Lauren Halsey Opens a Free Sculpture Park in South Central Los Angeles, Built on the Site of a Beloved Ice Cream Shop
A long-imagined sculpture park by Los Angeles artist Lauren Halsey is now open in South Central — not inside a museum, but on neighborhood ground with its own layered history.
Officially titled sister dreamer lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles, the public artwork was curated by Christine Y. Kim and organized by the arts organization Los Angeles Nomadic Division. For Halsey, who began envisioning the project nearly two decades ago while studying architecture at El Camino College, the opening marks the realization of an idea rooted in the place where she grew up.
The park occupies the former site of Gwen’s Ice Cream, a local destination that burned in a 2014 fire. That choice of location is more than practical: it anchors the project in a shared civic memory, turning a scarred lot into a space for gathering, looking, and reflection.
Halsey’s visual language is immediately recognizable to anyone who has followed her recent rise. She has presented major projects at the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. biennial in 2018, where she won top honors, and later staged high-profile installations on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and outside the Arsenale during the 2024 Venice Biennale. But sister dreamer departs from those institutional contexts in a crucial way: it is free to the public and conceived as a community-facing environment rather than a contained exhibition.
The sculpture park extends Halsey’s ongoing dialogue between ancient forms and contemporary Black life in Los Angeles. Like many of her works, it draws on ancient Egyptian art and iconography, including references to the goddess Hathor. Yet the quotations are never purely historical. In Halsey’s hands, the monumental becomes vernacular: a sphinx wears sunglasses, and carved surfaces mingle ancient symbols with the visual codes of the neighborhood.
Columns throughout the site are etched with silhouettes of people and insignia of brands familiar to South Central locals. Interspersed among them are Egyptian motifs, including ankhs, creating a dense field of signs that reads as both homage and archive. At the center is a structure Halsey has described as an “oculus,” carved with related imagery and text.
Inside that oculus, the work turns toward a darker register. The interior includes images and textual references to the Grim Sleeper, the serial killer who targeted Black women from the 1980s through the 2000s. The emphasis on women aligns with a recurring current in Halsey’s practice: her 2024 Venice Biennale column-like sculptures, for instance, paid tribute to her grandmother as well as female activists and artists.
Programming will activate the site through efforts organized by The Broad and Halsey’s nonprofit, Summaeverythang. While the installation is currently temporary, it is expected to relocate to a permanent space next year.
In a city where ambitious public art is often tethered to institutions or real estate development, sister dreamer proposes another model: a sculptural environment that treats neighborhood memory, grief, and aspiration as materials — and invites the public to inhabit them on their own terms.
