Rachel Frank, Chrysalid Interchange: Wading Heron, Oyster and Mangrove, 2024
Allure of the Land
Curated by NARS Curatorial Fellow
Dylan Seh-Jin Kim
Season III 2024 International Residency Exhibition
August 30 - September 18, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, August 30, 6-8pm
NARS Main Gallery
Featuring works by Sarah Ahmad, Maude Corriveau, Rachel Frank, Giuseppina Giordano, Visaya Hoffie, Shohei Katayama, Tina Lam, Celeste Viv Ly, Kanthy Peng, Heather Renée Russ, Sao Tanaka, Shuai Yang, and Jeehee Yoo.
Home to the First People’s nation of the Lenape-Algonquian people, the Sunset Park neighborhood sits along the waterfront where it has been favorable for its rich, fertile land and prime geographical position. In the neighborhood’s recent history, the development of the Bush Terminal, or Industry City today, situated the area as a major shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing nexus. Recently, with shifting urban developments and real estate rebranding, the neighborhood has been subject to ongoing transformations: its historical, and cultural fabric upended, mended, and worn out from systems of industry and displacement. From the Chinatown Friendship Archway backed by the borough and Beijing to the impositions of an emergent “innovation district” with Industry City, the maintenance of the neighborhood has been driven by outside projections placed onto the land. Keeping this in mind, Allure of the Land reckons with the need to grapple and reconcile with the shifting forces onto the land beneath us, here in the neighborhood and around the world.
Artists in Allure of the Land examine and navigate the complexities of the land, from the visible to the imagined, that have shaped the projection of narratives and realities, across exploitation and colonization, topography and landscapes, and ecological forces of healing. The exhibition is centered on the multidimensionality of land, which Lucy Lippard describes in The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society as “an amalgam of history, culture, agriculture, community, and religion, incorporating microcosm and macrocosm:” all facets being linked with the whole.
About the Curatorial Fellow:
Dylan Seh-Jin Kim lives and works in New York. He currently serves as a Bandung Resident at Asian American Arts Alliance & MoCADA and the Institutional Giving Coordinator at Independent Curators International. He has organized and worked on exhibitions and programs at MoMA PS1, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, Unclebrother, Tutu Gallery, Columbia University, brownstones, restaurants, and elsewhere. He received a B.A. in Philosophy and Film and Media Studies from Columbia University.
About the artists:
Sarah Ahmad is a multimedia artist based in the American Southwest and Pakistan. A Tulsa Artist Fellow (2019–23) and 2024 SOVEREIGNTY resident at Santa Fe Art Institute, Ahmad is currently a NARS foundation resident fellow, in Brooklyn. Ahmad has exhibited internationally—from Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum and CUNY’s James Gallery—to the Sharjah Art Museum, UAE; Pakistan’s Lahore Museum; and Asia Triennial, Manchester. Her work has been featured in mainstream media (USA Today, NPR, PBS) and in art publications (ARTnews, Bomb, MIT). Ahmad has been funded by awards including the Andy Warhol Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies. As an immigrant working across national boundaries, Ahmad’s practice rooted in earth-centered healing provides an awareness of geo-political environmental ties between global and local, positioning her to bring voice from the—often marginalized—rural.
Maude Corriveau is a Canadian artist based in Montreal. She obtained her Master’s degree in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2020. Corriveau’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions as well as prestigious art fairs and auctions across Canada and the United States. She has received grants from the Conseil des arts du Québec (2024), the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship (2023), the Canada Council for the Arts (2021) and the Yvonne L. Bombardier Graduate Scholarship (2019). Her pieces adorn private and corporate collections, including those of BMO Bank of Montreal, Musée National des Beaux-arts du Québec and Ubisoft, among others. Corriveau is represented by the Nicolas Robert Gallery.
Rachel Frank lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She is the recipient of grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, and Franklin Furnace Archive. Her performance pieces have been shown at HERE, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Select Fair, and The Bushwick Starr in NYC, The Marran Theater at Lesley University, Franconia Sculpture Park (MN), and at The Watermill Center in collaboration with Robert Wilson. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include MOCA Tucson (AZ), the SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC), Thomas Hunter Projects at Hunter College (NYC), Standard Space (Sharon, CT), and Geary Contemporary (NYC). She works as a licensed wildlife rehabilitator in Manhattan.
Giuseppina Giordano is an interdependent artist, a term she uses to emphasize the importance of relationships with others in her artistic practice. Her socially engaged research is fueled by transformations and manifests itself in centerless, transdisciplinary, and multisensory works, often in the form of long-term open projects.
Graduated from Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan and completed the executive program Entrepreneurship with Social Impact at SDA Bocconi she has joined residencies such as MASS MoCA, USA, and the Slade School of Fine Art and Camden Arts Centre, London, UK.
Among her exhibitions: 2023, "DIÁLOGOS," solo show, Italian Cultural Institute, Madrid, Spain, 2022, "I'M NOT A TREE," performance with the patronage of the Italian Paralympic Committee, Milan, 2021 "Una Boccata d'Arte," public art project, Fondazione Elpis in collaboration with Galleria Continua, Gressoney-Sant-Jean, Italy, 2019 "Please, Teach Me the Language of a Rose," solo show, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, USA.
Her latest project is the work of art in transformation www.nocentre.org, a start up born to bring art in daily ’s people life, with whom she has collaborated with institutions such as the Italian National Deaf Association.
Visaya Hoffie is an artist based in Australia who graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Trained as a painter, she also engages a range of different media including sculpture, printmaking, textiles, assemblage, inflatables, zines and animation. Her work addresses themes raised by the impact of social media on the everyday. She draws from popular culture and the cultural histories of outsiders and ‘Others’ to explore the possibilities of magic, ritual, re-enchantment and critical cultural re- evaluations that engage with crucial contemporary issues while maintaining one foot in
Shohei Katayama received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2019. He is the inaugural recipient of the MTV: REDEFINE award and has received the Outstanding Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award by the International Sculpture Center, among others. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as Palazzo Mora in Venice, Plaxall Gallery in New York, and Littman Gallery in Portland. Katayama has participated in several residencies, including the Facebook Artist-in-Residence Program, the Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard, the Labverde Amazon Residency in Brazil, the International Sculpture Center Residency in New Jersey, the Tough Art Residency Program in Pittsburgh, and the Asia Institute Crane House in Louisville.
Tina Lam was born in Montréal, Canada, and raised in urban regions by Cambodian-Chinese refugees. She is a graduate of Cornell University (MFA), Concordia University (BFA) and McGill University (PhD). She has attended residencies including Shandaken: Storm King (2022), Cold Willapa Bay AIR(2023), Spring Harbor Laboratories (2023) and the Carving Studio & Sculpture Center (2024).
Celeste Viv Ly (b. Seattle, WA; they/she) is a London/NYC-based interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and writer. Recently shortlisted for Somerset House Studios x CCI Creative Technologies Fellowship (UK, 2023) and received grants from Sasakawa Foundation (UK, 2023), Celeste has exhibited and performed at Tate Modern lates programme, Kyoto Art Centre, Gossamer Fog, Staffordshire St, Ugly Duck, ACUD Galerie, Electrowerkz, etc. Celeste's works have been featured in Clot Magazine, Art Monthly, Tokyo Art Beat, Artribune, Artscape, and other platforms. Celeste's practice inquires into the generative potentials of the intra-action betwixt speculative mythscience, biotechnological processes, and bodily registers of harm and synergy. It encompasses time-based/ sculptural/ multimedia installations, sythesising a hypertextual reality across diegetic prototypes, performance, software, and writing. Interweaving design fiction, peripatetic lifeworld, organic-synthetic processes, hyperstitional and subcultural material-syntaxes, their research and practice question and examine the artefacts of interspaces/non-places, instrumentalisation, and agential entanglement in continual processes of becoming.
Kanthy Peng is an artist who specializes in lens-based mediums. Her current practice focuses on the uneven mobility caused by and/or embodied in colonialism, disasters, and globalized tourism. Peng holds a BFA from the School of Art Institute of Chicago (2016) and an MFA from the Yale School of Art (2019). Her works have been exhibited and screened internationally, including, most recently, at Stuttgart Filmwinter in Stuttgart, Germany, the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, China, and the Times Art Museum in Chengdu, China. Peng has received fellowships and residencies from the Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta, Malta, the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Netherlands, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, United States.
Heather Renée Russ exhibited at NADA Miami with Paradice Palase during Miami Art Week 2023. She also participated in SPRING/BREAK Art Show NYC in 2023 She has shown at SomoS in Berlin, IMT Gallery in London and Satellite Art Fair in Miami. In New York, she has also shown at Flux Factory, ChaShaMa and with Paradice Palase at the Other Art Fair. She has completed residencies at MASS MoCA, ChaShaMa North, Vermont Studio Center, and TransBorder Art on Governors Island. Russ will show with NYC-based apexart in spring 2024. Russ comes from a history of stewarding queer spaces. She co-produced Club Feral, a raucous queer nightclub in San Francisco and the collaborative space in Brooklyn known as Lair Fera.
Sao Tanaka (b. Tokyo, Japan) is currently based New York City. She hold a BFA in Japanese painting from Tama Art University, an MA in sociology and cultural anthropology from Hitotsubashi University, and studied at the School of Visual Arts. Her works have been internationally exhibited including at Mizuma & Kips Gallery in New York, Bunkamura Gallery in Tokyo , Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, in Hiroshima. Tanaka has received the Fellowship of the Pola Art Foundation Overseas Study Programme, the Hiraizumi Curator Jury Prize, SHIBUYA ART AWARDS 2019, Winning Selection Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art "Open Call for Art Project Ideas 2018, and the Grand Prize at the 5th 21st Century Asia Design Competition from Kyoto University of Art. She explores landscape and identity, portraying inorganic materials in genesis scenes, inspired by myths that legitimize identity-region links.
Shuai Yang (b.1998) is an interdisciplinary artist. Her work is in the collection of the Hudson River Museum. Yang also exhibited at Fredric Snitzer, FL; Abigail Ogilvy, LA; Society of Arts and Crafts, MA; Lenfest Center For The Arts, NY; Chambers Fine Arts, NY; Storage Gallery, NY; LATITUDE Gallery, NY and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Nars Foundation residency, the Vermont Studio Center residency, the Rockella Studio Program residency, and other awards and scholarships. Her exhibitions have been reviewed by Paul Laster in White Hot Magazine and by Yubai Shi in the Venti Journal. Yang recently received her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and a BFA in Printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art.
Jeehee Yoo (b. Seoul, Korea) is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in New York. She has an MFA in Mount Royal School of Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art, a Post-Baccalaureate in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a BFA in Korean Painting, and a double major in History of Art from Ewha Womans University in Seoul. Her diverse educational background has influenced her multidimensional approach to art, which seamlessly combines Korean traditional elements with contemporary perspectives. Her work has been shown in several venues throughout the United States and Korea.
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