EAST HOLLYWOOD

Alicia Piller

Lost in Space


March 20 - May 9, 2026


Opening reception: Friday, March 20, 6-9pm

Celestial Monument. Eternal Frequency, 2026.
Vinyl, recycled leather, photos on Canvas: Augusta Savage, Edmonia Lewis, & George Washington Carver), window screen, recycled 3-D printed parts, wood, metal, acrylic paint, resin, abalone shell, tile, fabric, paper, recycled paint, lightbulbs, palm root, seed pod, foam, coral.
106” h x 80” w x 29" d

In Lost in Space, Los Angeles–based artist Alicia Piller constructs a material cosmology where history, identity, and erasure orbit one another in constant motion. Long invested in cellular biology as a metaphor for trauma, repair, and continuity, Piller turns outward toward the universe—using the cosmic as both mirror and measure of the human condition. The exhibition considers what it means to be “lost,” not only within the infinite expanse of space, but within the fractured landscapes of American memory, cultural visibility, and historical accountability.


As public histories are increasingly revised, removed, or silenced—plaques taken down, language restricted, and truths treated as liabilities—Lost in Space responds to a growing cultural impulse to erase the past rather than confront it directly. The exhibition resists this malingering amnesia, insisting that what has been marginalized or made invisible continues to exert force, shaping the present whether acknowledged or not.



The works assemble constellations of organic, industrial, and digital matter. Celestial images sourced from a 1982 astronomy book—the year of the artist’s birth—serve as temporal anchors, linking personal origin to deep cosmic time. Around these images, Piller gathers materials charged with histories of labor, consumption, and decay: abalone shell, coral and sea sponge, strata-like layers of salvaged factory-floor paint, and recycled 3D-printed components created in collaboration with the artist duo Bec/Col. These hybrid materials form an archaeology of the present—where natural systems and human technologies collide, fracture, and transform.


Working across sculpture, drawing, and poetic text, Piller frames material practice as a critical methodology, foregrounding continuity, historical knowledge, and power while examining how memory operates within contemporary systems of visibility, governance, and cultural production.


Embedded within these material fields are figures whose lives and legacies resist historical erasure: Dred Scott, George Washington Carver, Octavia Butler, Augusta Savage, Edmonia Lewis, Breonna Taylor, and the artist’s African American great-great-grandmother, whose lineage traces back to the late nineteenth century. Their images function as gravitational forces—anchoring the cosmos to lived experience and asserting presence within narratives that have repeatedly attempted to exclude, flatten, or silence them. Through framing, embedding, and suspension, Piller repositions the “lost” as central rather than peripheral.


Piller’s process is tactile and recursive—sewing, binding, layering, and building surfaces over time in ways that echo biological growth and geological pressure. Rooted in a lineage of making and mending, craft operates as a form of knowledge: a means of holding history through the hand, repetition, and sustained attention. Influenced by the writings of theoretical physicist and cosmologist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Piller treats observation itself as political, asking who is permitted to imagine the universe—and who is allowed to remain visible within it.


Lost in Spaceapproaches history as an ongoing condition rather than a closed record—maintaining memory as an active and unresolved presence within the present.

Detail of Celestial Monument. Eternal Frequency, 2026.
Vinyl, recycled leather, photos on Canvas: Augusta Savage, Edmonia Lewis, & George Washington Carver), window screen, recycled 3-D printed parts, wood, metal, acrylic paint, resin, abalone shell, tile, fabric, paper, recycled paint, lightbulbs, palm root, seed pod, foam, coral.
106” h x 80” w x 29" d

ABOUT THE ARTIST


Alicia Piller was born and raised in Chicago and received her Bachelors in both Fine Arts (Painting) & Anthropology from Rutgers University in 2004. While working in the fashion industry—living a decade in New York City and three and a half years in Santa Fe—Piller cultivated her distinctive sculptural voice. Continuing to expand her artistic practice, Alicia completed her MFA focused on sculpture and installation from CalArts in May of 2019. Her work is in the collections of the Hammer Museum, the California African American Museum, Glendale College Collection, the Pam Royalle Collection, and the Janine Barrois Collection. Her sculptural work was featured on the covers of Full Blede Magazine, Issue 10 (Fall 2019), the Lumina Journal (Sarah Lawrence College) (January 2020), and the LA Times (August 2022). She is represented in Los Angeles by Track 16 Gallery.


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