presents
Katya Grokhovsky, "The Future is Bright (in progress)"
NARS Foundation is pleased to present residency alumna Katya Grokhovsky’s “The Future is Bright (in progress)”, a one night mixed media installation, accompanied by artist talk and discussion with curator and art critic Audra Lambert as part of its Entree/Encore public events series. “The Future is Bright” is an ongoing long-term multidisciplinary project, which explores disillusion, migration, identity, re-discovery and the failed utopian promise of ideology through the narrative of Grokhovsky’s only surviving 92 year old grandmother, who was a veteran of World War II and a former member of Communist party in Ukraine. The project investigates formation and de-construction of migrant self through an extraordinary story of survival, humanity and legacy.
*“The Future is Bright” project is supported by Asylum Arts.
Katya Grokhovsky was born in Ukraine, raised in Australia and is based in Brooklyn, NY. She is an artist, independent curator, educator and a founding director of Feminist Urgent. Grokhovsky holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA from Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University, Australia and a BA (Honors) in Fashion from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. Grokhovsky has received support through numerous residencies, fellowships and awards including Wassaic Artist Residency, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Studios at MASS MoCA, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, WY, SOHO20 Gallery Lab Residency, BRIC Media Arts Fellowship, VOX Populi AUX Curatorial Fellowship, Residency Unlimited, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, NARS Partial Fellowship, Santa Fe Art Institute Residency, Watermill Center International Summer Residency, Asylum Arts Grant, Dame Joan Sutherland Fund, APT (Artist pension trust) Membership, Australia Council for the Arts ArtStart Grant, NYFA Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists, Chashama space to create grant, NYC, Freedman Traveling Scholarship for Emerging Artists, and others. Her work has been exhibited extensively nationally and internationally.
Audra Lambert is an independent curator and art critic, born in New Orleans, based in New York, NY. Founder of Antecedent Projects (2014), a sustainable urban curatorial consultancy investigating site-specific heritage and cultural regeneration, she has curated exhibits with CoLab-Factory, White Roof Project, Flux Art Fair (2015-16) and (most recently) with the New York City Parks Dept's Arsenal Gallery (2017). Lambert is co-founder of social justice nonprofit alt_break art fair, and she has worked with NY-based art nonprofits More Art and Friends of Material for the Arts, NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs. She has coordinated art installations and performances with artists such as Dread Scott, Autumn Ahn, and Sari Carel. She is Editor-in-Chief of ANTE. media outlet, covering contemporary fine art, design, & culture, and her writing has appeared in D/Railed Mag, Americans for the Arts, Artefuse and Quiet Lunch. She holds a BA, Art History & Asian Studies from Saint Peter's University and is currently completing her MA thesis at the City College of NY (CUNY).
Entrée/Encore is a series of artists’ talks, discussions, and performances, launched in Fall 2016, which presents our artists and curators-in-residence in dialogue with the cultural community in NY and abroad. Whether it is former residency artists who return to NARS to share how their practice has developed since and new work, or current artists presenting ongoing projects, this initiative provides artists a critical environment to experiment with or contextualize multidisciplinary practices and perspectives within the languages of art and critical socio-political concerns.