February 25 through April 15, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 25, 6-9 pm
More than any other city, Los Angeles is shaped by the immigrants who make it their home. So it’s fitting that, in a new show at Bermudez Projects, an immigrant is breathing new life into another transplant that has been a ubiquitous symbol of the city since the 1930s. In Candles Burning in the Wind, Francesca Bifulco’s debut solo show at the gallery, the artist presents the iconic palm tree in a style that will surprise even the most jaded Angeleno.
Bilfulco was born in the town of Pæstum in Southern Italy, “literally across the street from the ruins of three Greco-Roman temples,” and to her, palms are our monuments, “honoring people who migrated or have transplanted here, without whom LA would not be the multilayered city as we know it,” with its “multigenerational hardships and themes of integration, multiculturalism, and the right to exist.” Arriving in the city 10 years ago – with her art rolled into an 8-foot long PVC tube – the artist has made LA her home and her creative center.
Candles Burning in the Wind features twelve works, including four original paintings from her California Dreaming print release, and eight brand new works. And, just like a palm tree, they are big – the largest topping out at 7 feet high!
Painted in glowing reds, oranges, and yellows on black backgrounds, each work is a tribute to these urban sentinels. Whether standing tall, bathed in the sun’s light (Wishful, Sinful Wicked You) or taking center stage, fully aflame (Sleep Now in the Fire), these paintings are portraits, not landscapes. In Bifulco’s world, the palms are “breathing and waving at us, indisputable queens of this monstrous city.”
Her monumental Nero Apparente, included in the gallery’s 2022 SPACELAND Biennial titled Requiem, is a tribute to her recently deceased father, featuring black palm fronds from the last palm he trimmed.
Says Bifulco, “Thinking back now it all makes sense. I grew up around palms, I can recognize at least 6 different types, I can trim a few, and know how to care for them, after seeing my father doing it for as long as I can remember.”
Palm trees are not native to Los Angeles. And, for Bilfulco, they have become “the perfect embodiment of all those people who continue to stand still despite how hard it is for them to thrive.”
Francesca Bifulco (Italian, b. 1986) is a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist. Her distinctive line work channels a graphical quality through her primary medium of painting, crafting a personal language that carries through large-scale canvases, textural burnt wood compositions, and multidimensional installations. Her subjects have spanned from crowds and the force of their plurality, to individuals affected by social media culture, to men playing cards in a conflicted and underrepresented neighborhood of Naples, Italy. Her current work processes the effects of personal loss through preservation of memory; examines the sociopolitical awakening in the US; and celebrates an iconic symbol of her adoptive city of Los Angeles. She is a member of the multidisciplinary artist duo, Card 0 Collective, and the LA based-women lead IAC (Immersive Art Collective), a coalition that empowers disadvantaged youth through creative outlets. The artist lives and works in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles.