OCHI, a gallery located in Los Angeles, is now presenting How To Build Up Worn Out Soils, an exhibition of paintings and ceramics by artist Hana Ward. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.

Borrowing from George Washington Carver’s pamphlet of the same name, How To Build Up Worn Out Soils speaks to a theme Ward has been mining in her work for years: self- determination and transformation despite limited resources. In the wake of those overlapping pandemics—Covid, climate anxiety, and the resurgence of old rage about persistent systemic racism, Ward reached for books to help gain perspective. Her study found her at the intersection of Black land justice and spirituality.

Like many of Ward’s titles, this one is polysemous—worn out soils refers to both our minds and our environments. Ward considers the ways subsistence farming has historically provided a path toward Black socio-political self-determination, and that self-determination, a catalyst for self-possession. Ward extends this practical labor of place-making and turns it inward to the ethereal, our minds and internal worlds: nurturing the seeds of divinity within each of us, cultivating our energy fields, and enriching our lives in the process.

Text by Bethel S. Moges

How To Build Up Worn Out Soils is on view through June 17 at OCHI, 3301 W Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles, California