Early on Sunday morning, I drove from the westside to Western and West 76th Street in South Central Los Angeles to see the new public art project and space by Lauren Halsey called sister dreamer. The sun was out, blue sky was above, and I parked on in the neighborhood and walked up to a fenced lot, with towering Egyptian-style sculptures overhead, 22-feet high, music playing from speakers around. It was closed, much to my disappointment. Myself and a few other revelers were walking around the perimeter, each of us smiling and giving each other those nice Sunday morning pleasantries and hellos, all of us a bit sad and excited to be in the presence of greatness. Even closed, Halsey’s ambitious and long-awaited project in Los Angeles felt important, not so much an oasis but a piece of public art on par with the Watts Towers or even Urban Light. Halsey is a universe-builder, but it’s her universe and we are witnessing a change in the way public art and public practice can be initiated.
In less than a decade, Halsey has become not only one of the most important artists in Los Angeles, but the United States. Her work is a combination of public and private, fine art that captures a spirit of the concrete expanse of the southland and a mythical aesthetic of her own visual language. In our Issue 01, Halsey told us that even in her earliest years of an artist, sister dreamer was on the horizon, creating a space in the neighborhood she grew up in that didn’t just give back but created something that is often just allocated for the roof of The Met (she did that, too). “Before I knew I would become an artist, I knew, no matter what I did, that I had to serve… So once I realized that my interest was professionalizing an art practice, I then started thinking, the plot twist has to be how do I sustain [the center], through art and those connections?”
And it has happened. Halsey’s sculpture park, sister dreamer, lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles opened this past weekend in what could only be called one of the biggest art happenings in a city of many art happenings in 2026 (LACMA’s new building, George Lucas’ new museum, to name a few). The park honors in action, so to speak. It’s powerful, and even with the music, there is a majestic calm and quiet. The columns feature images of community heroes and mentors, all assembled on a square lot that gives the impression of Roman, Greek and Egyptian empires. But they don’t depict warriors of distant and centuries old wars, or mythical gods, but real people of Los Angeles, people important to Halsey and the area around the park. It’s more of a living, breathing space.
The city has been battered since the pandemic, since ICE took over, since the fires raged throughout the city. It’s a city in transition, in motion, but with a DNA that is captured in the works of Halsey. I haven’t been to an unopened public art space in my life with a crowd of just happy to even peek through the fence. In a city that has often handed the keys to its aesthetic to the likes of Ruscha and Turrell, it seems like Halsey has now taken the baton.
“Imagine Sundays in the park. Let’s pick fruit and take it home,” she told The Unibrow. My colleague Shaquille Heath asked Halsey what she saw as the future of sister dreamer, and the artist envisions a wide range of programming for both the park and center—music, screenings, community conversations, game nights, educational resources. “It’s like living architecture. It’s not like this eulogy about a place. It’s not dead. It’s incredibly vibrant and extra.”
Text by Evan Pricco
