Tavares Strachan’s “Six Thousand Years, 2018,” is included in the upcoming exhibition. (photo by Frazer Bradshaw, © Tavares Strachan)

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents “Tavares Strachan: The Day Tomorrow Began,” the artist’s first major museum exhibition in Los Angeles, running through March 29.

Introducing more than 20 new works – including the artist’s most expansive neon piece and one of his largest sculptures to date – the multi-sensory exhibition spotlights Strachan’s excavation of histories that have been rendered invisible within mainstream narratives, particularly in relation to the Black diaspora. Weaving together sculpture, painting, text and music, “The Day Tomorrow Began” transports visitors to unique environments ranging from uncanny everyday spaces to surreal landscapes. In the immersive spaces, Strachan invites audiences to rethink the ways in which people represent and discuss history, and more significantly, what histories are lionized.

LACMA’s presentation of “The Day Tomorrow Began” is curated by Diana Nawi, curator of contemporary art at LACMA, and co-organized with the Columbus Museum of Art. The exhibition is made possible by The Hyundai Project at LACMA, part of the museum’s ongoing partnership with Hyundai Motor Company. Launched in 2015, the initiative is the longest and largest programmatic commitment from a corporate supporter in LACMA’s history.

“This exhibition is an opportunity for viewers to not only engage with the diversity of concepts and hybrid approaches that animate Tavares’s practice, but also to experience his attention to the craft of object-making and the importance of world building,” Nawi said.

The exhibition evokes a barbershop, laundromat, field of Indian rice grass and other scenes across seven galleries. Highlights include “Encyclopedia of Invisibility” (2018), Strachan’s take on the Britannica encyclopedia. A new body of work brings the craft of ceramic pots together with the iconography and history of Black haircare, a recurrent theme in the artist’s practice. “ENOCH” (2018) and “Robert” (2018) highlight the artist’s longstanding engagement with space exploration and in particular the story of Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., the first Black astronaut in the United States. “ENOCH,” a canopic jar that features a sculpted portrait of the astronaut, emerged from the artist’s participation in LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab, through which he collaborated with SpaceX to launch the artwork into orbit around Earth. A new large-scale neon piece meditates on two quotes from renowned American authors and thinkers James Baldwin and Mark Twain.

LACMA is located at 5905 Wilshire Blvd. For information, visit lacma.org.