Flight Logs — Harlesden High Street

Angela Anh Nguyen & Okey Ofomata
Flight Logs

Private View: 20th April 2025 4-8pm
Open Wednesday - Saturday 12-5pm
And by appointment
Closed 3-15 May 2025
Book here

Harlesden High Street is excited to announce an upcoming duo show by LA-based artists Angela Anh Nguyen and Okey Ofomata. This collection of paintings and textiles looks to capture the present moment with objects from the recent past—people, art, and products condemned by the mainstream as ‘problematic.’ Flight Logs satirizes popular culture whilst highlighting the feelings of disorientation and anxiety it engenders in people. It confronts us with the possibility that the ‘democratization’ of culture and media conceals the persistence of foundational inequalities of power.

Enacting a ‘return of the repressed,’ Nguyen and Ofomata depict the detritus of a culture intent on erasing itself. The various artifacts depicted here constitute an archive of failure, a collection of cultural products suppressed in an attempt to localize the violence and alienation that pervades every facet of modern life. Each ‘cancellation’ is an act of forgetting; it seeks to censor an individual and remove them from the public sphere, while also obscuring their status as a symptom of deeper problems. It’s a social practice that reflects our continued preoccupation with celebrity, pursuing the exceptional at the expense of the mundane. Yet it is in the domain of the latter where the multifarious miseries of this world are reproduced. By re-contextualizing familiar cultural objects, these pieces illustrate the banality of the problematic.

The interminable culture war(s) that now dominates contemporary discourse is premised on the possibility of saving or reviving some aspect of prevailing norms, therefore obstructing the emergence of new value-systems. The negation of its own products is thus an act of self-preservation for the culture industry, as critique comes to prioritize the ephemeral over the structural. How might this process be turned against itself? Can those ‘cancelled’ figures and trends, pushed to the margins of collective memory, be used to trace the contours of the present? As Nguyen and Ofomata show through their art, one can learn a lot about someone by looking through their trash—and the same holds for that which popular culture attempts to discard.

Presenting multitudes yet recognisable states of anxiety, paranoia and overconsumption, both artists utilise their material with a sense of action, depicting characters going through relatable struggles surrounded by familiar ‘iconic’ and ‘cancelled’ material possessions, making a statement about the dividers present in the political economy of the West.

Angela Anh Nguyen (b. 1994) is a Los Angeles based fiber artist whose work satirizes the mayhem of America’s culture wars. Working primarily in gun-tufted textiles, Nguyen’s art narrates the contemporary relationship Americans share with popular culture—with its subject matters dictating discourse while its existence is hardly momentary. Her pieces are a tongue-in-cheek ode to the convoluted rhythm of life, often exaggerated and never serious on the surface.

Angela is a self-taught textile artist. She received a B.A. in Communication from UCLA and an M.A. in Communication from CSULA.

Selected Group Shows
2024, Blank Space, Primary Projects Miami, FL
2024, MFAs of LA, Good Mother, LA
2024, Homeward, WHAAM!, NYC
2024, OAXAKALIFORNIA, John Doe @ Yope Projects OAX
2023, Heaven is a Basement, Soho Warehouse LA
2023, Do You See Me? Albertzbenda LA
2022, Endless Summer, Albertzbenda LA

Fairs
2025, Harlesden High Street @ Post Fair, LA
2024, Carlye Packer @ Felix Art Fair, LA
2022, Albertzbenda @ The Armory Show NYC

Okey Ofomata’s works are a reflection of life in all its facets as they delve into the discomfort of existence, exploring the mundane and studying the choices people make under pressure or based on upbringing. Rather than challenging ideas, Ofomata aims to offer a different perspective, presenting familiar thoughts in settings that are polar opposites but resonate in location. Drawing inspiration from the deliberate framing in film, photography and media, Ofomata strives to infuse every aspect of his works with purpose. This pursuit of powerful compositions is evident in the thoughtfully arranged interplay of forms, colors, and negative space, shaping a visual language that resonates deeply. As a visual storyteller, Ofomata recognizes the significance of each element, constructing immersive experiences that invite viewers to explore layers of meaning.

Okey Ofomata (b. 1997, Los Angeles, CA) recent solo exhibitions include It’s Like Sports at The Cabin LA, Los Angeles, CA. Recent group exhibitions include Until It’s Faced, New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Blaq Sheep, Superchief Gallery LA, Los Angeles, CA; and Okey Ofomata and Silva Flandez, IRL Gallery, New York, NY. Ofomata lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is currently in his 3rd year at CalArts.