WeHo premieres the ‘Moving Image Media Art’ Exhibition Series

The City of West Hollywood announces the premiere of the Moving Image Media Art (MIMA) program and the worldwide debut of BLACK.ECO, a film from director and choreographer Shauna Davis. The film will be displayed for ten-and-a-half minutes at the top of every hour on the Netflix Invisible Frame billboard, located at 8743 Sunset Boulevard on the Sunset Strip from Wednesday, February 2, 2022 through Tuesday, May 31, 2022. The MIMA program will be an ongoing exhibition series of moving image media artworks on multiple digital billboards at various locations along Sunset Boulevard.

Shauna Davis’ original film BLACK.ECO is a multidimensional Afrofuturist journey through space and time. Using movement and positivity as battering rams to destroy tired oppressive tropes, Davis spreads magical light and reveals the exquisite hope of abundance. By subverting Black existential narratives, Davis resets racist fictions with images that should be within the cultural lexicon (intimate, happy, unremarkable moments in Black lives), but aren’t. Pulsating through these stories are images of love, history, and connection; demonstrating the powerful gravitational pull that joy creates.

 Shauna Davis is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, dancer, and choreographer who creates cinematic dance experiences. Spanning both the commercial and concert-dance realms, she has worked with artists such as Olivia Rodrigo, Snoop Dogg, and Kanye West, and has performed works by Bill T. Jones, Ohad Naharin, and Gustavo Ramirez Sansano. Davis’ pieces have been performed at the Dallas DanceFest and Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival, and she has created work for Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Encore! Opera Omaha, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, and the LA Chamber Orchestra, among others.

The Moving Image Media Art (MIMA) program is a City of West Hollywood exhibition series administered by the City’s Arts Division as part of its Art on the Outside Program and is presented as part of the City’s Sunset Arts and Advertising Program. Curation of the MIMA program offers artists the opportunity and the funding to create immediate, remarkable, and ambitious works of art that engage with the unique visual landscape of the world-famous Sunset Strip and experiment with the state-of-the-art technology of high-definition digital signage. The MIMA program enables artists to occupy, contest, and play with the boundaries and uses of public space and manifest moments of connection and awe.

The MIMA program assembles a list of prequalified moving image media artists using a rolling open-call opportunity. Applications are reviewed bi-annually by the City of West Hollywood’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission in November and May. Curation of the MIMA program fosters cultural equity, expands accessibility, inspires communication, creates public space, and ultimately enhances the human experience of the Sunset Strip. MIMA prequalified artists include a diverse array from all career levels, emerging to prominent, including Doug Aitken, Candace Breitz, and Diana Thater. For more information, please visit www.weho.org/community/arts-and-culture/visual-arts/mima

The City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division delivers a broad array of arts programs including Urban Art (permanent public art), Arts Grants, City Poet Laureate, Free Theatre in the Parks, Human Rights Speaker Series, Library Exhibits, One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival, Summer Sounds + Winter Sounds, Art on the Outside (temporary public art), and WeHo Reads. For more information about City of West Hollywood arts programming, please visit www.weho.org/arts.

For more information about the Moving Image Media Art program, please contact Jessica Rich, City of West Hollywood Public Art Consultant at publicart@weho.org, or Rebecca Ehemann, City of West Hollywood Arts Manager at rehemann@weho.org or at (323) 848-6846. For people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, please call TTY (323) 848-6496.