From Sunrise to Sunset
Anat Ebgi Gallery
Los Angeles, CA
Nov. 16, 2024-Jan. 11, 2025

​Exhibition Text
​Anat Ebgi presents From Sunrise to Sunset, a solo exhibition by Anabel Juárez on view at 6150 Wilshire Blvd from November 16 through January 11. This is Juárez’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and presents an installation of new ceramic sculptures. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, November 16 from 4-7 pm.

 Every day on street corners across Los Angeles—from dawn to dusk—and in all weather conditions, flower vendors set up temporary, mobile shops. These vendors, many of whom are immigrants of Latinx heritage, create vibrant, ephemeral spaces that bring beauty and life to the urban landscape. Inspired by these laborers, Juárez has produced an installation that pays homage to their resilience and the labor they perform.

The installation features an array of ceramic containers filled with sunflowers, dahlias, California poppies, birds of paradise, roses, and water-storing succulents—flowers that evoke the provisional fleeting nature of the flower stands these vendors assemble each day. A small white stool with a gardening glove resting on top sits near these buckets. The seat and glove, tools of respite and protection, are also stand-ins for these workers, whose absence directs attention to the ‘invisible’ physical labor force that often keeps the gardens and homes of Los Angeles pristine.
Juárez’s selection of plants and flowers reflect a combination of both native Californian species and migrant plants that arrived in the region through multiple paths. She considers their stories of origin as well as the plant’s natural characteristics to reflect on notions of migration, adaptation, and survival. For example, the bird of paradise, graceful, sharp and hardy, is able to withstand drought and wildfire smoke, perhaps ironically this non-native chimera is the official flower of Los Angeles—a symbol of both migration and resilience.

While Juárez has previously explored floral motifs in her work, often as painted imagery on freestanding forms—one such work, Girasol, is presented in this exhibition. The large totemic two-sided work is named the Spanish word for sunflower; it alludes to the sun’s singular presence in, and daily journey across, the sky. As a sunflower ‘moves’ to follow the sun, the presiding sculpture also refers to a clock or compass, markers of time, a marker of working. From Sunrise to Sunset marks her first foray into sculpting life-like representations of floral motifs. However, both the monumental ceramic sunflower sculpture, and the smaller buckets of blooms, allude to the interwoven histories of people, plants, and place, reflecting the ways in which both human and natural worlds are shaped by migration, adaptation, resilience, and survival.