SaveArtSpace is proud to present Lost in Language & Sound, a public art exhibition on billboard ad space in Los Angeles, CA, opening April 17, 2026, curated by Mikayla Rodriguez.

The Lost in Language & Sound selected artists is Ashley Cole.

Inspired by the 2011 essay-collection Lost in Language & Sound by Ntozake Shange, this exhibition will explore contemporary and archival notions of linguistic, performative and cultural reclamation narrated through visual mediums. Lost in Language & Sound seeks to transmute collective dissonance through exploring the liberative acts of sound, movement, and prose. Encouraging submissions from artists whose work intimately reflect and converse with the effects of these themes.

Opening April 17, 2026, SaveArtSpace will launch a public art installation for the selected artwork on billboard ad space in Los Angeles, CA. The public art will be on view for at least four weeks.

Selected Artist

Location: N Alvarado St & Scott Ave, Los Angeles, CA

Ashley Cole

Born in Compton, CA | Lives and works in Los Angeles

Anchored in the legacy of Compton’s cultural resilience and shaped in the shadow of the Watts Towers, Ashley Cole’s practice weaves together abstraction, assemblage, and gesture into expansive, sculptural paintings. Her canvases—often draped, cut, and stitched—engage the improvisational language of jazz, echoing the sonic freedom of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Influenced by Abstract Expressionism and the spatial poetics of artists like Sam Gilliam, Cole constructs visual compositions that unfold like psychological terrains and spiritual manuscripts. Textural surfaces—burnt edges, raw canvas, automatist markings, and geometric linework in metallics and pastels—become repositories for song lyrics, numerologies, and graffiti-inspired ciphers. Twine and thread, recalling her training in fashion design at Brooks College, bind these works together in acts of both deconstruction and repair. Cole’s evolving canvases are at once deeply personal and socially resonant—meditations on memory, fragmentation, and transformation in an age of rupture and reconfiguration.

Artist Statement:

My practice is anchored in process, materiality, and the body as a site of memory, pressure, and becoming. Through large-scale, draped paintings, I explore states of balance, tension, and transformation shaped by lived experience, collective history, and systemic structures. Rather than seeking resolution, the work remains open, reflecting the ongoing nature of growth and self-determination.

Each painting begins with a black underpainting, a subtle yet intentional deconstruction of Western narratives surrounding aesthetics, purity, and beauty. This foundational layer positions Blackness not as absence, but as origin, depth, and ground. From this base, I build surfaces through layered applications of acrylic paint, interior paint, wood stains, oil pastels, and pencil. Earth tones drawn from melanin-rich skin palettes anchor the work in both the body and the land, while expressive mark-making accumulates as traces of labor, rhythm, and presence.

The canvas is cut, shaped, and draped directly onto the wall using exposed nails, allowing it to fold, sag, and pull away from its support. These sculptural gestures introduce weight and vulnerability, transforming the painting into a bodily presence rather than a fixed image. The wall becomes an active site of resistance and containment, emphasizing physical engagement and spatial tension.

My mark-making references gestures found across indigenous and ancestral visual languages, not as quotation, but as embodied knowledge and repetition. These marks speak to a universal pursuit of freedom, dignity, and belonging, extending beyond singular narratives of time or place.

Through material exploration and physical engagement with the canvas, my work reflects both personal and collective experience. I consider the act of making as a form of listening to history, to the body, and to what continues to shape how we move through the world. In this way, my practice honors inherited knowledge while carving space for presence, reflection, and transformation.

Connect with Ashley at @ashley.cole__.

Curator

Mikayla Rodriguez is an art curator and designer committed to reshaping cultural narratives through immersive storytelling. As the founder and lead curator for art collective, UNMET, Mikayla’s curatorial eye is informed by highlighting diasporic multimedia artists that explore intersections of art, identity, and design.

Connect with Mikayla at @mikaylalrodriguez.

SaveArtSpace

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a message of social change that benefits the working class. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.