The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
Malik Gaines
Malik Gaines is a writer and artist based in Los Angeles. Gaines has contributed art criticism and journalism to publications including The Advocate, ArtUS, Art Papers, Art Review, Artforum and Frieze. He has written catalogue essays for the Studio Museum in Harlem, the 1st Moscow Biennial, the UCLA Hammer Museum, Secession in Vienna, and others, and has provided monograph texts for artists including Glenn Ligon and Wangechi Mutu. Gaines has worked as a curator to organize exhibitions including “Fade: African American Artists in Los Angeles” (2004) for the City of LA, “Effacé” (2006) at Steve Turner Gallery, Beverly Hills, “Read Me! Text in Art” (2007) at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, as well as “Kalup Linzy: All My Churen” (2006), “Talks About Acts” (2007), and “Anna Sew Hoy: Pow” (2008) at LAXART, where Gaines is Adjunct Curator. In 2003, Gaines received a Penny McCall Foundation Award for his work as a critic and curator. Gaines is a member of the performance art collective My Barbarian, which performs internationally. The group was included in the 2005 and 2007 Performa Biennials, the 2006 and 2008 California Biennials, and the 2007 Montreal Biennial. Gaines received a B.A. in History from UCLA (1996) and an MFA in Writing from Cal Arts’ School of Critical Studies (1999) and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA, which he expects to complete in 2010.
