phantom charges
2025 National Members Exhibition
GALLERY I, II, & III
Carrie Scanga, Futureproof, 2025, paper with intaglio and pochoir printing, dimensions variable.
July 5–August 3, 2025
Opening reception: Friday, July 11, from 5–7pm
Irja Bodén, Nancy Daly, Robin Dintiman, Nicolei Buendia Gupit, Nicole Havekost, Gina Herrera, Olga Hiiva, Duwenavue Santé Johnson, Gongsan Kim, Jennifer McCandless, Sabra Moore, Cozette Russell, Carrie Scanga, Martha Sedgwick, Rebecca Weisman, Holly Wong, Amy Yoshitsu
Curated by Elizabeth Larison
A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce phantom charges, a group exhibition curated by Elizabeth Larison that features work by seventeen A.I.R. National Artist Members.
No one is an island and no thing exists in a vacuum: every thing bears the phantom charges of what came before it. These charges function as energies, debts, designations, or responsibilities. They are phantom forces, invisible yet everpresent—the culmination of what is inherited as fact, combined with intentions and offerings for the future. The works in this year’s A.I.R. National Members Exhibition vibrate with phantom charges of their own, psychic residues that orbit objects of refuse and rituals of devotion.
Many of the works on view memorialize the complex weight of family histories, or engage the absurd to communicate the distorted psychogeographies that result from forced assimilation, regimentation, and concealment; other works consider the ways daily practices of care are painstakingly bestowed upon the next generation. Elsewhere in the exhibition, artists turn their attention to humanity’s cumulative toll on the environment. They contemplate the ecological and consumerist impacts of industry and commemorate losses to climate change. They also expose the complex and contradictory ways in which humans engage with the animal world of which they are part.
Whether considering the genealogical or the geological, all of the artists in phantom charges contend with the influences of complex inheritance and layered realities. Through practices that include photography, drawing, painting, mixed media, installation, fabric arts, sculpture, and performance video, they examine how these realities intersect with that which is willed, and also what is proffered in legacy, in memory.
Elizabeth Larison is an artistic freedom advocate, writer, and curator based in Brooklyn, NY. With degrees in Human Rights (BA) and Curatorial Studies (MA), she currently serves as the Director of the Arts & Culture Advocacy Program at the National Coalition Against Censorship. Her writing has appeared in The Art Newspaper, Full Bleed, Art21, and as part of programs presented at Amant and A.I.R. Gallery. She is a co-editor of Not Going It Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating (apexart, 2024), and has worked in curatorial and directorial capacities for organizations including apexart, The Park Avenue Armory, and Flux Factory.
View the Press Release here.