Your Fruit Tastes Sweet, I Taste Sweat

YOUR FRUIT TASTES SWEET, I TASTE SWEAT October 22 – November 19, 2026 Sovern LA Curated by Philip P. Bucknor (Tru) with support from research collaborators Dr. Nicole Ramsey and Dr. Melanie Y. White FORTHEFUTURE + Sovern LA presents Your Fruit Tastes Sweet, I Taste Sweat (YFTSITS), an interdisciplinary group exhibition examining the labor hidden beneath consumption and tracing the movement of people, crops, materials, stories, and bodies across Central America and Los Angeles. Featuring the works of Tim “Menylek” Coleman, Philip P. Bucknor (Tru), Schessa Garbutt, Madelyn Inez, Astrid Kayembe, Jahneli Leslie, Francis Robateau, Rodney Wagner, and Cheyann Washington, the exhibition examines systems of labor, migration, extraction, memory, and care through the movement of Central American people, histories, materials, and traditions into Los Angeles. Tracing connections between Central America and the metropolitan landscape of Los Angeles, the exhibition considers how histories of agricultural labor, migration, colonial extraction, ecology, and cultural memory travel across borders and generations. This interdisciplinary exhibition looks particularly at how these systems become visible through the first-generation experience—via inherited memory, family histories, food, labor, cultural adaptation, and the ongoing negotiation between where one comes from and where one is building a life. The exhibition asks audiences to consider what is carried across generations, what is transformed through migration, and what histories remain hidden beneath the things we consume. A series of public programs will extend these questions beyond the gallery, including Rooted Readings, an intimate literary and oral storytelling gathering; Sweat Archive: Show & Tell, an open community archive gathering; and a closing artist conversation exploring Black Central America, migration, labor, memory, and artistic practice. This exhibit is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.