‘In Finite Space,” by artist Kean O’Brien, explores the sky as a metaphor for the liberation of marginalized bodies. (photo courtesy of Kean O’Brien)

The West Hollywood community is invited to an Artist’s reception on at 6 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 6 to celebrate the final installation of a two-part temporary art exhibition by artist Kean O’Brien, as part of the city’s Art on the Outside Program. The final exhibition, “In Finite Space,” will be on-view through December 2023. The previous phase of the exhibition, “I use ____ pronouns,” was on view from October 2022 to December 2022.

“In Finite Space,” includes two 5-foot by 7-foot cyanotypes and a gold-leafed, hand-drawn text work on paper. The artwork explores the liminal and expansive sky that holds infinite space for the liberation of marginalized bodies. O’Brien considers both the body as landscape and the landscape as a human body. At a time when gender is in revolution, race politics are being interrogated and resisted, where bodies are seen as sites of controversy, and bodies are trying to cross borders all over the globe, we can see that our own bodies are also deeply linked to the environments and the people that hold them.

O’Brien (he/they) is a transgender, chronically ill, disabled, artist, educator, and academic living between Chicago and Los Angeles. As a multimedia artist working in  photography, painting, found images, installation and writing, he focuses on the nuance of gendered construction, whiteness, the body as landscape for survival, death, grief, and trauma. His academic writing explores the current landscape of higher education from an abolitionist, decolonial lens. He has a longstanding commitment to radical pedagogy, community building and grassroots organizing. He holds an MFA from California Institute for the Arts, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago and is currently a doctoral candidate in social change at Fielding Graduate University for Education Leadership.

The Art on the Outside Program is the city’s temporary art program that installs rotating artworks throughout the city.

O’Brien’s exhibit is on-view at the third floor of the Aquatic and Recreation Center, 8750 El Tovar Place.

For info, visit weho.org/arts.