Lauren Halsey’s Long-Awaited LA Sculpture Park in South Central Is Finally Here—See Inside

Artnews / By
A sculpture park featuring columns with heads at their tops and rows of sphinxes. The park abuts a city street.
Lauren Halsey’s sister dreamer lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles, a sculpture park in Los Angeles’s South Central neighborhood. Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio

Almost two decades ago, while she was an architecture student at El Camino College, Lauren Halsey began conceiving a sculpture park for South Central, the Los Angeles neighborhood where she grew up. At long last, that sculpture park has finally arrived and is now open to the public.

Curated by Christine Y. Kim and organized by the arts organization Los Angeles Nomadic Division, the park is officially titled sister dreamer lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles. It is in many ways the grandest expression to Halsey’s desire to meld past and present in the hope of creating a future in which “Black people can experience themselves differently and not feel weighed down by some of the oppressive forces,” as she once put it.

Halsey has exhibited projects elsewhere, most notably at the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. biennial in 2018, where she took the top honors. Presentations on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and outside the Arsenale during the 2024 Venice Biennale followed. But unlike those projects, sister dreamer is free to the public and not held within the confines of an art institution. It is meant to be for the community, by one of its members.

Below, take a look inside the sculpture park.

  • A concrete structure carved with images of people
    Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio

    Like many of Halsey’s other projects, the sculpture park draws on ancient Egyptian art, paying homage to age-old objects such as the goddess Hathor. But Halsey’s works typically have a contemporary twist: one of her sphinxes, for example, wears sunglasses.

  • A column etched with the profiles of people.
    Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio

    The columns are etched with silhouettes of people as well as insignia of brands recognizable to locals in South Central. Also etched into some of the columns are ancient Egyptian symbols, such as the ankhs seen here.

  • A concrete structure that has two large openings for doors. Etched into its surface are words such as
    Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio

    At the center of sister dreamer is a structure that Halsey has termed an “oculus,” according to a Los Angeles Times report from last week. The structure is carved with similar symbols to the ones that appear on the columns.

  • A concrete structure etched with various designs, including the silhouettes of heads.
    Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio

    Inside the oculus, one can find images and textual references to the Grim Sleeper, a serial killer who targeted Black women between the 1980s and the 2000s. The focus on women is common for Halsey, whose column-like sculptures shown at the 2024 Venice Biennale paid homage to her grandmother, as well as female activists and artists.

  • A circular concrete object planted in the ground near plants.
    Image Credit: Photo Allen Chen/@_h_studio

    sister dreamer will be activated by programming organized by the Broad museum and Halsey’s own nonprofit, Summaeverythang. While the installation is only temporarily sited here for now, it is likely to relocate to a permanent space next year, according to the Los Angeles Times.