b'IhighlightClarissa Tossin VideoTHE ACQUISITION OF CHU MAYAA BEGAN her earliest video works, White Marble Everyday (2009), with artist Clarissa Tossins lecture at Smith Collegewhich she filmed in her hometown of Brasilia.in March 2018. Invited to campus by Professor ofWith Chu Mayaa, Tossin shifts her attention Art Frazer Ward, Tossin was a 201718 fellow at thefrom the Brazilian economies and labor of daily main-Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She makes arttenance that she addresses in White Marble Everyday to that is conceptually rich, research-driven and materiallythe forms of cultural appropriation found in U.S. modernist diverse. On the way to realizing a body of work, shearchitecture. The focus here is the Mayan Revival style often learns a new craft or technique, such as her recentas it manifested in Los Angeles during the early 20th experimentations with 3D printing to create playablecentury. Tossin sets the work in a private home that musical instruments based on scans of ancient Mayanemblematizes this style: Frank Lloyd Wrights Hollyhock musical instruments or her study of native AmazonianHouse, built between 1919 and 1921. Tossin worked with65basketry and weaving for the installation Meeting ofthe choreographer and performer Crystal Seplveda Waters. Tossin described her process and its broaderto develop choreography and movements based on implications in a 2018 interview: Negotiating differ- the gestures and poses Tossin found in her research on ence, diversity, multiplicity, hybridization and othernessancient Mayan ceramics and murals. Seplveda dons a have become the places from which I engage with artleopard-print jumpsuit and bright blue sneakers as she making. I am interested in movement as displacement,moves in and around Wrights design, activating it anew. and its resulting transformations. My work is concernedThe questions that ensue are especially perti-with circulation: at the level of the body, at the level ofnent in an academic context and to discussions related global industry, and all the levels in between. to contemporary arts so-called global turn: How doChu Mayaa was originally commissioned byartists and architects construct and rely on differencethe City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairsand otherness? How might contemporary art for the exhibition Condemned to Be Modern, as partmeaningfully address cultural appropriations past and of the Getty Foundations region-wide program Pacific present? And in so doing, what new understandings do Standard Time: LA/LA. In it, Tossin combines her com- artworks generate of who and what are appropriated? mitment to a rigorous, research-based practice with her longstanding engagement with modernist architecture.Chu Mayaa was on view at SCMA from October 11, 2019January 5, 2020The latter interest is perhaps most evident in one of above:Clarissa Tossin. Brazilian, born 1973. Chu Mayaa, 2017. HD single-channel digital video, color, stereo sound. Running time: 17 minutes, 56 seconds. Choreography/Performer: Crystal Seplveda. Cinematography: Jeremy Glaholt. Purchased with funds from the Contemporary Associates, Smith College Museum of Art'