Entropy

2026 Mohn LAND grantee Angela Anh Nguyen will present her project Entropy at Old Fire Station #6 in Angelino Heights. Nguyen’s site-specific installation will address the collective experience of the 2025 Eaton and Palisades Fires, one which was primarily mediated through social media, monitoring apps, and other forms of digital communication. The installation will consist of a large-scale sculpture comprised of a series interlinking tufted rugs encased in vinyl that will scale the exterior wall of the firehouse. The word entropy is spelled out across seven ascending segments, with each segment layering a letter of the word against a variety of images associated with the fires drawn from online postings, message boards, and other digital media. According to the artist, “the piece narrates the desire for solidarity and community amidst the natural disaster of the wildfire.”

Nguyen’s textile-based practice often explores the complex relationship between online culture and the material world. Her gun-tufted collages draw from diverse media artifacts, employing the dense visual language of appropriated images pioneered by the Pictures Generation artists to satirize our contemporary media ecosystem and the absurd, idiosyncratic compressions of information that accompany navigating it.

Old Fire Station #6 is a designated Historic-Cultural Monument built in 1929. Decommissioned in 1987, it currently serves as the headquarters of the Central City Action Committee, a non-profit agency that provides youth services for low-income families, graffiti prevention and removal, delinquency programs and summer job training for at-risk youths, in addition to operating a thrift store out of the structure.

In conjunction with this installation, Nguyen will also produce a zine featuring contributions from individuals from all over the region. The zine will live in a community library adjacent to the installation on the corner of Boston and Edgeware and will be available to all visitors. Contributions to this include creative writing, research, interview, mock advertisements, calls to action, and images.

Angela Anh Nguyen (b.1995, Los Angeles) is an American textile artist whose work explores the complex relationship between online culture and the material world. Tufting collages that incorporate diverse media artifacts, she produces images that are simultaneously anachronistic and contemporary. Always tinged with a sense of humor, they encourage viewers to reflect on the absurdity of the present. Bringing together the digital and industrial, the personal and the political, Nguyen’s work presents a multifaceted meditation on modern life.

Angela received her B.A. in Communication at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2017. She has an M.A. in Communication Studies from the California State University of Los Angeles (CSULA) and an M.F.A in Studio Art from the University of Southern California (USC). Her work has been exhibited at galleries and museums both nationally and internationally.

Entropy is commissioned by Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) and organized by Bryan Barcena, LAND curator at large.

This project is funded through the Mohn LAND Grants established by Pamela and Jarl Mohn. The initiative provides Los Angeles-based artists resources and support to present site-responsive, transdisciplinary work across Los Angeles County.

LAND’s 2026 projects are supported by the LAND Artist Fund with lead support from Karyn Kohl, Offield Family Foundation, and Perenchio Foundation. Generous support is provided by the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation, Ruth Arts, Ben Weyerhaeuser, and the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Goodman Family Foundation, the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition, Berry Stein, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture, Brenda Potter, the San Francisco Foundation, and LAND’s Nomadic Council.

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