Artist Talk: Stephanie Bernheim & Aya Rodriguez-Izumi

Exhibition view, Stephanie Bernheim, Depending on Glass, 2025, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Photography by Matthew Sherman.

Exhibition view, Aya Rodriguez-Izumi, Traces of the Last Battle, 2025, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Photography by Matthew Sherman

Friday, March 7 at 6:30 PM via Zoom

Join A.I.R. Gallery and Less Than Half for artist talks by Stephanie Bernheim & Aya Rodriguez-Izumi in conjunction with their exhibitions Depending on Glass, and Traces of the Last Battle.

Less Than Half is a movement-driven organization dedicated to reshaping the art world through education, advocacy, and community action.

Stephanie Bernheim lives and works in New York. Bernheim graduated from Sarah Lawrence College (BA) and New York University (MA), where she studied with Milton Resnick, and studied with Ad Reinhardt at Hunter College. She has been affiliated with A.I.R. Gallery for over three decades. She was a New York Member of A.I.R. Gallery for seven years (1990–97), and in 1993, founded the A.I.R. Fellowship Program. Bernheim’s exhibitions in galleries and museums include P.S.1 Museum in Long Island City, Trisha Collin’s Grand Salon, Barbara Mathes Gallery, Franklin Furnace, Art Resources Transfer, Inc., The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, and The Arts Club of Chicago. Her work is in the collections of The Yale University Art Gallery, The Milwaukee Museum, The Metropolitan Museum, The Princeton Museum, The Arts Students League, and many private collections. The book Stephanie Bernheim: From Paint to Pixels, a monograph by Kara L. Rooney (Foli Art Publ: London, New York, Brussels 2017), traces Bernheim’s career from 1978 – 2016.

Aya Rodriguez-Izumi is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work blends sculpture, installation, performance, community engagement and documentation to explore aspects of ritual retention, cross-cultural identity and histories that risk erasure. She was born in Okinawa, Japan, and grew up between that island and East Harlem, NY, where she currently holds a studio. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in venues such as El Museo del Barrio, MoCADA, the NUS Museum in Singapore, the International House of Japan in Tokyo, the Taipei Fine Art Museum, The Aldrich Museum, and The Children’s Museum of Manhattan among others. She was a recipient of the A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship in New York, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship at Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota, the JUSFC Creative Artist Fellowship, the Annual Artist fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park, the Artist Alliance Inc x District 1 in-school residency program in New York, and represented Okinawa and the United States in the 2021 Benizakura Art Annual in Hokkaido, the 2023 Romantic Route 3 Triennial in Taiwan, and the 2024-35 Yanbaru Art Festival in Okinawa. She earned a BFA in Fine Arts from Parsons the New School for Design and an MFA in Fine Arts from The School of Visuals Arts. Aya centers community building in her practice and work and brings this sensibility to her teaching in SVA's MFA Fine Art Department and at the Studio Museum in Harlem, as well as her work as a board member at the historic feminist artist-run A.I.R. Gallery.