Ami Vitale (detail) / courtesy of the artist and Annenberg Space for Photography
W|Alls: Defend, Divide, and The Divine
Oct 5 – Dec 29, 2019
Annenberg Space for Photography
Los Angeles, USA

Complex, challenging, and immersive, W|ALLS: Defend, Divide, and the Divine is a historical look at civilization’s relationship with barriers, both real and imagined. For centuries, across diverse civilizations, walls have been central to human history. This exhibit explores the various aspects of walls – artistic, social, political, and historical – in six sections: Delineation, Defense, Deterrent, The Divine, Decoration, and The Invisible. These categories overlap and change meaning according to context, much like the walls themselves: erected for one reason, their appearance and use is then altered and modified over centuries, reflecting the civilizations that have grown and changed around them.

Featuring over 70 artists and photographers, W|ALLS invites guests to contemplate how these structures – from the decorative to the divine – affect the human psyche and why we keep building them.

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