Angella d'Avignon is a writer and reporter based in New York by way of California. I write art criticism, narrative nonfiction, and profiles on people I find fascinating. Currently I'm an MFA candidate in Art Writing at School of the Visual Arts.
I'm a card-carrying member of the Newswomen's Club of New York and a proud member of the National Writer's Union and the International Association of Art Critics. I post what I read online here: recommended reading. If you want to listen to me talk about feminism, art history, and florals, I'm featured on Episode 6 of the Carla podcast discussing my essay about floral aesthetics and feminism.
I recently released a book about architectural clocks and city centers made in collaboration with artist Megan Mueller and friends at the Fulcrum Press. You can buy it here.
Here is an essay I wrote about living utterly alone in Long Beach, California and here is another about beachcombing and the paintings of Chantal Wnuk, a dear friend and a brilliant artist.
☞ To get in touch: heyangella [at] gmail dot com
Selected Writing
Ghost Towns of Instagram, ghost towns, influencers, and luxury development in the California desert for The Baffler
Location Not Found, mapping loss, wildfire season, digital ghost towns and Paradise, California, for Real Life Magazine
The Mortician and the Murderer, a reported piece on a 1980s mortician who turned his family’s funeral home into a nightmare cremation factory—pulling gold teeth, harvesting organs, and threatening anyone who got in his way, for Topic
Got To Be Real, on the art world's weird fetish for "authenticity" for The Baffler
Citrus Season, in which I eat an orange off the ground and strangers endear themselves to me while the sole of my boot breaks, for Popula
How Close to Reality is Velvet Buzzsaw's Depiction of the LA Art World?, while I don't believe this to be an effective way to analyze fiction, Dan Gilroy claimed this to be a project of ~realism~ so I conducted a light roast of Los Angeles complete with not-so-blind items about parties, for i-D
To Live and Fade in LA, an art essay about drifting, looking, and the physical choreography of graffiti and those who are tasked to erase it, for Open Space (SFMOMA)
The Price is Wrong, a review and roast of the art world and its bloated art market and self-satisfied crowd for The Baffler
Review: POSSESSED: Eckhaus Latta at the Whitney, I went to the Eckhaus Latta special exhibition store and couldn't afford the concept, for Carla 14
Los Angeles: The City of Dreams and Sprawling Art Book Fairs, a reported piece on Los Angeles' art book fair boom the year after Printed Matter's Los Angeles Art Book Fair was canceled, for GARAGE Magazine
Neighbors Converge and Share Their Memories Around a Public Art Project in LA, a write-up on a temporary public sculpture by artist Tanya Brodsky, and the incomplete story of the lot it stands on, for Hyperallergic
In Conversation with Pamela Ramos, an interview with Pamela Ramos, artist and project coordinator of El Clasificado, a newsstand turned micro-gallery in Los Angeles, for Degree Critical
The Joker: The Art World’s Best Patron, an aesthetic investigation of The Joker's love for abjection and his unlikely preservation of a Francis Bacon painting, for GARAGE Magazine
Review: Nevine Mahmoud at M+B, a long review about stone fruit, marble carving, Greek sculpture, Medusa’s hair, and Anne Carson, printed in Carla 11
Seth Bogart's Feelin Fruity is Bringing a Punk Aesthetic to TV, a profile on queer punk musician and art hero Seth Bogart who produced his TV series Feelin Fruity entirely himself (with the help of friends of course), for Vulture
"Car Culture" Takes on a New Meaning in This Mobile Gallery, about a gallery that lives in the cabin of a champagne-colored Crown Vic as it drifts through the streets of Los Angeles, for GARAGE Magazine
John Early has taken to LA like a Scientologist to a Celebrity Centre, a profile on comedian John Early who had just moved to LA where he ordered the chopped cobb for lunch at the iconic 101 Diner and draped his pale body across the marquee of the Scientology Celebrity Centre, for the original LA Weekly
Meet Big Sal, Jewelry District Security Guard, Historian and Ghostbuster, a profile on Sal Licone, a DTLA security guard who protects a historic theater, now a jewelry store, where he used to see John Wayne movies in as a kid, for the original LA Weekly
I Waited Until I was 30 to Go to College., my entire academic back story in one personal essay, for The Washington Post
Review: Broken Language at Shulamit Nazarian, “In the early days of the internet, fluency was self-determined. Intimacy blossomed between keystrokes. Without body language, a typed-out affectation negated grammar,” a long review, printed in Carla 9
Late Superbloom, when people ask what it's like to be depressed in California, with a history of the region's wildflowers, for Notes on Looking
These Surreal Paintings Embody L.A.’s Hedonism and Spirituality, an art essay about the psychedelic air-brushed paintings inspired in church by Ben Sanders, for Artsy
A Woman Shorn: The Disruptive History of the Female Shaved Head, It’s Britney, bitch. It’s Joan of Arc, too, for VICE