Nick Kochornswasdi Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of the Los Angeles-based artist Elijah Ford. In Displace the artist begins with the forced deportation of the inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago from 1967 to 1973 by the British government in order to accommodate the construction of a U.S. military base and traces his own ancestors history of displacement and the effects it has on people and communities. The Chagos Archipelago was considered under the control of the country of Mauritius, a British colony, until 1965 when Mauritius sought its independence and the Chagos Archipelago was split off as a condition of its independence. Thus beginning in 1967, around 1,500 inhabitants were removed and forced to re-settle in the neighboring Seychelles and Mauritius, where many died because of the horrible living conditions they were forced into along with the severe trauma of being removed from their homes and the only lives they ever knew. Ford considers this event in relation to the history of colonization and the altered futures it has created. His paintings depict imagery and symbols that are constantly slipping and changing, creating an imbalance in an always de-centered center. Errantry and exile creating a rhizomatic root that proliferates, never crushing difference, but one that encounters difference and accepts it in all its opacity, the chaos of connections that builds a network where one can relate one’s experience without reducing, never reduction. The work proposes an environment where people, cultures, and communities can recognize each other in the face of the Other, where no generalization occurs, where every plight is understood in all its complexities, in solidarity with the sufferings and resiliency of a people and a people yet to come.