Rising from the devastation of last year&rsquo;s wildfires, California-based artists are preparing to gather at the art fair in a collective show of strength.&nbsp;

As the Eaton Fire claimed Beatriz Cortez&rsquo;s Altadena apartment on January 9, 2025, the Los Angeles&ndash;based sculptor was six hours north at UC Davis, teaching her fine arts students as she did at the start of every week. Feeling helpless in the face of a natural disaster, Cortez decided it was best to stay occupied with work. &ldquo;I told my students, My house is burning right now... Let&rsquo;s have a class,&rdquo; she remembers.
A few days later, in the same neighborhood, artist Kelly Akashi was surveying the destruction of what was once her home and studio. As she searched the rubble for salvageable leftovers alongside a nonprofit organization that had offered assistance, Akashi was asked if she had a community that she could turn to for help. The sculptor explained that she was part of a supportive network of artists&mdash;a tight-knit group that, to her surprise, the volunteers had already heard about, thanks to their incredible collaborative efforts in the wake of tragedy.
It&rsquo;s easy to see why the LA art community set the standard for organized resilience and collective compassion after the City of Angels was ravaged by a series of wildfires for nearly a month. Artists offered each other studios and materials, dealers shared their spaces with colleagues, and grassroots groups began fundraising efforts. A feeling of extreme vulnerability was met with profound strength, and both energies permeated the aisles of Frieze Los Angeles&mdash;the West Coast outpost of the London-born international art fair that takes place at the Santa Monica Airport&mdash;which continued as planned just three weeks after the blazes were finally contained.
&ldquo;There was a strong sense of urgency, so we detoured and pivoted our original programming,&rdquo; says Frieze&rsquo;s Director of Americas Christine Messineo. In addition to donating a portion of its ticket sales to the LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund&mdash;a coalition formed by local and global art institutions and philanthropists&mdash;the fair introduced the Galleries Together initiative, encouraging gallery participants to donate artwork to be sold, with the money raised going to the fire relief fund.

In addition to offering fiscal support, Frieze&rsquo;s decision to open last year affirmed how constructive it can be to move forward during harsh times, and highlighted art&rsquo;s unique ability to provide comfort and uplift. For Akashi, it also served as a nexus for connecting with colleagues and peers from all over the world.&ldquo; So many people showed up for me and others in similar situations because they were here for the fair,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;You could feel the support in the air.&rdquo;
Although Akashi had created new sculptures made from glass, earth, stone, and bronze for her first exhibition at Lisson Gallery, which was set to open at the end of January 2025, the fires destroyed all of her output. After a month&rsquo;s delay, she presented a selection of salvaged glass and bronze sculptures&mdash;recovered from the wreckage of her studio&mdash;with their now heavily burned patinas, alongside newworks. This month, Akashi will be one of 56 artists exhibiting at the 82nd edition of the closely watched Whitney Biennial; the museum has also awarded her $150,000 in fabrication costs to create a piece dedicated to the victims of LA wildfires.
While Frieze LA&rsquo;s 2025 edition presented around 100 exhibitors from across the globe, this year&rsquo;s iteration of the fair&mdash;its seventh&mdash;will feature 95 galleries, 40 of which hail from the greater Los Angeles area. &ldquo;This is a uniquely LA event,&rdquo; says Messineo, who appreciates how many artists attend the fair despite what can be an intimidating, sales-forward environment. &ldquo;The fair becomes its own little campus.&rdquo; Throughout its sprawling indoor-outdoor layout, it&rsquo;s not uncommon to see people picnicking outside or casually hanging out on benches; it&rsquo;s a stark contrast to the faster pace and more cutthroat nature of its New York counterpart.
But while the LA fair presents a more laid-back atmosphere that allows artists, dealers, and other art professionals to operate with a more adventurous outlook&mdash;and brings together a growing network of students and alumni from influential art schools such as CalArts, UCLA, ArtCenter, and Otis College of Art and Design to energize the city&rsquo;s art ecosystem through mentorship and creative exchanges&mdash;the reality is that many in the sector still face precarious economic realities.

The fires imposed an unprecedented halt on emerging artists and dealers, such as Sara Lee Hantman of Sea View gallery. This year, she&rsquo;ll exhibit a booth dedicated to the enigmatically provoking sculptures of Zenobia Lee as part of Frieze LA&rsquo;s next-gen Focus section, which platforms new talent with bold solo presentations.
Hantman, who lost her Altadena home in the Eaton Fire, received an outpouring of support from colleagues like gallerist Ariel Pittman, who introduced her to the Grief and Hope initiative that provided roughly $5,700 in general support funds each to more than 270 art professionals. She also received fiscal support from the LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund. &ldquo;It was a silver lining to know that you could lean on your immediate community for information, tools, and simply a dinner,&rdquo; explains Hantman, noting that one collector even sent her a few days&rsquo; worth of meals from Erewhon.

Thanks to initial fundraising efforts with the nonprofit art organization The Brick, Pittman&mdash;who runs the gallery Official Welcome in MacArthur Park&mdash;cofounded Grief and Hope with a group of locals that included artists Kathryn Andrews and Andrea Bowers. The initiative first launched as a Google survey to sort out the art practitioners&rsquo; urgent needs, which, given the community&rsquo;s small scale relative to that on the East Coast, could be navigated through a few degrees of separation. In addition to hands-on volunteers who facilitated applications, 3,000 individuals donated to the cause, raising approximately $1.5 million in emergency funds.
&ldquo;You cannot discount that an event like Frieze gave us a little bit of an anchor point to come together and participate in a conversation,&rdquo; says Pittman, describing the LA art community as &ldquo;horizontal and not as hierarchical as New York, [although] that doesn&rsquo;t mean the wealth disparity is not enormous.
In the aftermath of the fires, many realized that the most valuable things are those that can&rsquo;t be replaced. Cortez was particularly devastated to lose paintings by her father; she had brought them to the U.S. when she left El Salvador in 1989. The idea of home also took on a broader meaning for the artist when a friend offered to turn their office space into her bedroom. Her support system propelled her forward; fellow LA&ndash;based artist Rafa Esparza even helped her complete the work for their joint show at New York&rsquo;s Americas Society. Then came the true turning point for Cortez: An invitation to move into the historic Richard Neutra&ndash;designed Galka Scheyer House as the Modernist landmark&rsquo;s first resident artist. Soon into her residency, Cortez organized a group exhibition called Temporary Home, featuring her own work and that of other artists throughout the scenic space.
&ldquo;It made me think about my artist community, who had to change homes many times, as well as what it meant for an immigrant like myself to live in a famous house in Hollywood Hills,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Especially at a time when so many of us are under attack.
Frieze Los Angeles takes place at Santa Monica Airport from Feb. 26 through March 1, 2026.

”4 Meters” by Beatriz Cortez, 2025, steel and patina, installation view at Commonwealth and Council. Photography by Paul Salveson. Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council.

How Los Angeles’s Resilient Art Community Found Support in Frieze LA

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How Los Angeles’s Resilient Art Community Found Support in Frieze LA