a.i.r. fellowship

Fragmented Imaginaries: Sarah Anderson, Rachel Guardiola, Emily Oliveira, Macon Reed, Victoria-Idongesit Undonian

HOUSE 4A, NOLAN PARK
GOVERNOR'S ISLAND, NY

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Macon Reed, Still from All The World Must Suffer A Big Jolt, 2016

July 21 - August 6, 2017

Opening Reception: July 29, 2017, 3-5pm
Open Studios Weekend: July 29 & 30, 2017, 12-5pm

Fragmented Imaginaries presents works by the first round of artists participating in the 2017 A.I.R. Summer Residency at Governors Island. Sarah Anderson, Rachel Guardiola, Emily Oliveira, Macon Reed, and Victoria-idongesit Undonian share an interest in exploring the breaks within contemporary conditions and historical events. The included artworks manifest as artifacts of another present –  amalgamations of both real and imagined pasts – to express the slippage between fact and fiction, and the past, present, and future.

https://www.facebook.com/events/961553870649031

Hours: Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12-5 pm
Location: House 4A, Nolan Park, Governor's Island, NY

Panel Discussion: Thinking Beyond Limits - Age, Culture and Economics

Wednesday, July 26th, 6:30-8pm

A.I.R. Gallery, 155 Plymouth Street, NY 11201

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Jayanthi Moorthy, Moving Through His Body, 2016Archival pigment print on paper. 

This panel will discuss limits we have imposed on ourselves through various ways and how they have shaped our personal practices. 

MODERATOR

Srinivas Kaushik, partner, Kirkland and Ellis LLP, New York

PANELISTS

Candy Argondizza, chef, educator, and triathlete. Vice President of Culinary and Pastry Arts, International Culinary Center, New York

Daria Dorosh, artist, fashion researcher (SMARTlab, University College Dublin), former educator (FIT & Parsons, New York). Co-founder of A.I.R. Gallery

Loreen Oren, architect, Ismael Levya Architects, New York

Jayanthi Moorthy, artist, freelance graphic & communication designer and educator (Abron Arts Center, New York).

https://www.facebook.com/events/1879482262311632

Two-day Quilting Bee

Join us at A.I.R. for a two-day quilting bee, Friday & Saturday (June 2 & 3), in support of a new project by former Fellowship artist, Rachel Farmer.

In progress, one of the eight ceramic figures for Ancestors Traversing Quilts, 2017

In progress, one of the eight ceramic figures for Ancestors Traversing Quilts, 2017

 

Drop-in anytime between 12-6pm and Rachel will teach you the basics of hand-tying a quilt using a needle and yarn. Then apply your new skills to help complete two quilts.

As a 2013-14 Fellow, Rachel created a site-specific work on Governor’s Island, combining her ceramic sculptures (of ancestral pioneer women) with a quilted landscape. She is expanding this idea for a new installation at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (July –early September), which follows two women helping each other climb a mountainous quilted terrain.

Rachel Farmer is a Brooklyn-based artist, originally from Provo, Utah. Her art encompasses a variety of media including sculpture, drawing, photography and video. She was awarded a 2013 – 14 A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship, which culminated in a solo exhibition. Group exhibitions include Torn and Fired: new work in collage and clay, curated by Jason Andrew (Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn), Illegitimate and Herstorical, curated by Emily Roysdon (A.I.R. Gallery, NY), #throwbackthursday / #flashbackfriday, juried by Scott Chasse and Hrag Vartanian (Calico, NY), and Land + Place + Performance, curated by Laura Allred Hurtado (Granary Art Center, UT). Her work is included in the Feminist Art Base (digital archive, Brooklyn Museum) and in the collection of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Rachel was a resident artist, through the Artist Studios Program, at the Museum of Arts & Design from February – May 2016. She received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and teaches at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

For more information on the artist, visit rachelfarmer.com

OLD NEWS / NEW RULES

Join us at A.I.R. for OLD NEWS / NEW RULES a screening and performance on Sunday, May 21st at 7:30 pm. Organized by Fellow Eleanor King, the event features artists Tiffany Joy Butler, Miatta Kawinzi, Shadi Harouni, Divya Mehra, Joiri Minaya and Elise Rasmussen.

OLD NEWS / NEW RULES is held in conjunction with King's A.I.R. Fellowship.

This event is cosponsored by LADIESKUNST intersectional feminist union. Join LADIESKUNST today!

Divya Mehra, The Importance of Being Earnest, 2009, Video, color, stereo, 00:02:41. Image credit: Divya Mehra

Divya Mehra, The Importance of Being Earnest, 2009, Video, color, stereo, 00:02:41. Image credit: Divya Mehra

 

The videos and performances in OLD NEWS / NEW RULES present reframed narratives that question accepted notions of neutrality and upend common assumptions. The artists are front and center, often using their own bodies in the work. They defiantly tackle challenging content using humour, absurdity, and joy to expose and critique pressing issues.

Elise Rasmussen’s She Doesn't Get the Rules is a performance lecture that explores the role of the muse and questions whether the avant-garde can be considered radical under a patriarchal capitalist system. Channeling the surrealist technique of automatism, Rasmussen manually moves through more than 300 PowerPoint slides of imagery from pop culture and art history.

With a nod to Marina Abramovic’s performance Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful, Miatta Kawinzi's Art M.B.F. (Art Must Be Formal) is a playful/serious interrogation of formalism with the understanding that contemporary art codes are not neutral even when it is claimed otherwise.

In The Importance of Being Earnest, Divya Mehra presents a darkly humorous juxtaposition of her lip-synching Disney’s hit “A Whole New World” to a background of found photographic images that create an unsettling picture of a racist, unjust, and cruel society.

Tiffany Joy Butler's Culture Control: Exploring Another World concentrates on the beliefs of metaphysical experiences while reinterpreting primitiveness versus assimilation in our advanced and “evolved” society. When one describes the act of discovering another world, this new world is represented as the Other.

Siboney by Joiri Minaya documents the process of copying the tropical pattern of a found piece of fabric on a museum wall with juxtaposing subtitles. It explores the collection of the museum Centro León in Santiago, D.R., with focus on a painting by Vela Zanetti of a dancing mulatta. Minaya herself transforms the mural to the soundtrack of the song Siboney as adapted by Connie Francis.

Shadi Harouni's The Lightest of Stones was shot in an isolated black mountain pumice quarry in Iranian Kurdistan. The men in the film, whose own work at the quarry has been rendered profitless by the trade sanctions against Iran, critique and empathize with the artist’s futile attempt to carve through the mountain by hand, while also chatting about labor, ISIS, dragons, and Jennifer Lopez.

Show/Tell

Join us at A.I.R. for Show/Tell on Saturday, May 13th from 3-5pm!
Show/Tell is an afternoon of performance and readings hosted by A.I.R. Fellowship artist, MaryKate Maher. This event brings together 6 artists and writers who focus on politics, gender, and (mis)communication. Participants include Amanda Alfieri, Kendra Eash, Christine Sun Kim, Merissa Nathan Gerson, Slinko, and Suzanne Snider.

This event is being held in conjunction with Maher's first solo show in NYC. Invisible Float is on view at A.I.R. through May 21st. This event is sponsored by Realty Collective.

Slinko, AMERICAagh!, 2016, Ink on paper

Slinko, AMERICAagh!, 2016, Ink on paper

 

BIOs

Amanda Alfieri makes work primarily in performance using her body as her main subject. By placing herself in extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable situations, her work investigates the influence of technology on popular culture and gender as well as online sexual self-expression. In past works, she’s trained and dieted in order to compete in a bikini competition. Currently, she’s investigating Instagram’s obsession with all things booty. Alfieri received a BFA from the University of Southern California (2007), an MFA from Columbia University (2013), and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2008). She is a 2016 recipient of a Franklin Furnace Fund.

Kendra Eash is a humor writer and creative director based in Brooklyn. Her humor pieces have been published by The New Yorker, McSweeney's, The Rumpus, The Hairpin, The Toast, and GOOD magazine. She is a co-owner of And/Or studio, where she writes clever things for screens of all sizes.

Christine Sun Kim uses the medium of sound in performance and drawing to investigate her relationship with spoken languages and her aural environment. Selected exhibitions and performances have been held at: White Space, Beijing (solo); Carroll/Fletcher, London (solo); De Appel, Amsterdam (solo); nyMusikk, Oslo; Sound Live Tokyo, Tokyo; Berlin Biennale; Shanghai Biennale; and the Museum of Modern Art / PS1, New York. Kim was awarded TED and MIT Media Lab Fellowships.

Merissa Nathan Gerson is a freelance nonfiction and fiction writer. Her written work focuses on sex, sexuality, and Judaism as well as trauma, post-war reconciliation, and intergenerational repercussions of war.  She was the intergenerational trauma consultant to Amazon's hit show Transparent and has writing featured in Playboy Magazine, The Atlantic, Elle.com, Tablet Magazine, Lilith Magazine, and many others.  She teaches about sex and religion across Los Angeles and nationally. Merissa holds a BA in American Culture Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado and most recently an MA in Jewish Studies from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She spent a year studying Torah at the PARDES institute for Jewish Studies in 2010 and is a Sivananda certified yoga teacher.  From 2006-2008 she trained intensively in the Shambalah lineage of Shamatha meditation and in 2013 she attended the ALEPH Jewish Renewal Kallah retreat where she studied with Rabbi Shefa Gold, Rabbi David Ingber, and others. 

Slinko is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Ukraine, and now working and living in New Jersey. Slinko studied painting at Kharkiv Institute of Industrial Art, graphic design at Fashion Institute of Technology, and has an MFA in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University. Slinko has been awarded Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and had residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Sculpture Space, Henry Street Settlement, Bemis, and Dar al-Ma’mûn in Morocco. Slinko currently is an Open Sessions fellow at the Drawing Center in New York.

Suzanne Snider is a writer, documentarian, and educator whose work is deeply influenced by oral history theory and practice. Her most recent projects have taken the shape of sound installation, essays, and archive design. In 2012, she founded Oral History Summer School/Oral History Winter School, a cross-disciplinary workshop in upstate New York and Chicago. She works with institutions and project teams including MoMA, the National Public Housing Museum, Center for Reproductive Rights, Judd Foundation and the Prison Public Memory Project on oral history-related challenges. Her own oral history projects have addressed disappearing labor forces, rehabilitative medicine, parapsychology, and feminist presses (supported by the Radcliffe Institute/Schlesinger Library Oral History Grant). Her writing/audio work appear in The Guardian, The Believer, Legal Affairs, and The Washington Post, along with several anthologies and artist catalogs; she received a 2011 commission from Triple Canopy for New Media Reporting. Prior to her work with adult learners, she taught in the New York City public school system (pre-K through 6th), and developed arts curriculum for visually impaired students at the New York Institute for Special Education. With support from the Yaddo Corporation, the MacDowell Colony and the UCross Foundation Center, she is completing her first book, The Latecomers. Snider teaches at the New School University. 

ART/WRITING

Join us at A.I.R. for ART/WRITING, a reading and discussion on Saturday, April 1st at 4pm. Organized by Fellow Elizabeth Hoy, the event will feature writers: Miriam Atkin, Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves, and Rachel Levitsky, all of whom touch upon the visual arts in their writing practice.

ART/WRITING is being held in conjunction with Hoy's first solo show in NYC. Why does it end here? is on view at A.I.R. through April 16th. This event is cosponsored by The Felt, a journal of writing and visual art from Pratt Institute.

Elizabeth Hoy, National Priorities, Mixed media sculpture, 40 x 26 x 18 inches

Elizabeth Hoy, National Priorities, Mixed media sculpture, 40 x 26 x 18 inches

 


BIOs

Miriam Atkin is a writer and performer based in New York City. Her work has been largely concerned with the possibilities of poetry as an oral medium in conversation with avant-garde film, music, and dance. Miriam has contributed essays and reviews to Haunt journal, Art in America, and ArtCritical, and her poetry has appeared in The RecluseBoog City Reader, and This Image journal. She was a 2014 Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project and is a member of KAF, a performance and publishing collective. Miriam is a PhD candidate in English Literature at CUNY Graduate Center.

Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves (New York City, 1980) is an artist chiefly concerned with postcolonial ethnobotany working in the mediums of scholarship, diorama, corporeal wisdom, archival gesture, and language. Greaves has been published in About Place JournalThe Recluse, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. She lives and works in New York City where she is young mother of The Florxal Review—a global journal of postcolonial ethnobotany foregrounding black femme plant life—and where she is completing work on The Bulletin of Wilderness and Academy: an introductory conclusion to unschoolMFA forthcoming from Organic Electric Industries. Galleries of her documentary photography and Afrofuturist dioramas are viewable on Instagram via @TerraBot and @SuperModelStudioPractice respectively.

Rachel Levitsky is the author of several chapbooks and three full length volumes of poetry and prose, Under the Sun (Futurepoem 2003), NEIGHBOR (UDP 2009), and The Story of My Accident is Ours (Futurepoem 2013). In 1999 she started Belladonna Series, salons and readings that featured feminist avant garde writers. In 2009, Belladonna morphed into Belladonna* Collaborative (www.belladonnaseries.org), a multi-headed hydra of which she is one part.

Release of the A.I.R. Community Cookbook!

A.I.R. Gallery Community Cookbook
Dina Kantor

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In 2014 Dina Kantor was selected as an A.I.R. Gallery Fellow. As part of the program, fellows are asked to create a community project. At the time, Kantor had just begun a new body of work about community cookbooks and their relationship to identity (still in progress), so she took the opportunity to create a community cookbook for the gallery.

The resulting cookbook studies how the food we make and share with family, friends and our communities plays a large role in our identities.

Besides being a collection of recipes and tips that were contributed by members, staff, fellows and other artists affiliated with A.I.R., the book also includes photographs exploring the identities of the artists who shared them. Kantor photographed the artists in their studios, examining the links between creativity in the kitchen and in their art practice.

The cookbook is softcover, 8.5˝ x 11˝, with 152 pages, 82 recipes and 80 color photographs.
It is available for purchase through Blurb for $40 by clicking here.
In true community cookbook style, a portion of the sales will be donated directly back to A.I.R. Gallery's Fellowship program.

For more information on Dina Kantor, visit www.dinakantor.com.