Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera

Lars Jan is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, where he is on faculty as head of directing at CalArts. The son of émigrés from Afghanistan and Poland, he synthesizes eclectic materials to incite thought about issues such as surveillance, national borders, housing scarcity, screen-based propaganda, and climate change. Jan is the winner of the third Audemars Piguet Art Commission and his work has been shown at The Whitney Museum, Hammer Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach, ICA Boston, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Ringling Museum of Art, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Wexner Center, Sundance Film Festival, BAM Next Wave Festival, 21c Museum Hotels, Istanbul Modern, London’s Burning Festival, Sydney Festival, Athen’s Niarchos Cultural Center, and Montreal’s Festival TransAmériques, among others. Lars Jan is a TED Senior Fellow, Sundance Art of Practice Fellow (2021), Sundance New Frontier Story Lab Advisor (2020, 2019), Creative Capital Awardee (2021), USA Artists Fellow (2022), and Guggenheim Fellow (2025).