Karla Lagunas Announces Give Me Shelter, a Site-Responsive Installation and Performance on Mount Charleston
LAS VEGAS, NV — Las Vegas artist Karla Lagunas presents Give Me Shelter, a new site-responsive installation and performance unfolding on Mount Charleston August 13–15, 2026. Developed through repeated visits to the mountain, the project brings together loose canvas, rope, projection, performance, and temporary structures to explore the fragility of the body and the shelters, both logistical and emotional, we build to keep ourselves alive.
Created through sustained engagement with a single place, Give Me Shelter expands Lagunas' ongoing practice by placing painting in direct conversation with weather, gravity, darkness, and terrain. Her loose canvas paintings shift between painting, shelter, structure, and skin, while rope functions as drawing, architecture, support, and survival. Together, these materials become both practical tools and poetic forms, adapting alongside the body as conditions change.
The project follows a simple question: What does a sustained relationship with a place demand of the body?
Lagunas describes the work as a form of anarchistic calisthenics, a self-directed practice of working beyond familiar institutional conditions in order to develop another ethic for making. On the mountain, weather, stewardship, endurance, joy, and care become the forces that shape artistic decisions. The project embraces the uncertainty of a place where success depends less on control than on attention, adaptability, and reciprocity.
"Choosing the mountain over a traditional gallery space doesn't remove responsibility. It replaces one set of responsibilities with another. I'm interested in learning what kind of artist I become when my first obligations are to the land, to the people I'm with, and to the conditions that keep us alive."— Karla Lagunas
Known for combining painting, installation, and performance, Lagunas has exhibited at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, Meow Wolf’s OmegaMart, the Palo Alto Art Center, and The Momentary. Give Me Shelter continues her investigation into how environments shape bodies, materials, and artistic imagination through sustained, site-responsive practice.
The installation will evolve throughout the weekend. Projection and live performance will take place at sunset on Friday, August 14, and Saturday, August 15. Visitors are encouraged to camp to experience the project at sundown, with daily visiting hours in the afternoon.
Meeting location, schedule, and camping logistics will be announced during the week of the event through the artist's Instagram, @karlalagunasartist and at www.vimmag.com/karla
