Anansi and Salima sit cross legged in the sunny grass after days of intense rain. They sip on butterfly pea flower tea across from each other.

Can machine learning algorithms accurately reproduce the subtle nuance of emotional expression present in traditional dance forms? This is just one of the questions artist, performer, data scientist, and tech entrepreneur Faith "Aya" Umoh explores in her technological-meets-anthropological Level Ground residency show. Raised in Miami in a Nigerian-American family, Aya earned a Master's from Boston University in Biostatistics and Public Health, and she's on a mission to use AI to tell stories in ways that we rarely see. 

For artist Gemma Jimenez, moving through Los Angeles is not a passive act.

The person who commutes by bus for hours each day to clean houses for work will experience a much different Los Angeles then the person who drives from their house, to work, in their Tesla.

That's the crux of Jimenez’s first solo show at NAVEL, ‘From A to B and Everything in Between.’

Staff Artists Rebekah Mei and Leslie Foster are headed back to school, this time as educators. They’ve both been part of Level Ground from the very beginning (in 2013) and were our first volunteers to transition to part-time staff 5 years ago. In the last year, they’ve both started full-time jobs in education and are leaving the Level Ground staff team – but not our community!

We are so excited to announce the incomparable yétúndé ọlágbajú as our new Director of Art Residency!

Level Ground is thrilled to announce our next cohort of resident artists: Leo Alas, Raegan Brown, and Bianca Nozaki-Nasser.

An Interview with Resident Artist gabbah baya.