Photo by: Michael Oliver

What Black Is This, You Say? 

A Public Artwork by Amanda Williams

May 2021 – June 2023

#whatblackisthis    #awstudioart     @storefrontnyc 

What Black Is This, You Say? is a public artwork created by artist and architect Amanda Williams for Storefront’s facade. This multi year project translates to the physical realm, a body of work initiated by the artist on Instagram. 

The project began as an informal response to #BlackoutTuesday, a social media protest campaign that invited the public to post black squares to their feeds. This “blackout” of communication on June 2nd, 2020 was intended to be a show of solidarity with Black lives and the calls for justice in response to the murder of George Floyd and many others before him. 

“I’ll be honest. I wasn’t feeling the blackout. I hate stuff like that, but I caved. Wanted to be in solidarity. But color is everything to me. You can’t just say “black”…which one?” –Amanda Williams

Drawing upon her past work exploring color theory, Williams sought to bring attention to the plurality, complexity, and nuance of Black experience(s). Over the following five months, in order to challenge the black square as a monolithic representation, she posted 120+ shades or textures on Instagram – each with a corresponding caption. Together, they provided a rich palette of overlapping and divergent narratives and histories that inform Black identity. 

At Storefront, Williams presents a public artwork that more deeply explores these shades. During the first year, twelve of these were painted on each one of the moving panels of the gallery’s facade, serving as hinges between the public realm and the gallery interior. In its second iteration for the season 2022-2022, five new shades are introduced. What Black Is This, You Say? constitutes a transformation of Storefront’s facade, which all exhibitions during its run navigate and build upon in various ways.

Alongside this, Storefront will release a publication with writings, reflections, and interviews, related to the work. Together, these discussions and contributions from cultural thinkers such as Roxane Gay, J Wortham and Corrine Bailey Rae, among others, interrogate and contextualize commonly held narratives around Black culture, joy, spirituality, suffering, agency, labor, and more.

About the Artist

Amanda Williams is a visual artist who trained as an architect. Her creative practice employs color as a way to draw attention to the complexities of how race shapes the ways in which we assign value to space in cities. The landscapes in which she operates are the visual residue of the invisible policies and forces that have misshapen most major US cities. Williams’ installations, paintings, and works on paper seek to inspire new ways of looking at the familiar, and in the process, raise questions about the state of urban space and ownership in America.

Amanda has exhibited widely, including the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, a solo exhibition at the MCA Chicago, and a public project with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. She is a 2018 USA Ford Fellow, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors grantee, an Efroymson Family Arts Fellow, a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow and a member of the multidisciplinary Museum Design team for the Obama Presidential Center. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. Williams lives and works in Chicago.

In the spring and summer of 2021, Williams presented three bodies of work at New York City organizations. In addition to this public artwork at Storefront, they included two projects organized by The Museum of Modern Art: Embodied Sensations, a participatory artwork that considers the transformation of public space during the global pandemic, and Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, MoMA’s first ever exhibition to explore the ongoing impact of anti-black racism on the shaping of architecture and the built environment. 

Amanda Williams was selected as a 2022 MacArthur Fellow.

Groundworks

Groundworks invites one artist to present a public artwork on Storefront’s iconic facade, that will be on display for the duration of a year. Launching with What Black Is This You Say? by Amanda Williams in 2021, this series of annual commissions engage the gallery’s exterior wall with the sidewalk passerby. This initiative locates Storefront’s facade as a site of critical discourse to weave together notions of place and identity, using the built environment to foster understanding around complex ideas of public life. Each artists’ commission celebrates community, and the history and politics inextricably connected to the building of cultural identity within a specific time and context. 

Credits

What Black Is This,  You Say? A Public Artwork by Amanda Williams

Graphic design by poly-mode. Organized by Storefront for Art and Architecture, 2021.

aw|studio:

Amanda Williams / Artist

Bianca Marks / Communications and Strategy

Polymode:

Silas Munro / Partner

Brian Johnson /  Partner

Randa Hadi / Designer

Michelle Lamb /  Designer

Storefront Team:

José Esparza Chong Cuy / Executive Director and Chief Curator

Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa / Curator of Programs and Public Affairs

Camille Bacon / Project Coordinator

Eduardo Meneses / Environments and Production Manager

Jessica Kwok / Assistant Curator

Andrea Molina Cuadro / Gallery and Exhibitions Fellow

Maya Whites / Gallery and Community Engagement Fellow

Jennifer Cohen / Finance Manager

Support

What Black Is This, You Say?  has been made possible through the support of the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the New York State Council of the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; The Storefront Circle and Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.

Image: Detail of Under My Feet, 2023. Courtesy of the artist

Under My Feet

Ilana Harris-Babou

Exhibition Opening:
Saturday, October 7th from 4 – 6pm

[RSVP]

Under My Feet by artist Ilana Harris-Babou delves into her childhood memories, reimagining and reinventing the playful rituals of her Central Brooklyn upbringing. In this exhibition, she meticulously layers and transforms the sounds, colors, and textures of Prospect Lefferts Gardens, East Flatbush, and Crown Heights—neighborhoods predominantly inhabited by African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and West Indian immigrants. Through this creative process, Harris-Babou revisits and reconstructs her sense of home and belonging, engaging with themes of intimacy, witness, dispossession, and the possibilities for the sidewalks and storefronts of Nostrand Avenue, Church Avenue, and Flatbush Avenue.

Through a blend of sound, imagery, and video, Harris-Babou stages a vivid representation of her childhood neighborhood, bringing to light diverse notions of place hidden in plain sight. This immersive installation presents itself as a nostalgic journey to her youth—skipping over sidewalk cracks, perching on cellar gates beneath bodegas, and pondering the vibrancy of its towering signs. 

Harris-Babou layers the interior with an expansive streetscape, using the gallery as a place to celebrate intergenerational businesses and retail spaces that have served as hubs for liberatory pedagogies within Afro-diasporic communities. A new video pays homage to Lenore Briggs and the Lefferts Gardens Montessori, where Black children were encouraged to shape their own sense of purpose and affirm their individuality within their community. On the opposite end of the gallery, she recreates the protective havens provided by neighborhood institutions like the African Record Centre, offering a glimpse into the resources they have accumulated over the years and inviting audiences to choreograph their own worldbuilding experience through contemplation and curiosity.

Under My Feet recognizes and reconnects with a vanishing landscape of self-determination in the face of gentrification and displacement, while claiming a future rooted in its enduring legacy.

About the Artist

Ilana Harris-Babou. Photo: PJ Roundtree.

Ilana Harris-Babou (b. 1991, Brooklyn, New York) has presented solo exhibitions of her work at The Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University (2023); Artspace New Haven (2022); Kunsthaus Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany (2021); Goucher College, Baltimore, MD (2021); Jacob Lawrence Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (2020); and The Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY (2017).

She has participated in major exhibitions including the Istanbul Design Biennial, Turkey (2020); and the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2019), and group exhibitions at The Wellcome Collection, London, UK (2023); California College of the Arts Wattis Institute, San Francisco, CA (2021); The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2021); and Queens Museum, Queens, NY (2020). She lives and works in Brooklyn and Middletown, CT.

On the Ground
On the Ground is a yearlong research project and exhibition series about New York City’s ground floor. Through a close look at the urban typology of the storefront, this expansive endeavor presents newly commissioned artistic explorations and dialogues about the heterogeneous threshold between public and private space throughout 2023. The project will unfold through three exhibitions, a radio show, an open call, a public program, and a thematic reader. 

Credits
Under My Feet by Ilana Harris-Babou. Organized by the Storefront Team.
Graphic design by Estudio Herrera 

Photography by PJ Rountree

Support
This exhibition has been made possible through the support of the Graham Foundation, the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; with invaluable support from Storefront’s Board of Directors, the Storefront Circle, Storefront members, and individual donors. Storefront is a proud member of CANNY (Collaborative Arts Network New York), currently supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Arison Arts Foundation, Imperfect Family Foundation, and the Jay DeFeo Foundation.

Broad Street, East Broadway, Market Street, New York, 2023, consecutive floor rubbings with graphite on a piece of paper, 22.75” x 29.75”

Direct Action

Francisca Benítez

Exhibition Opening:
Saturday, June 17th from 4 – 7 pm [RSVP]

Performance by Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, 6pm

Gallery Hours:
Wednesdays – Saturdays, 12-6 pm

#DirectAction #franciscabenitez @storefrontnyc 

We put our bodies on the streets 

our bodies in the trees 

our bodies against the fences of a chemical plant 

our bodies inside banks 

our bodies in the forest 

our bodies against the pavement 

we harmonize 

we dissonate 

we become one sonic body 

we spread 

we vanish 

we reappear 

in crescendo through tunnels 

caves, theaters, jail cells 

we become everybody 

and one with the buzzing of the honeybees 

— Francisca Benítez

Accessible public space can only exist if it is collectively created, used, exercised, and cared for. Dissent and meaningful dialogue are forms of expression that uncover its political possibilities. Direct Action by Francisca Benítez explores the many ways in which the artist and activist grapples with the ethics of protest and her sustained commitment to solidarity through collective action.

By putting her creative body on the line, Benítez uses direct action as a method. In the words of the late anthropologist and activist David Graeber, she embodies the practice of direct action by her insistence in engaging the city freely when faced with structurally oppressive urban environments. Her expansive work is both a product and a stage of the rituals of resistance that result from her long-term involvement with activist groups rooted in Lower Manhattan. Whether it’s organizing against displacement, fighting for housing, standing up to developers, or singing about climate futures, her work imagines and engenders a society beyond capitalism.

Rubbings hung on the wall are part of Benítez’s growing catalog on the many ways in which the ground floor of the city is both host and platform to diverse forms of protest and collective dissent. A sculpture consisting of the artist’s old bicycle seat includes a branch used in a performance protest at the East River Park. A metronome made from a piece of New York City streetscape serves as a reminder of the urgency of the work that Benítez undertakes in her melded life and art practice. A consistent tool in Benítez’s work is her voice—an instrument used to harmonize, to unionize, to crescendo. Whether it’s uttered or gesturally performed, Benítez understands her voice as a tool for collective action, and music as her ultimate form of sociability. 

Direct Action showcases the processes and procedures of her artistic practice, which is centered in the use of performance as a method to engage the politics of space and her participation in political and community action. Her involvement with various activist organizations such as The Stop Shopping Choir, Art Against Displacement, Chinatown Working Group, Coalition to Protect Chinatown & The Lower East Side, East River Park Action, and Asamblea Popular de Chile en Nueva York, are crucial aspects of her practice. With her artistic work operating as both backdrop and instigator, Benitez uses Storefront as a productive space to strengthen existing collaborations and forge new ones. 

Throughout the run of the exhibition, the gallery will operate as a meeting room, a rehearsal studio, a writing workshop, and an urban stage. By opening up the space of the institution to the many activist groups she is an integral part of, Benítez transforms Storefront into a site for social intervention. Direct Action invites the audience to consider the possibilities of protest, and encourage participation in local collective organizing efforts.

Earth Chxrch at 36 Loisaida Avenue and East 3rd Street. Photo by Francisca Benítez

About the Artist

Francisca Benítez. Photo: PJ Roundtree.

Francisca Benítez is an artist born in Chile in 1974, living and working in New York since 1998. Her art practice explores relations between space, politics, and language, being closely linked to the places where she lives and the communities she interacts with. Her videos, photographs, performances, and drawings are shown internationally. Recent exhibitions include: Riego at Die Ecke, Santiago; In Support at The Kitchen, New York; New/Now at the New Britain Museum of American Art, CT; Uprisings at the Jeu de Paume, Paris; Much wider than a line at SITE Santa Fe, NM. She graduated as an architect from Universidad de Chile (1998) and Master in Fine Arts from Hunter College of the City University of New York (2007). She is an alto singer in the Stop Shopping Choir, an anti-capitalist direct action performance group based in New York City.

Scheduled Exhibition Events:

Performance by Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir for opening night of Direct Action. Photo by PJ Rountree

June 17, 6pm: Performance by Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir

June 29, 5pm – 7pm: Performance by Leila Adu with Savitri D.

July 6, 5-7pm: Performance by Leila Adu with Kwami Coleman and Erich Barganier

July 7, 2:30-4pm: Art Against Displacement zine-making party

July 11, 6:30pm: Art Against Displacement monthly meeting

July 15, 5-7pm: Performance by Ali Dineen

July 29, 4-6pm: Performance by Raimundo

August 3, 1pm: Performance by Ray Santiago

August 8, 6:30pm: Art Against Displacement monthly meeting

August 12, 5-7pm: Performance by Cecilia Vicuña and Ricardo Gallo

August 19, 4-6pm: Performance by Eduardo Pavez Goye

August 26, 5-7pm: Performance by Ricardo Gallo and Amirtha Kidambi

September 1, 5pm: Performance by Sunder Ganglani

September 2, 2pm: Performance by Gregory Corbino

September 8, 7-8pm: Film Program

September 9, 6pm: Performance by Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir

On the Ground
Direct Action is presented as part of On the Ground, a yearlong research project and exhibition series about New York City’s ground floor. Through a close look at the urban typology of the storefront, this expansive endeavor presents newly commissioned artistic explorations and dialogues about the heterogeneous threshold between public and private space throughout 2023. The project will unfold through three exhibitions, a radio show, an open call, a public program, and a thematic reader. 

Credits
Direct Action by Francisca Benítez. Organized by the Storefront Team. Graphic design by Estudio Herrera. 

Photography by PJ Rountree

Support
This exhibition has been made possible through the support of the Graham Foundation, the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; with invaluable support from Storefront’s Board of Directors, the Storefront Circle, Storefront members, and individual donors. Storefront is a proud member of CANNY (Collaborative Arts Network New York), currently supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Arison Arts Foundation, Imperfect Family Foundation, and the Jay DeFeo Foundation.

make money and good luck!, 2023. Photo: Canal Street Research Association

New Land Plaza: You Can’t Beat a New York Original

Canal Street Research Association

Speculative research on the shifting landscapes of Canal Street,  featuring works by Ming Fay

Exhibition Opening:
Wednesday, March 1st from 6-8pm [RSVP]

Gallery Hours:
Wednesdays – Saturdays, 12-6 pm

#NewLandPlaza @canal_street_research @mingfaystudio @storefrontnyc 

“Whoever you are, wherever you are, we are going to shut you down.” 

— Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg during the “Counterfeit Triangle” raid press conference

February, 2008

About the Artists

Canal Street Research Association at New Land Plaza. Photo: PJ Rountree

Canal Street Research Association was founded in 2020 in an empty storefront on Canal Street, New York’s counterfeit epicenter. Delving into the cultural and material ecologies of the street and its long history as a site that probes the limits of ownership and authorship, the association repurposes underused real estate as spaces for gathering ephemeral histories, mapping local lore, and tracing the flows and fissures of capital. They have occupied storefronts, empty office buildings, and storage units—and are currently located in a basement under Canal Street.

The fictional office entity is operated by Shanzhai Lyric (Ming Lin and Alex Tatarsky), a poetic research and roving archival unit that take inspiration from 山寨 (shanzhai or counterfeit) goods to examine how bootlegs use mimicry, hybridity, and permutation to both revel in and reveal the artifice of global hierarchies.

Ming Fay, Monumental Fruit (sketch) from Public Art in Chinatown (Asian American Arts Centre, 1988)

Ming Fay is a New York City-based sculptor celebrated for his large-scale, life-like sculptural renditions of plants, fruits, trees, and other organic forms.Fay has exhibited internationally and has been commissioned by numerous cities to create large-scale public sculptures.

Born in Shanghai in 1943, Ming Fay grew up in Hong Kong, moving to the United States in 1961 to attend the Columbus College of Art and Design. He received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

On the Ground

New Land Plaza: You Can’t Beat a New York Original is presented as part of On the Ground, a yearlong research project and exhibition series about New York City’s ground floor. Through a close look at the urban typology of the storefront, this expansive endeavor presents newly commissioned artistic explorations and dialogues about the heterogeneous threshold between public and private space throughout 2023. The project will unfold through three exhibitions, a radio show, an open call, a public program, and a thematic reader. 

Credits

New Land Plaza: You Can’t Beat a New York Original by Canal Street Research Association. Organized by the Storefront Team. Graphic design by Estudio Herrera. 

Storefront for Art and Architecture Team:

José Esparza Chong Cuy, Executive Director and Chief Curator

Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa, Curator of Programs and Public Affairs

Jessica Kwok, Assistant Curator

Eduardo Meneses, Environments and Production Manager

Andrea Molina Cuadro, Gallery and Exhibitions Fellow

Maya Whites, Gallery and Community Engagement Fellow

Support
Storefront’s On the Ground program is made possible through the support of the Graham Foundation, the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the Storefront Circle and Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.

Public Space In A Private Time: Building Storefront for Art and Architecture
97 Kenmare Street, New York, NY

Exhibition Opening:
Saturday, September 17th from 4–6 pm [RSVP]

Gallery Hours:
Wednesdays – Saturdays, 12-6 pm
September 17th–December 10th, 2022

#publicspaceinaprivatetime   @storefrontnyc  

The establishment of certain spaces in the city as “public” is a reminder, a warning, that the rest of the city isn’t public.
— Vito Acconci, 1990

On the occasion of the gallery’s 40th anniversary, Public Space in a Private Time: Building Storefront for Art and Architecture connects our focus on the built environment with New York City’s social and political challenges at the time of its founding in 1982. Through a close reading of early shows and projects, the exhibition showcases the leading role Storefront has played in the defense of public space through artistic practice.

Using our own archive as its main resource, Public Space in a Private Time foregrounds Storefront’s early preoccupation with the dominance of private interests in the public sphere, as well as with the accelerated pace of urban development, gentrification, and displacement. All these issues were of deep concern in New York City during those years, and continue, urgently, to require attention today—both here and around the world.

Taking its title from an essay presented at Storefront in 1990 by artist Vito Acconci, the exhibition highlights the role this organization has long played in positioning art and architecture at the center of public life. It focuses on key exhibitions, competitions, and open calls that have been instrumental in the shaping of Storefront’s ethos, and includes a section about the making of the iconic facade by Acconci and architect Steven Holl from 1993, which continues to embody our mission as an enduring public artwork in Lower Manhattan.

The exhibition Public Space in a Private Time is presented as part of Storefront’s 40th anniversary and will be accompanied by a series of events that examine moments of resistance against the erasure of civic space in New York City.

Credits

Public Space in a Private Time: Building Storefront for Art and Architecture is part of an anniversary initiative that studies the organization’s early history to inform future programs. The exhibition is collectively organized by Storefront’s staff with artist and board member Justin Beal. Graphic design by Pentagram.

Storefront for Art and Architecture Team:

José Esparza Chong Cuy, Executive Director and Chief Curator

Jessica Kwok, Curatorial Fellow

Eduardo Meneses, Gallery and Operations Manager

Andrea Molina Cuadro, Gallery and Exhibitions Fellow

Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa, Curator of Programs and Public Affairs

Support

Storefront’s 40th Anniversary program has been made possible through the support of the Graham Foundation, the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the Storefront Circle and Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.

The Absolute Restoration of All Things
By Miguel Fernández de Castro & Natalia Mendoza
97 Kenmare Street, New York, NY

Exhibition Opening:
Friday, April 8th from 6:30–8:30 pm [RSVP]

Gallery Hours:
Wednesdays – Saturdays, 12-6 pm
April 8th–July 30th, 2022

#absoluterestoration  @miguelfernandezdecastro  @mendozarockwell   @storefrontnyc  

In the middle of the vast Sonoran desert in the northwest of Mexico, a sculpture sits within the deep pit of a decommissioned gold mine. Made on-site with soil from the pit, the sculpture is shaped as a perfect cube. Beside it sits a silver plaque that reads:

Between 2010 and 2013, the Penmont Mining company illegally extracted 236,709 ounces of gold, according to its own reports. To do this, they blew up and moved 10,833,527 tons of stone. 

The decision of the Unitary Agrarian Court of the 28th District, issued on December 8th, 2014, obliges Penmont to return the extracted gold, which would take the shape of a 70 x 70 x 70 centimeter cube and would have a value of 436 million dollars. 

— Ejido El Bajío

February 2022

The contrast in scales between the small volume of the sculpture in relation to the massive open pit clearly showcases the environmental damage caused by the mining industry. This sculpture and its accompanying plaque function as an anti-monument to the site’s dispossession. They are part of the exhibition The Absolute Restoration of All Things by artist Miguel Fernández de Castro and anthropologist Natalia Mendoza at Storefront for Art and Architecture. 

For the last five years, Fernández de Castro and Mendoza—who are based in the Sonoran Desert—have been researching the 2014 court case that shut down Penmont’s mining operations. The lawsuit was brought to court by the “ejidatarios” (communal land holders) of the mining site, who claimed that their territory was illegally occupied and exploited, causing an irrevocable environmental impact on their land. In addition to the return of the extracted gold, the court ruled that Penmont Mining is “obliged to fully restore the ecosystem that prevailed in this place, with its hills, mountains, waters, air, flora, and fauna that existed before.” Not only has Penmont Mining not complied with the court ruling, but the ejidatarios continue to suffer from arbitrary imprisonment, harassment, and forced disappearance in a context of intertwined state and criminal violence. 

The Absolute Restoration of All Things departs from the impossibility of this historic legal verdict to explore the issue of land rights and the limits of the legal language that protects it. 

The exhibition at Storefront presents newly commissioned works by Fernández de Castro and Mendoza that unpack the court case, including a film, diagrams, a photo mural, and objects from the mine. The formwork used to create the rammed earth sculpture inside the open pit is also included, allowing the viewer to grasp the scale and connect the two sites. Together, these works present a panoramic picture of the expansive devastation caused by the mining industry, alongside the unattainable legal verdict that aims to restore this particular part of the Sonoran Desert.

RSVP for the public opening here.

About the Artist

Miguel Fernández de Castro (b. 1986, Sonora, Mexico) is a visual artist based in the Sonora-Arizona borderlands. Through photography, video, sculpture, and writing, his work examines how extractive and criminal economies materially transform a territory while looking at the historical ties between environmental catastrophe, smuggling routes, and forced disappearance. In Mexico, his work has been shown at Museo Jumex, Casa del Lago, and Museo de Arte Moderno. Internationally he’s presented work at Frac Centre-Val de Loire (France), Spazio Veda (Italy), Wren Library (UK), Museo Artium (Spain), Ashkal Alwan (Lebanon), among others. His film Grammar of Gates was selected by Ballroom Marfa to be for the Artists’ Film International program at Whitechapel Gallery in London. Since 2018 he has collaborated with multiple search groups documenting mass graves on both sides of the Mexico-US border.

​​Natalia Mendoza, (b. 1981, Mexico City, Mexico) is a researcher and essayist based between New York and Sonora, Mexico. She obtained a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University and joined Fordham University as an assistant professor. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research in the region of Sonora-Arizona. Her work examines the convergence of legal and illegal economies, and the overlaps between state and criminal violence in the US-Mexico borderlands. In 2020, Natalia Mendoza won the “José Revueltas-INBA National Essay Award” for her collection of essays on disappearance, funerary rituals, and political imagination.

Building Cycles

The Absolute Restoration of All Things is presented as part of Building Cycles, Storefront’s ongoing curatorial program that examines building as both a place and a process. The Absolute Restoration of All Things follows five exhibitions in the cycle, Aquí­ vive gente, Ministry for All,  Arabesque, and Something Broke, and The Great Ruins of Saturn.

Credits

The Absolute Restoration of All Things by Miguel Fernández de Castro & Natalia Mendoza.  Graphic design by Estudio Herrera. Organized by Storefront for Art and Architecture, 2022.

Storefront for Art and Architecture Team:

José Esparza Chong Cuy, Executive Director and Chief Curator

Jinny Khanduja, Deputy Director

Eduardo Meneses, Gallery and Operations Manager

Support

The Absolute Restoration of All Things is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and Fundación Jumex. The opening is supported by Los Mariscos and Mal Mezcal.

Building Cycles has been made possible through the support of the Graham Foundation, as well as from DS+R; KPF; Steven Holl Architects; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and by Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.

 

 

 

The Great Ruins of Saturn
By Alvaro Urbano
97 Kenmare Street, New York, NY

Exhibition Opening:
Saturday, December 4th from 5-7 pm [RSVP]
Please note that the public opening is free and all are welcome to attend. Proof of vaccination will be required to enter the gallery space.

Gallery Hours:
Wednesdays – Saturdays, 12-6 pm
December 8th, 2021 – February 26th, 2022
(Closed December 23rd – January 1st)

#greatruinsofsaturn     @alvaro_urbano     @storefrontnyc   

RSVP for the public opening here.

About the Artist

Alvaro Urbano (b. 1983, Madrid, Spain) is a visual artist based in Berlin. He studied at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Madrid (ETSAM) and the Institut für Raumexperimente of the Universität der Künste in Berlin. He is currently a professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Urbano’s practice embraces a variety of media, from performance to spatial installations that unfold throughout an experimental process. Often using architecture, theatre, and heterotopia as points of departure, his work invites dialogue in newly conceived environments – exposing conflicts between reality and fiction that redefine and render time-space based situations. Recently, his work has explored and researched the futures of abandoned and vacant World’s Fair pavilions, as in his 2020 show The Awakening at La Casa Encendida (Madrid), which animated the 1958 Spanish Pavilion in Brussels. The Great Ruins of Saturn is Urbano’s first solo exhibition in the U.S.

Building Cycles

The Great Ruins of Saturn is presented as part of Building Cycles, Storefront’s ongoing curatorial program that examines building as both a place and a process. The Great Ruins of Saturn follows four exhibitions in the cycle, Aquí­ vive gente, Ministry for All,  Arabesque, and Something Broke.

Credits

The Great Ruins of Saturn by Alvaro Urbano. Graphic design by Estudio Herrera. Organized by Storefront for Art and Architecture, 2021.

Film Credits:
Artist: Alvaro Urbano
Puppeteers and Scenography: Victor Ame Navarro, Yao Liao, Luli Pérez, and Elena Peters
Music: Coeval
Editing: Joji Koyama
Graphic Design: Estudio Herrera
Commissioned by: Storefront for Art and Architecture with the collaboration of Acción Cultural Española, AC/E

Storefront for Art and Architecture Team:

José Esparza Chong Cuy, Executive Director & Chief Curator

Jinny Khanduja, Deputy Director

Eduardo Meneses, Gallery and Operations Manager

Support

The Great Ruins of Saturn is presented in collaboration with Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), as well as with the support of Silman, ChertLüdde, Travesía Cuatro, and Sotheby’s. Lighting design is supported by L’Observatoire International, with contributions from Lutron / KETRA, Lumenture, and O’Blaney Rinker Associates.

Building Cycles has been made possible through the support of the Graham Foundation, as well as from DS+R; KPF; Steven Holl Architects; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and by Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.

Graphic design by Julian Solis Morales.

Something Broke: 2011–Windows–2021
By Mariela Scafati
97 Kenmare Street, New York, NY

Exhibition Opening:
Thursday, July 29th from 6–8 pm [RSVP]

Gallery Hours:
Wednesdays – Saturdays, 12-6 pm
July 29th–November 6th, 2021

#somethingbroke  #algoserompio  @scafatiscafati  @storefrontnyc   

About the Artist

Mariela Scafati (1973) is a painter, queer silkscreener, and teacher. She has lived and worked in Buenos Aires since 1997. In 2000, her first solo show took place at Belleza y felicidad gallery in Buenos Aires. One of her most recent group exhibitions, Transformation, was presented at the National Museum of Engraving in Argentina and at the 11th Berlin Biennial. Scafati has participated in collective and collaborative projects related to screenprinting, education, radio, and theater. Since 2007, she has been a member of Queer Silkscreeners, a non-group that calls meetings to create slogans that are printed on T-shirts for use at LGBTQIA+ pride marches, feminist demonstrations, schools, hospitals, museums, and assemblies. Since 2013, she has been a part of Cromoactivismo, a group that uses color to intervene poetically and transversally in political and social events. In 2020, she joined a collective that is constructing the Transfeminist Agroecological Garden in Buenos Aires.

Building Cycles

Something Broke is presented as part of Building Cycles, Storefront’s ongoing curatorial program that examines building as both a place and a process. Something Broke follows three exhibitions in the cycle, Aquí­ vive gente, Ministry for All, and Arabesque.

Credits

Something Broke: 2011–Windows–2021 by Mariela Scafati. Graphic design by Julián Solís Morales. Organized by Storefront for Art and Architecture, 2021.

A special thanks to Isla Flotante.

Storefront for Art and Architecture Team:

José Esparza Chong Cuy, Executive Director and Chief Curator

Jinny Khanduja, Deputy Director

Eduardo Meneses, Gallery and Operations Manager

Support

Building Cycles has been made possible through the support of the Graham Foundation, as well as from BKSK, DS+R; KPF; Steven Holl Architects; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and by Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.

A Long Evening

with Christian Nyampeta

Begins April 8th, 2021 

97 Kenmare Street, New York, NY

Begins: Thursday, April 8th from 6-8 pm [RSVP]

Ongoing: Wednesday – Saturday from 12-5 pm until May 26th, 2021

#alongevening      @christiannyampeta       @storefrontnyc

A year of social distancing has made time, touch, and gesture elusive. The spaces people inhabit together are increasingly temporal and psychological, rather than physical.

This extended meta-concert at Storefront for Art and Architecture spatializes artist Christian Nyampeta’s recent album, An Evening with Christian Nyampeta. Over the course of the last decade, Nyampeta has been making musical experiments as a way to commemorate the shifts caused by major events: the Fukushima nuclear disaster, police shootings, the intensification of tyrannical regimes, and the current pandemic, to name a few. Each track emerges from Nyampeta’s intimate act of seeking the company of artists, musicians, theorists, and other figures. He mixes their ideas with his own and translates these allusive collaborations into sonic compositions. In doing so, he imbues them with what he calls a sociography of emotions, collectivizing personal experiences into structures of feelings.

A Long Evening with Christian Nyampeta, like its namesake album, is presented during a brief hiatus in the regular course of operating, born as an impromptu act of solidarity. It stretches that brief period of time that sits between day and night, between public and private, between outside and inside, between what the world is and what it could be. Offering a time zone of respite from the exhaustion, loss, grief, and conflict of our current era, it instead imagines a moment of belonging, joy, generosity, and creation in the face of an ever challenging world. In the process, Nyampeta asks a crucial question that provokes a more hopeful future: how do we rest together? 

About the Artist

Christian Nyampeta lives nearby Storefront, from where he organizes programs, exhibitions, screenings, performances, and pedagogical experiments in New York, the Netherlands, London, and beyond. His 2018 film Sometimes It Was Beautiful will be premiered in the US at the Guggenheim Museum on April 30th, 2021 in a solo exhibition curated by Xiaoyu Weng.

On Maintenance

A Long Evening is presented as part of On Maintenance, Storefront’s year-long interim program in the midst of the global pandemic. The program introduces an interjection and a moment of pause in our previously scheduled programming to address aspects of maintenance and care, exploring what it means to both sustain and rehaul our spaces, our social and political systems, and our bodies and minds.

Credits

A Long Evening with Christian Nyampeta. Organized by Storefront for Art and Architecture, 2021. 

Storefront for Art and Architecture Team

José Esparza Chong Cuy, Executive Director & Chief Curator

Jinny Khanduja, Deputy Director

Jessica Kwok, Gallery and Operations Manager

Support      

Storefront’s programming is made possible through general support from BKSK; DS+R; KPF; Steven Holl Architects; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and by Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.

Graphic design by Morcos Key.

 

 .اقرأ عن المعرض باللغة العربية 

Rayyane Tabet

January 23rd–April 18th, 2020*

97 Kenmare Street, New York, NY

#arabesque  #rayyanetabet  @storefrontnyc   

In 2020, an improbable meeting takes place between a young American architect and an older French architectural historian over a century after they were both at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Julia Morgan (1872–1957) was the institution’s first female architecture student, and went on to become a prolific representative of the American Arts and Crafts movement in her home state of California. At a time when Modernism was coming into favor, her design for the Hearst Castle at San Simeon was grand and complex, utilizing decorative elements and mixing many architectural styles.

Jules Bourgoin (1838–1908) was a Paris-born professor who spent much time traveling across the Middle East and North Africa. Bourgoin’s trips were intricately documented, and his keen interest in architectural detail and ornamentation was made visible through elaborate drawings that were incorporated into publications such as Les Arts Arabes (“The Arab Arts”) and Les Eléments de l’Art Arabe (“The Elements of Arab Art”).

It remains unknown the impact that Bourgoin’s work had on his students, and whether Morgan—who was a master in adopting different architectural styles—actually studied under him. Arabesque creates a space where the work of Morgan and Bourgoin is juxtaposed to reflect upon notions of appropriation and context. Anchoring his explorations around these two figures, Tabet presents a new body of work that sits between historical truths, chance encounters, and the migration of ideas.

About the Artist

Rayyane Tabet lives and works in Beirut. Drawing from experience and self-directed research, Tabet explores stories that offer alternative understandings of major socio-political events through individual narratives. Informed by his training in architecture and sculpture, Tabet’s work investigates paradoxes in the built environment and its history by way of installations that reconstitute the perception of physical and temporal distance. His most recent and upcoming solo shows include the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Parasol Unit in London, Carré d’Art in Nîmes, Kunstverein in Hamburg, and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. His work was featured in Manifesta 12, the 21st Biennale of Sydney, the 15th Istanbul Biennial, the 32nd São Paulo Biennial, the 6th Marrakech Biennale, the 10th and 12th Sharjah Biennials, and the 2nd New Museum Triennial.

Building Cycles

Arabesque is the third exhibition in Building Cycles, Storefront’s year-long curatorial program that examines building as both a place and a process. Focused on decoration and ornamentation, this exhibition questions existing and historical modes of practice by examining the notions of context and appropriation in our built environment. Arabesque follows the first two exhibitions in the cycle, Aquí­ vive gente and Ministry for All.

Credits

Arabesque by Rayyane Tabet. Graphic design by Morcos Key. Organized by Storefront for Art and Architecture, 2020.

Storefront for Art and Architecture Team:

José Esparza Chong Cuy, Executive Director and Chief Curator

Jinny Khanduja, Deputy Director

Jessica Kwok, Gallery and Operations Manager

Kweku Addo-Atuah; Axelle Dechelette; Eduardo Meneses; Victor Ohene, Interns

Support

Arabesque is generously supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Violet Jabara Charitable Trust, and BKSK Architects.

Arabesque is the third exhibition in Storefront for Art and Architecture’s year-long program of exhibitions and events, Building Cycles. Founding support of Building Cycles is generously provided by Linde-Griffith Construction Company and the Graham Foundation.

Building Cycles has also been made possible through general support from Arup; DS+R; KPF; Steven Holl Architects, WXY architecture + design; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and by Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.