Artist Alex Prager Brings Los Angeles to Miami With the “Mirage Factory”

“It’s very hard to distinguish who I am versus who Los Angeles is,” said Alex Prager, the artist and Los Feliz native whose photographic work often references and reworks the visual language of classic Hollywood. “I was thinking about what it meant to live in a city that's so intense and temporal and always, and always trying to find itself and always rebuilding and always destroying itself too. It was a city that was never really meant to be a city.”

So when Capital One and The Cultivist offered her the chance to stage an immersive exhibit during Art Basel Miami Beach, she decided to recreate Los Angeles. Not in accurate detail, but as a physical realization of the iconography and perception of L.A. “It's a city that's been depicted more than any other city, and everyone has an idea of Los Angeles and the myth of Hollywood. It’s in the collective imagination. So in the way the city is more than what it actually is.” The result was her project “The Mirage Factory,” which last night, doubled as the backdrop for a party hosted by Capital One and The Cultivist with W Magazine. Guests including Chance the Rapper, Alana and Este Haim, Janelle Monae, Giveon, Quavo, Lori Harvey, Justine Skye, Jeremy Pope, and Quavo came to step inside the fantasy.

Appropriately held inside a former movie theater on Lincoln Road in South Beach, guests wandered through a front room in which a grove of fake orange trees were placed alongside the real thing. A disembodied voice coaxed visitors to move to Los Angeles.

A second room featured a dream-like replica of Hollywood Boulevard. Prager collaborated with a family that specialized in to-scale-miniatures for three generations (they’ve also worked with Wes Anderson—Prager met them through one of his producers). Her aim was for guests to feel like they were Allison Hayes in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, towering above the city. “I wanted people to be immersed in dream space visual poem of Los Angeles,” she says. Easter eggs referring to both local history and Prager’s own life were hidden in the miniature street below. Handprints from both Prager’s young son and some of her favorite filmmakers like David Lynch, were included outside of the small Grauman's Chinese Theatre. An Arby’s billboard placed amongst the buildings was inspired by a time Prager had her purse stolen with her phone inside. She called so many times, the thiefs eventually answered. They arranged an agreement where they’d return her belongings if she left $100 behind an Arby’s dumpster.

The final room recalled the Griffith Park garden. Prager was born nearby in Los Feliz. The space was painted emerald green, inspired by The Wizard of Oz. A pair of legs wearing ruby high-heeled pumps emerge from a fake pool at the center of the room. “What’s a Hollywood party without someone ending up in the pool naked?” she joked.

That didn’t happen last night, but unlike your average backyard Hollywood party, Ellie Goulding delivered a mini-concert, running through her numerous hits from "Lights" to "Love Me Like You Do." Following the performance guests relocated to an after-party at the Shelbourne by Proper where DJ Pawsa played late into the night.

Prager hopes to bring the “Mirage Factory” back to Los Angeles proper at some point. “It was founded by people who were trying to sell us any package like cigarettes or tooth paste. It's a commodity. It's always been a city that people tried to market and sell rather than a city for people to live. Yet, people go there and it's still one of the best places in the world to find a side door into living your dreams.”

Here, a look inside.