Qualified Opportunity: Book Launch

Join us for the book launch of Harrison Kinnane Smith’s Qualified Opportunity: Fundrise Commercial Investments in West Adams, Los Angeles (2017-2026) with a conversation between 2026 Mohn LAND Grant recipient Harrison Kinnane Smith and Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist Cauleen Smith at Reparations Club.

The publication includes photographs and real estate data culled from county records, indexing every commercial property purchased by Fundrise, one of the world's largest real estate private equity investors and platforms, on Jefferson Boulevard in the Los Angeles neighborhood of West Adams. Inspired in equal measure by Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) and Hans Haacke’s Shapolsky et al. (1971), this work situates itself in the overlapping legacies of Los Angeles artists responding to the unique architectural and economic conditions of their city and research-based artists working to reveal the opaque intersections of public law and private finance that shape our communities.

This event continues both artists’ ongoing exploration of race and real estate in West Adams, building on Cauleen Smith’s recent project the National Museum of the Aftermath at OXY ARTS, curated by Harrison Kinnane Smith and Jon Rubin.

Published by Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) with a limited run of 100 copies, books will be available for purchase at the event and afterwards through LAND's website.

Harrison Kinnane Smith is an artist based in Los Angeles. His collaborative work and site-specific interventions critique public institutions and financial systems. He has been published by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and included in exhibitions at François Ghebaly, Meier St/ and Frankfurt Ordorica galleries in LA; Romance Gallery and the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh; and Emmelines and SculptureCenter, NYC. Smith is a Co-Founder of PlaceHolder Gallery, LA and Affiliated Faculty and Co-Director of the Morning Star Research Center for the Afterlife of Slavery. He holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Cauleen Smith is a filmmaker who builds installations to hold time and consider the generative possibility of the mundane objects around us, “the fragile, the forgotten, the flawed, the fugitive.” Her singular foray into narrative filmmaking, Drylongso (1998), was restored in 2025 and is now finding new audiences through its distribution with Janus films and the Criterion Collection. Smith (b. Riverside, California, 1967) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She is a professor of art at UCLA in the interdisciplinary program. She serves on the board for the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.

Commissioned by LAND, Harrison Kinnane Smith: Qualified Opportunity examines how the federal Opportunity Zone program, which grants private investors tax deferral and exemption incentives, shapes real estate use and ownership in the West Adams neighborhood of South Los Angeles.

The project, comprised of a new publication and three public programs, focuses on Fundrise, one of the world's largest real estate private equity investors and platforms, and its instrumentalization of Qualified Opportunity Zones. The artist’s book, titled Qualified Opportunity: Fundrise Commercial Investments in West Adams, Los Angeles (2017-2026), features photographs and real estate data detailing every commercial property purchased by Fundrise in the Jefferson Boulevard corridor of central Los Angeles since the Opportunity Zone program began in 2017.

Alongside the publication, Harrison Kinnane Smith: Qualified Opportunity presents three public programs: a book launch conversation with artist Cauleen Smith, a walking tour of historic West Adams sites with artist Hunter Baoengstrum, and a lecture from researcher and architect Masha Hupalo, whose work explores how financial technology has impacted urban planning and reshaped systems of real estate ownership in the 21st century.

Qualified Opportunity is commissioned by Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) and organized by Christopher Mangum-James, LAND deputy director, and Astrid Kayembe, LAND operations coordinator.

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 Perenchio Foundation, Offield Family Foundation, and Karyn Kohl. 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 Berry Stein, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture, Pamela and Jarl Mohn, Brenda Potter, The Goodman Family Foundation, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, and LAND’s Nomadic Council.

LAND is a member of and supported by the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition.

LAND is a member-supported organization. Keep LAND programs free for all by becoming a member today at nomadicdivision.org.

Feature image by Harrison Kinnane Smith.