deep utopian wish for social change, no matter how naive and nostalgic that dream is."  ~ Miyoshi Barosh

Over the last fifteen years, Miyoshi Barosh made her work with humor and dystopian irony in a style she called "Conceptual Pop."  With an emphasis on cultural blindness toward death, decay, and the disintegration of both utopian social constructs, and ultimately the individual body itself, Barosh saw her work as "a manifestation of competing emotions around cultural conceits and identity politics through a handmade carnivalesque, mischievous confrontation."  Given her untimely death, her message is made even more poignant, if not tragic, because she lived it.  

LOVE was the first large-scale work that Barosh created using repurposed afghans -- those lonely and discarded, hand-made blankets which "in itchy, acrylic coziness embody feelings of dependency, obligation, and guilt." Together with I Keep Going On, these collaged and crocheted pieces play on the notion of a "labor of love." Making afghans is traditionally a women's craft that, according to the artist, refers to both the "ideal of self-less love and to the idea of unconditional love, that is expected of, but not a reality of, family." These pieces are "deliberately imperfect, damaged, and irregular like the human condition, pulled by conflicting desires for independence and dependency, freedom and obligation."

Love will be on view through February 15, 2020 @ Luis De Jesus Los Angeles 2685 S. La Cienega Blvd. LA. Concurrent exhibitions honoring the life and work of the late Los Angeles artist, who died in 2019, will be held at Night Gallery in downtown LA and The Pit in Glendale. photographs courtesy of the gallery