Transient Grounds
August 8 - September 11, 2021
Governors Island, Nolan Park 6B
Opening Reception: Sunday, August 8th, 2-4pm
With works by Nobutaka Aozaki, Christina Barrera, Daniel Barragán, Keiron de Nobriga, Ignacio Gatica, Stefany Lazar, Cole Lu, André Magaña, Cassandra Mayela, Mariana Parisca, Xinan (Helen) Ran, Edward Salas, Claudia Peña Salinas, Adrian Edgard Rivera, and Daesup Song
ACOMPI and NARS Foundation are pleased to present Transient Grounds , an exhibition that houses the histories embedded and preserved by immigrant, first-generation, and borderland artists whose work counters the gradual forces of cultural erosion. Sited within architectural and emotional fragments of a former home in Governors Island’s Nolan Park, the works unravel experiences and psychologies of hybridity, double-consciousness, memory, and belonging. They reclaim identities against the historic and persisting realities of colonialism, militance, and environmental crises of the Island and the United States at large.
The exhibition of these fifteen artists’ work is not organized by region, but rather through common themes of their experiences: cultural synchronicity, double consciousness, terrestrial memory, inherited trauma, and reshaped distance.
The artworks in this house reveal inherited cultures and narratives, symbols and physical ties to memories of past lands, and the therapeutic quest for belonging. “Home” is much more complicated than family, nationality, ethnorace, or geographic regions. For many artists, the search for home happens through the physiological mapping of the familiar, the imposed, and the foreign. Moreover, the immaterial finds its voice through the objects in this home—and the cohabitation of these artists under one roof—signaling new communities and generations that will make their mark for years to come.
ABOUT ACOMPI
Founded by Constanza Valenzuela and Jack Radley, ACOMPI is a global curatorial project based in New York City. ACOMPI derives from the Spanish word “acompañado,” meaning “in company”, highlighting community, interdisciplinary practice, and collaboration. ACOMPI serves as a youth-oriented, community-ingrained platform to highlight and expand the intersection of independent curatorial practice and site-specific public engagement. ACOMPI recently organized the colloquium “What Can NYC Art Museums Do For Immigrants?” at NYU Steinhardt and curated Shanzhai Lyric: Canal Street Research Association and Diana Sofia Lozano: Suspended in the Iris. Their projects have been featured in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and The Brooklyn Rail, among other publications. @acompi.nyc
