Facebook Artist In Residence Program, Los Angeles:
A Collaboration with Lavialle Campbell

During their residency in 2020 at the Facebook Headquarters in Los Angeles, California, Lava Thomas and Lavialle Campbell collaborated to create an immersive installation environment influenced in part by their adolescence growing up in 1970’s Los Angeles: the DIY aesthetics of their teenage bedrooms, and the works of the Sheroes that shaped their budding feminism and Black female pride. Grounded in an ethos of experimentation, the space featured a mural, portraits, lounging furniture with quilted pillows, and a curated playlist of R&B music from the 1970’s.

The mural wall was a striking focal-point of the installation and represented the culmination of collaborative and experimental processes between Thomas and Campbell. As a fine-art quilter, Campbell explored the translation of abstract geometric forms from one of her quilts, Fractured (2017), to a wall mural, and activated select shapes with hand tufted fabric. Thomas explored the visual potency of the fragmented portrait through enlarged excerpted images of iconic Black female musicians from the 1970’s – Tina Turner, Chaka Kahn, and Roberta Flack. Photographs of the musicians were edited, enlarged, cut, placed in circular frames and installed overlaying the mural to create depth and contrast to the mural’s hard-line geometry, exploring the interchange between figuration and abstraction.