subterranean convergence, by artist LaRissa Rogers, is a sculptural installation and score for performance at Los Angeles State Historic Park. Rogers uses the train as a vessel and a metaphor to trace the geographies of the railroad between the American South and West, investigating how liberation has been conceptualized—and where it might still be. The artist assumes the roles of caretaker, archivist, and laborer to build a simulated railroad complete with tabby-cast objects reproduced from archives and individuals. This project explores collective memory by archiving the movements of people and goods across generations and geographies.
The Sunset Limited rail route has connected New Orleans and Los Angeles since 1894, representing possibilities for Black Southerners and new immigrants to resettle in the West. Some came through the Southern Pacific River Station, which is now the site of this installation. The repetition of routing and rooting within and across generations has become a grammar for Black life, one that Rogers contends with here. Over 50 community members and institutions along the historic route were invited to contribute objects of personal or historical significance, some of which were reproduced. This invitation questions what it means to be at home in America and whether liberation lies in holding in tension all of the complex histories of rooting and uprooting, voluntary and forced migration, and hope and mourning. For Rogers, these objects can unearth what it means to endure, to reposition what it means to be carried, and to journey through the passage of time toward a new destination.
The steel form of the railroad traces the route across two dirt medians, and its interior wooden tracks echo the chinoiserie designs found in architecture in the American South and in Los Angeles’s Chinatown. Chinoiserie, a decorative style that appropriates East Asian aesthetics, was popularized in Greek Revival architecture by Enlightenment-era thinkers to visually encode the founding values of the nation through governmental and domestic buildings. In LA’s New Chinatown, chinoiserie appears in the exoticized, Hollywood-inspired version of Shanghai, reimagined by the immigrant community themselves as a gesture of belonging—revealing how the repetition of an aesthetic can take on new meanings.
Anchored within the tracks are cast objects constructed with tabby, an ancient building material of lime, sand, and oyster shells originating in northern coastal Africa and used by enslaved peoples in the South. Through the process of reproduction—scanning, 3D printing, mold making, and casting—the objects adapt to and join the archive’s visual language of tabby while retaining their core sentimental essence.
Through a collaboration with artist Michelle Sui, a visual score for the performance invites visitors to engage with the installation. Accompanying the installation will be a website containing the score, an ArcGIS map of all contributed objects and their information, and a curriculum coproduced with scholar Angel Adams Parham. This project offers strategies for examining the tensions between the fantasy of flight and groundedness, considered here as a communal memorial.
LOCATION
Los Angeles State Historic Park is located at 1501 N Spring Street, directly adjacent to Chinatown and the Metro A Line. Follow the dirt path around the perimeter of the main lawn of the park to the northeast. Opening October 2026.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
LaRissa Rogers (b. 1996) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work investigates how personal and shared memory and history impact the perpetual evolution of cultural identity formation and placemaking. She has exhibited at Documenta 15 (Germany); Weserburg Museum (Germany); Lilley Museum (NV); the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art (CA); the California Museum of Photography (CA); the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (VA); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (CA); California State University, Fullerton; The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MA); Torrance Art Museum (CA); and the Fuller Craft Museum (MA). She received the Visual Arts fellowship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2022) and the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship (2023–2024). Rogers has also held residencies at the Bemis Center of Contemporary Art (2022), the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2024), and MASS MoCA (2025). Rogers is a tenure-track assistant professor and sculpture area head at the University of Virginia. She is currently represented by Super Dakota.
CREDITS
subterranean convergence, by LaRissa Rogers, was commissioned by Clockshop and curated by Cat Yang, Director of Artist Projects, and Isabel Yi Jimenez, Artist Projects Manager. Clockshop’s projects at Los Angeles State Historic Park are supported through our long-standing partnership with California State Parks.
The production of this work was generously supported by the Hearthland Foundation, the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Anonymous Was A Woman, University of Virginia Karsh Institute and Department of Art, Accelerated Resilience Los Angeles, Betsy Greenberg, and Clockshop’s generous community of supporters. A special thank you to Angel Adams Parham, Michelle Sui, Jheanelle Brown, Victoria Valdes, Carolyne and Bill Edwards, Foothill Steelworks, Wendy Gaudin, Santa Monica History Museum, Antenna, Ashé Cultural Arts Center, and all open call contributors.
CONTRIBUTORS
Open Call: Antenna, Ashé Cultural Arts Center, Kayla Andrus, Se Young Au, Malik Baloney, Kathleen Benjamin, Aidan Marie Maeve Bigard, Brandon-Marie Bigard, E. Chris Brady, CJ Calica, Nadia Castro, Quinn Research Center, Kyle Chen, Jahziel Chu, Gina Clyne, Michael Duckworth, Bill Edwards, Carolyne Edwards, Ella Fitzgerald, Wendy Gaudin, Jennyffer Giraldo, Mark Gozonsky, Mikayla Harrell, Omar Ruiz Hernandez, Asuka Hisa, Julie Holman, Rahsaana Ison, Soraya Jean-Louis, Daria Jiles, Jessica Johnson, Roberto Torres Mata, Ebonie Mathews, LaShaunda Pickett-René, Gigi Pun, Monica Mejia R., Lynn Robb, Jude Rogers, Santa Monica History Museum, Sharita Sims, Nell Slaughter, Alexius Diana Smith, Daniel Soto, James Brooks, Sr., Avery Temple, Fred Thompson, Isaac Trejo, Chastity Vasconez, Keith Carr Walsh, Michelle Salinas Wamungu, Caitlin Ezell Waugh, Nathaniel Whitfield, Cindy J. Xie, Norge Yip
Public Casting Workshop: Katie Ryan, Ayush Garg, Sharon Leung, Thomas Miller, Lily Laugharn, James Obed, Thomas Obed, Ayasha Guerin, Joy Singh, Sabrina Fielden, Evelyn Serrano, Hannah Tsai Kim, Chase Melton, Soham Patel, April Banks
Summer Youth Fellowship x Casting Workshop: Allisson Hernandez-Lozano, Anthony Rivera, Ashley Cos-Sica, Elias Muratalla, Erika Celedon Miramon, Frank Casillas, Giovanni Ozelotzin-Hernandez, Hayley Rodriguez, Juliane Prudencio, Maya Dailo, Nathan Moyes, Oscar Umana, Perla De La Rosa Diaz, Sofia Zarate Sotelo
