The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project Chapter #9: Zoe Crosher LA

The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project
Chapter #9: Zoe Crosher
LA-LIKE: Shangri-LA’d
Palm Springs, CA
April – May 2015
Zoe Crosher, LA-LIKE: Shangri-LA’d, 2015, billboard, The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project
LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) presents the ninth chapter of billboards as part of The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project featuring
the work of Zoe Crosher in Palm Springs, CA from April 3rd through May 2015. Zoe Crosher’s chapter of The Manifest Destiny Billboard
Project, entitled LA-LIKE: Shangri-LA’d, was created by staging a lush landscape in the former Communist Chinese Headquarters in
Mandarin Plaza in Chinatown in Los Angeles, CA. The entropic installation was documented by Crosher onsite to track the gradually
transforming and decaying façade of a landscape. Crosher collaborated with florist Hollyflora to create a wall of flora and fauna that
embodied the fantasy of Los Angeles and the promise of the western ideal. As the billboards unfold over space and time traveling west
along I-10 in the Palm Springs, CA area, the lush green foliage, symbolic of the promise of abundance/fecundity and in stark contrast to the
barren desert landscape, becomes increasingly withered and brown. The falsity of the romanticized notion of Manifest Destiny is manifest
in her billboards as the promise of riches slowly degrades and fades away, just as the intangible American Dream slips away from those in
its pursuit.
The launch of the billboards is presented in conjunction with Crosher’s installation Expanded LA-LIKE: The Actual Shangri-LA’d
Disappearing Wall at the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert. Various activations and events will take place during the opening
weekend celebration, including the unveiling of a version of the flora wall as depicted on Crosher’s billboards made in collaboration with
floral artist Briana Burt of Eventscapes along with two performances of Scott Benzel’s Desert Center (Composition I-10, Mvmt IV: Dusk), a
sound composition designed to respond to the traffic patterns and harmonics of I-10.
Zoe Crosher (b. Santa Rosa, CA) is a Los Angeles-based artist whose multifaceted practice uses the Los Angeles cityscape and Hollywood
celebrity culture as the basis for fictional documentaries that explore the fantasy of expectations and the false promise of travel, identity,
and transience.
The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project is a series of artist-produced billboards and activations that are unfolding along Interstate 10
Freeway from Florida to California through spring 2015. Using 100 billboards total, 10 artists create “chapter” groupings along I-10, each a
unique interpretive link to the exhibition thematic. The billboards move through and punctuate the landscape by tracing territorial
expansion from east to west, along one of the country’s busiest freeways, concluding in Los Angeles.
Participating artists include John Baldessari, Sanford Biggers, Matthew Brannon, Zoe Crosher, Eve Fowler, Shana Lutker, Jeremy Shaw,
Daniel R. Small, Bobbi Woods, and Mario Ybarra Jr.
This project is made possible with support from the Offield Family Foundation, an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Art Works, and with support
from Lamar Advertising. Special thanks to the Palm Springs Art Museum, Hollyflora, and Hasselblad.
MAP:
For an interactive Google map, please visit www.nomadicdivision.org.
A. I-10 a nd Hwy 8 6, Indio
33.7148, -116.1837
Lamar Board 6531
B . I- 10 a nd Go lf Cent er
Pkw y
33.7290, -116.2050
Lamar Board 6151
C . I- 10 a nd Was hingt on St.
33.7781, -116.3417
Lamar Board 2711
D . I- 10 a nd Ra mo n Rd.
33.8224, -116.4138
Lamar Board 2221
E . I- 10 a nd Gene Autry
T rail
33.8832, -116.5093
Lamar Board 4211
F. I -10 and Ind ia n Av e.
33.9071, -116.5728
Lamar Board 4001
G . I- 10 a nd Hwy 111
33.9224, -116.6752
Lamar Board 5071
H . I- 10 a nd Main St.
33.9217, -116.7198
Lamar Board 1421
About LAND:
LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) is a non-profit public art organization
committed to curating site- and situation-specific contemporary art projects in Los
Angeles and beyond. LAND believes that everyone deserves the opportunity to
experience innovative contemporary art in their day-to-day lives. In turn, artists
deserve the opportunity to realize projects, otherwise unsupported, at unique sites in
the public realm.
I. I-10 a nd Highlan d Sp rings
33.9263, -116.9424
Lamar Board 4991
J. I-10 a nd Penns ylv ania
Av e.
33.9277, -116.9625
Lamar Board 1041