Teen Spirit: youth culture at the center of OCMA's California Biennial exhibits

Los Angeles Times

2 days ago

Over the past 10 months, a group of high school students from all over Orange County have studied art curation at the Orange County Museum of Art in Costa Mesa, developing wisdom and insight beyond their years.
They've banded together as the Orange County Young Curators under the guidance of OCMA's manager of gallery Nate Bench and Delaina Engberg, coordinator of youth and family programs.
'I think a program like this is really about encouraging young people to have a worldview informed by art,' Bench said.
Together the teens curated their own exhibition from OCMA's collection titled 'Piece of Me' after Britney Spears's 2007 song. Their show explores self identity, nostalgia and technology's impact on society, all through a Gen Z lens.
The collection of work, which includes artist Alison Van Pelt's painting of Spears titled 'Britney' (2004), which has never been exhibited before, fits perfectly into the Costa Mesa museum's 'California Biennial 2025: Desperate, Scared, But Social,' on view now through Jan. 4.
The show's title, taken from Orange County riot grrrl band Emily's Sassy Lime's 1995 album, features an installation of ephemera from the musicians. Arranged by Courtenay Finn, OCMA chief curator and director of programs; Christopher Y. Lew, founder of C/O: Curatorial Office and associate curator Lauren Leving, 'Desperate, Scared, But Social' examines the frustration and angst of late adolescence and early adulthood while still presenting instances of hope and inspiration.
'I think when you are young, you can imagine a future that doesn't exist and sometimes when you get older that feels harder,' said Finn. 'We need to remember that creativity and curiosity.'
The 2025 California Biennial is organized across OCMA's Special Exhibitions and Permanent Collection Pavilions and features 12 artists and collectives. It begins with 'What She Said,' by Deanna Templeton, a Huntington Beach native who pairs photo portraits of teens around the world with scans of her own teen diary entries that begin in the mid-1980s.
'She is talking through that moment in time where you are trying to figure out who you are, how you fit in and how to express yourself, especially through music and fashion,' Finn said.
The series is titled after a song by the Smiths. Templeton is particularly drawn to youth subcultures like goth, skater and punk; she documents teens from those communities almost exclusively.
'She had a really difficult adolescence, but also had these moments of ecstatic joy…she wants to share that journey with other teens to let them know no matter how awful it is, you can still come out the other side,' Finn said.
In the Juvenilia section, now-established California artists share works they created when they were teens themselves. On the verge of self-discovery, paintings, drawings, ceramics, zine-making and music demonstrate early hints of the artists that Seth Bogart, Miranda July, Brontez Purnell, Laura Owens and Joey Terrill became.
An installation of work by Griselda Rosas features embroidery skills passed down to her by previous generations, sewn over art made by her young son, Fernando.
Stanya Kahn's 23-minute film 'No Go Backs' follows two teens as they leave the city and explore a wilderness void of adults. New sculptures by Woody De Othello are also on exhibit.
Nearby, Heesoo Kwon investigates how much of our memory can be trusted, using A.I. to fill blank spaces and extend the frame of family photos from her youth in Korea.
'A.I. does these weird things, like in her birthday photo, it has replicated her several times, or in another case it filled out the room but added things that shouldn't be there,' said Finn.
Those images are paired with light boxes of more family photos with lenticular goddess avatars based on her female ancestors.
'They are based on her great-grandmother, her grandmother, her aunties and her mom, as if they were always there watching over her as she grew up,' said Finn.
The work of young Laura Owens, including her first interaction with art via her Keith Haring Swatch watch she sketched in high school, is paired with the Gardena High School Collection. In 1919, John H. Whitely, then principal of the school, encouraged graduating senior classes to acquire works of art as gifts to the campus. That led to an impressive collection of the early works of California artists. Although the acquisition program ended in 1956, Gardena High School alumni in 2013 began a nonprofit for the collection, making it available for public viewing again.
The collection is another example of young people's taste in art becoming refined. It is a thread that Leving hopes audiences tug on as they move through the exhibition and understand how they all connect.
'Adolescence is a touchpoint for most everyone and so we can have these shared experiences, even as intergenerational connections,' said Leving.
Emily's Sassy Lime represents a different generation of youth subculture than the Lindas Lindas, but both bands have ephemera featured in the show that track their shared DIY spirit and feminist agenda.
Founded in Irvine in the 1990s by Emily Ryan, Amy Yao and Wendy Yao, Emily's Sassy Lime played a key role in the early riot grrrl movement. The Linda Lindas, comprised of Bela Salazar, Eloise Wong, and sisters Lucia and Mila de la Garza, follow in those footsteps. Ryan joined the Linda Lindas onstage for the Biennial's block party kick off at OCMA on June 21, which included an appearance from riot grrrl movement pioneer Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.
For the Emily's Sassy Lime installation, extensive archiving of the bands posters, photographs, zines, letters and video footage alongside found art and work they were creating themselves has a simple explanation, Ryan explained.
'We come from a long line of hoarders,' said Ryan. 'Immigrants in a lot of ways place importance on certain things and so the way we grew up, anything that caught our eye or had some kind of meaning, it stayed with us.'
Styled like a '90s cool girl's bedroom with photos, drawings and CK One ads, the installation is a special type of teenage girl world-building, according to Ryan.
'It's the recreation of that gridded display, made from magazines, fliers, gum wrappers and photos,' Ryan said.
The grid display isn't completely unfamiliar to the Young Curators. Instead of reminding them of a teenage bedroom, they liken it to Instagram, perfect rows of photos that convey a meaning or aesthetic. A quote from Britney Spears' Instagram account from 2020 about authenticity accompanies Alison Van Pelt's blurred black and white painting of the pop star, a work all the young curators agreed belonged in their show.
'We really enjoyed the idea that Britney Spears is such a culture icon, that even though she is not active in our generation we still know her and know her story so closely,' said Laura Wagner, one of the young curators. 'Britney Spears is someone that everyone knows and everyone thinks they know very personally, but nobody knows the real Britney.'
'California Biennial 2025: Desperate, Scared, But Social' is on view at the Orange County Museum of Art at 3333 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa now through Jan. 4, 2026.