Good Mother Gallery Los Angeles is pleased to present WE BUY SOULS!, a solo exhibition featuring works from Los Angeles-based artist RABI (David Emanuel Mordechai Torres). This conceptual installation brings a long-running public intervention into a white cube space for the first time.
For the past four years, WE BUY SOULS! has existed on city streets as a living artwork, equal parts installation, performance, marketing experiment, and dark satire. This conceptual artwork is an evolving psycho social experiment in faith, finance, and exchange.
Signs advertising the phrase “We Buy Souls” appeared across Los Angeles and beyond, directing people to a hotline where they are prompted to leave a message stating the value of their soul and why. Creating transactions that feel both absurd and strangely plausible. This disarming proposition gathered more than
40,000 voicemails containing confessions, doubts, and deeply personal reflections, forming a living archive of human vulnerability and society’s shadow. What began as invasive signage triggering the public to question the value of self within an overwhelmingly capitalist culture now becomes a fully realized exhibition that unites the project’s visual, psychological, and conceptual layers into one.
The exhibition includes audio, video, documentation, performance, sculpture, and paintings, expanding the project’s visual and philosophical framework while preserving its street-born immediacy. The
installation remains interactive, inviting visitors to engage directly with the work. Official WE BUY SOULS contracts will be available on site, allowing audiences to participate in the ongoing dialogue about faith, value, and surrender.
A limited edition monograph, WE BUY SOULS, will be published to coincide with the exhibition. The book features documentation of the project, essays, and a foreword by artist and philosopher Shantell Martin, offering an intimate perspective on RABI’s evolving practice and the questions that drive the work.
“We Buy Souls is a profound world, project, an experiment, an alternative reality that explores life itself, what we do with our time and money, how we value ourselves, and where our darkest or most hidden thoughts go when they need a home, giving them a resting place. Would you sell yours. How much is it worth?”
— Excerpt from We Buy Souls: Reflection by Shantell Martin
With WE BUY SOULS, RABI invites the public to consider the commodification of identity, belief, and agency in contemporary life. The exhibition stands as both a culturally resonant conceptual artwork and a landmark example of street-based storytelling entering critical art discourse.
On View: January 10th – February 14th
Good Mother Gallery | 5103 W. Adams Blvd | Thursday – Saturday | 11-6 pm
