Founded in 2014 by Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, the Unconfirmed Makeshift Museum (UMM) is an artist-run project with a responsive, prismatic sensibility. It is organic and unfinished in its form of resistance, conceived as an art world intervention in a planned community and ur-suburb in Orange County, California, and elsewhere via its portable form. It provides a nomadic platform for exhibitions and events, decentralizing the circulation of contemporary art practices and integrating their sensory, poetic, political, and affective dimensions. Made visible by irregular iteration over time, UMM is kaleidoscopic and puzzling.
June 2022 update! UMM was in Santa Ana, CA at Grand Central Arts Center from May 7 through June 12, for the project ¡Hola! UMM in Santa Ana. UMM offered the audience three different ways to participate in a project focused around the themes of violence and resilience. Although the Storefront Gallery Exhibit is over, the project itself is still open. Please contact us if you wish to participate.
Contact
If you wish to contact UMM or join the mailing list, put a white flag on your window. If that doesn’t work, please email hola [at] unconfirmedmakeshiftmuseum [dot] org.
Support
You may support UMM by making a tax-deductible donation via its fiscal sponsor, Fulcrum Arts.
FAQ
Q: Why the name?
A: UMM came out of a need to re-imagine the idea of the solid, white cube museum with its museum-going-public, to make space for social practice and contemporary art embedded in the neighborhood, made visible through word of mouth and iteration.
Q: Is Social Practice in contemporary art just another term for activism?
A: Sometimes Social Practice takes the form of successful activist campaigns, but ambiguity as an element in art making is often incorporated to inspire or activate communities.
Q: Are artists who incorporate Social Practice social creatures by nature?
A: Not necessarily.
Q: Who supports the Unconfirmed Makeshift Museum?
A: UMM is a labor of love and has yet to receive any grants, but donations are welcome and tax deductible via Fulcrum Arts’ Emerge fiscal sponsorship program, which offers organizations the ability to seek funding and provides guidance by an established non-profit.
Q: Where are you located?
A: Roughly, we are located 40 + miles South of Los Angeles County, in the middle of a county with a deceptively colorful name:
Spaces
The fireplace gallery [F] has ashes of other F galleries, and is curated around ideas of affect and that which animates ordinary life, text as material, fire, hearth, wood/ash, and potentially incendiary issues, in no particular order. [Work by Luis G. Hernandez]
The all media gallery [AM] is host to works using slow, old, new or news media, glitchy, error-driven work, experimental collaborative works, and analog-digital hybrids. [Work by Diana-Sofía Estrada]
The powder room gallery [PR] honors the spirit of Antonieta Sosa, Judy Chicago, Marcel Duchamp, Piero Manzoni and Sherrie Levine’s work by showing contemporary art based on grooming rituals, detritus, and works that use the bathroom as a stage.
The physical space for Untested Address is drawn on the small UMM patio by copper metal pipes, creating a malleable platform for circulatory systems of the creative process.
A makeshift welcome for one of UMM’s exhibitions.
