Shells and Skins: The Body is a Home at Del Vaz Projects
Samantha Ozer, PIN-UP
March 2022
Jay Ezra Nayssan founded Del Vaz Projects, which gets its name from the Farsi phrase دست و دلباز (dæst ō del bāz) for open-handed and open-hearted, in 2014. The intimate exhibition platform’s programming has always centered the domestic — first located in a guest bedroom of Nayssan’s west Los Angeles apartment, it’s now situated in his Santa Monica home. Architect Frank E. Bivens built the house in 1929, and it was once Shirley Temple’s childhood home. It’s a space that is serendipitously astute for the context of its current project Shell, an exhibition of works by Heidi Bucher (1926–1993), Olivia Erlanger (b. 1990), and Nicola L. (1932–2018). […]