Built on Water is a contemporary art exhibition presenting past, present, and future visions of the Port of Los Angeles.
Join us Saturday, June 27 from 2pm–4pm for the opening of Built on Water, a group exhibition curated by Cecelia Caro. Featuring works by Flora Kao, Kaya & Blank, Jennifer Gunlock, Hilary Norcliffe, and Katie E. Stubblefield. This event is free and open to the public.
Built on Water maps the human forces that have shaped — and continue to reshape — the economy and ecology of the Port of Los Angeles, across our recent past, global present and into a visionary future.
RSVP at https://BuiltOnWater.eventbrite.com/?aff=artillery
About Built on Water
Overlooking the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Angels Gate Cultural Center is a resonant vantage point from which to examine the Ports’ industrial present and layered histories beneath. Monumental stacks of containers, towering cranes, endless lines of semitrucks and cargo ships, compress a dense network of global commerce into an abstract grid of steel, color and mechanized movement. This built environment both magnifies humanity’s dominance over nature and conceals place and memory. A container for redundant histories, the region’s layered story holds present-day parallels: the forced internment of Japanese Americans from the leveled Terminal Island fishing village also echoes the erasure of the original Gabrieleño Tongva peoples. The Ports are machines for transpacific exchange, yet their industrial reach has permanently altered the ecology of the natural coastline and the marine life once sustained. Built on Water examines the Ports’ layered industrial landscape in order to postulate a visionary future — where memories surface, nature reclaims and we progress.
Image: still from “Intermodal” by Kaya & Blank
Built on Water will be on view from June 27th — August 15th, 2026 with public gallery hours Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 10am – 5pm. For more information, visit angelsgateart.org.
Support for the exhibitions program is provided by the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, the Perenchio Foundation, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. Additional support for this exhibition is provided by the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach.
Accessibility
Please note that portions of Built on Water are in areas of the gallery that are currently only accessible via stairs. A virtual walkthrough of the full exhibition will be available on a tablet at the front of the gallery.
About Angels Gate Cultural Center
Angels Gate Cultural Center (AGCC) emerged from a group of San Pedro artists in the 1970s that created art studios and exhibition space within the WWII era army barracks of Angels Gate Park near the Port of Los Angeles. Today, AGCC hosts over 50 artist studios in addition to a variety of programs to engage the diverse communities of the Los Angeles Harbor region, including arts education in local schools, community classes, cultural events, and exhibitions of contemporary art. More information about AGCC is available at angelsgateart.org.
