Lauren Halsey is transforming the Hollywood Bowl into an immersive environment for a one-night concert headlined by Erykah Badu. The Los Angeles-based artist has created both a large-scale installation and the stage design, while bringing arcade and carnival-style activities to the venue’s campus. The event takes place tonight, with doors opening at 6 p.m.
An installation built around a concert
Halsey’s project turns the Bowl into more than a backdrop for the performances: the installation is designed as a world around Badu. Halsey has drawn on her own visual language, including dense, saturated collage works and forms she calls “funk mounds,” which contain small vignettes. She has adapted selected moments from that imagery to a larger scale.
The bill extends beyond Badu. The Alchemist, DJ Pee .Wee—Anderson .Paak—Flea, and artist Charles Gaines, collaborating with Black Nile and Devin Daniels, are also listed. Actor Yvonne Orji will host. With some tickets still available, the concert combines Halsey’s visual project with a broad musical programme in one evening.
From an idea to a Bowl takeover
The proposal followed Halsey’s meeting with Johanna Rees, vice president for programming and creative partnerships at the Hollywood Bowl. Halsey brought forward the idea of a maximalist campus takeover anchored by a stage and a headliner, then worked with the venue to shape it around Badu, whom she had already considered for the concept.
That earlier connection came through the Hammer Museum’s 2025 gala, which honoured Halsey alongside actor and activist Jane Fonda. Halsey had asked Badu to DJ at the gala. The Bowl event develops that relationship into a larger collaboration, with Halsey’s environment framing a live performance rather than appearing as a separate gallery presentation.
Childhood memories and musical influences
The Hollywood Bowl has been part of Halsey’s imagination since childhood, when she visited on field trips and attended summer camp there. She has also long worked across disciplines: before studying at California Institute of the Arts, she made sets for performances at her church. She earned her BFA at CalArts in 2012.
The elaborate stage productions of Parliament-Funkadelic were a formative reference for Halsey’s interest in placing objects around musicians in live settings. Her past projects have also brought musicians into art-world events: she invited Ms. Lauryn Hill to perform at the after-party for the opening of David Kordansky’s New York space, and has worked with Badu, Doechii and Parliament-Funkadelic.
A boardwalk spirit, reworked
The Bowl installation draws on the Santa Monica Pier, translating its arcade and carnival atmosphere into Halsey’s own visual idiom. The campus activities include ping-pong tables, mini golf and basketball games. Rather than treating the concert as a stage-only event, the setup invites visitors to encounter play and visual detail around the performance.
Another reference is “emajendat,” Halsey’s 2024 show at the Serpentine Galleries in London. She has carried that exhibition’s sense of looseness and enjoyment into the Bowl project. Together, the London show and the Pier-inspired activities point to a practice that moves between gallery installation, public space and live music without separating those settings into distinct experiences.
A possible annual future
Halsey sees the Hollywood Bowl takeover as a proof of concept for a festival and concert she hopes to stage every year in Los Angeles. Her proposed format would build an aesthetic environment around musicians, expanding the relationship between visual art and live performance beyond this single night.
She connects that ambition with Sister Dreamer Park in South Los Angeles, a project she says she has workshopped for almost 17 years in institutions, museums and backyards. The Bowl event offers a public test of how that kind of world-building might reach audiences across ages and backgrounds, including people who do not typically visit museums or galleries.
Takeaway: Halsey’s one-night Bowl project makes the concert setting itself part of the artwork, with Badu at its centre and a potential annual Los Angeles event in view.
