Gates, Borders, Barriers: 2022 Engaging Artists Fellows

Posted on Wednesday, May 17th, 2023

Join us on May 19th. Gates Borders Barriers: 2022 Engaging Artists Fellows. A line drawing graphic of the decorative ironwork design seen in Fred Wilson's sculpture. An evening of public performance, Columbus Park Brooklyn.

Gates, Borders, Barriers: 2022 Engaging Artists Fellows

Date and time: May 19th 2023, 4-8pm
Location: Columbus Park, in Downtown Brooklyn (see below for full location details)

Join us as Yeseul Song and Maya Simone Z. with collaborator Cinthia Chen kickstart the Spring 2023 season of our Gates, Borders, Barriers public program series! Developed in response to Fred Wilson’s sculpture, Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, artists from More Art’s Engaging Artists 2022 Fellowship program present work that highlights invisible barriers, community, and monuments.

A photo of a lone performer standing in a spotlight along a "catwalk" in a sparsely lit space. there are shadows of to other people flanking the performer in the background on the sides of the stage. The performer is a Black, gender non-conforming person with closely shaven hair. They are wearing a long flowy blue sleeveless dress with a white long-sleeve turtleneck underneath. They are looking off into the distance off camera.

Maya Simone Z. and collaborator Cinthia Chen present seen/unseen:

This performance incorporates movement and visual imagery to consider and amplify certain themes of Fred Wilson’s installation – particularly incarceration and perceptions of self in a racialized society. Together, we consider the power and implications of asserting/subverting agency, the act of surveillance, and who is looking in (or who is looking out).


A photo inside what looks to be a circular hall with concrete floors and white walls. There are two people in the foreground dancing around eachother wearing iridescent capes that cover their arms down to their waists. There is a group of onlookers in the background smiling and taking photos of them.

Yeseul Song presents Two Subtle Bodies:

Two Subtle Bodies (2022) is an interactive auditory experience where two strangers (YOU!) walking inside a space experience each other’s peripersonal space. As the two bodies move together, they generate and listen to sounds through bone conduction that correspond dynamically and in real time to their movements. The subtle body is a concept that appears in Taoism and Dharmic religions to indicate bodies that are neither solely physical nor solely spiritual, in contrast to the mind-body dualism that has dominated western thought. In neurology, the space surrounding a body is called Peripersonal Space and enabled by visuo-tactile senses. By recognizing and perceiving this soft and fluid space between us, we can lock new ways of connecting with each other by extending the sense of self and others.

Project by Yeseul Song with sound design collaboration from Jesse Simpson & Greg Halleran and garment design collaboration and production by Daniel Ryan Johnston. Originally commissioned and supported by the Korean Cultural Center in Washington, DC, Embassy of the Republic of Korea.

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This event is part of Gates, Borders, Barriers, a series of public programs in connection with Fred Wilson’s year-long installation Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds. This program is produced in part through the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a grant that funds projects that serve to enhance public space, increase access to cultural programming, and connect the neighborhoods of Downtown Brooklyn and Dumbo. The grant is part of the New York State Downtown Revitalization Initiative.

Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds is made possible by a grant from the Downtown Brooklyn + Dumbo Art Fund, a partnership with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership and Dumbo Improvement District as part of New York State’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This project is supported in part by the Lambent Foundation, the Joseph Robert Foundation, the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation, Pace, The David Rockefeller Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and commissioning sponsor VIA Art Fund. Additional support for educational programming has been provided by the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. Thank you to our partners, NYC Parks and the Center for Court Innovation.

Maya Simone Z.

New York City-based interdisciplinary artist Maya Simone Z. (they/them) creates performance-based work that centers emotional and spiritual connections between ancestral memory, the body, and the Black diaspora’s collective capacity to dream. They examine how brain-body-spirit connections manifest in private and civic life for Black and queer folks in both national and transnational contexts. They are particularly interested in how these tensions affect Black kinship, relationships and communities as we collectively navigate the specter of Capitalist white supremacy.

Maya Simone draws on Black movement and dance traditions, multimedia experimentation, Afro-futurism, poetry, devised theatre, and deep listening to develop work. Through a Black queer, non-binary lens and drawing on Anthropological research methods, they consider the many ways that Black folks connect to spiritual and embodied ways of knowing. Mediums they employ include movement and choreography, writing, sound, installation, video, and performance.

They have worked with Sydnie L. Mosley, Jasmine Hearn, Lisa Fagan and Cinthia Chen. Maya has developed and performed in works presented at Green Space, Corkscrew Theater Festival, Theater Mitu and more, including Waters of Oblivion (2020, 2021), the way back (2020), and Give It A Go (2022). Maya Simone has completed residencies with MODArts Dance Collective (NYC), Hambidge Center (GA), Mudhouse Art (Crete, Greece), GALLIM (NYC), and Marble House (VT). They are a recent Engaging Artists (EA) Fellow with More Art and 2022 artist-in-residence with the FloodNet Deluge program at NYU Tandon.

Cinthia Chen

Cinthia Chen is an interdisciplinary artist and director based in Brooklyn and Taiwan. She is interested in art-making and performance as ritual, that both engages with the self and with community, to explore memory, hybrid identities, and future spiritualism. She uses audiovisual technologies in her work to amplify these ideas and emotions and delights in blending mythos with documentary. She has created and developed original work through Mabou Mines, Theater Mitu, Fault Line Theater, Corkscrew Theater Festival, Asian American Arts Alliance, and Creators Collective.

For her work as a video and projections designer, she was recognized at La MaMa’s Design Fest 2020. Recent design works include: “Where Are You? (New York)” (Mabou Mines), “Take Shape” (ART/New York), “Specially Processed American Me” (Dixon Place), “O – Life’s a Drag” (Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre), and “american (tele)visions” (New York Theater Workshop, assistant designer). Cinthia also works as a film editor and helps run Theater Mitu’s Hybrid Arts Lab program, which supports trans, non-binary, and women artists working at the intersection of performance and technology.

Yeseul Song

Yeseul Song is a South Korean-born, NYC-based artist who uses technology, interaction, and participation as art media. She uncovers creative possibilities of non-visual senses and creates new sensory languages using technology to advocate imaginative and equitable views of the world. With the belief that art needs to be accessible to everyone, she explores and occupies non-traditional public spaces to challenge commonly held ideas about access and accessibility of art. She’s best known for Invisible Sculptures (2018-2021), a series of non-visual experiential sculptures made of sound, warmth, air, smell, and thought. Her first solo institutional exhibition, Invisible and Existent, was shown at the Clayarch Museum in South Korea in 2021.

Yeseul is an Assistant Arts Professor at New York University Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program & Interactive Media Arts (NYU ITP/IMA). Her teaching areas span interactive art and physical computing.

Her work was shown at Clayarch Art Museum (South Korea), Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum (D.C.), New York Live Arts (NY), PASEO (NM), and Art in Odd Places (NY), among others. She has held residencies/fellowships from Museum of Arts and Design, Mana Contemporary, More Art, Future Imagination Fund, and Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, and is an alum of New Museum’s NEW INC. Her work has been supported/funded by Wave Farm, NYSCA, Embassy of the Republic of Korea’s Korean Cultural Center Washington, D.C., Brooklyn Arts Council, DUMBO, GimHae Cultural Foundation, and more. Yeseul’s work won the iF Design Concept Awards and Communication Arts Interactive Awards, and her recent project has been shortlisted for Creative Capital 2023.

Image: Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, image by Kris Graves.

location.

The sculpture site is located in the plaza inside of Columbus Park, in Downtown Brooklyn, which is situated close to the Borough Hall subway station and near the Kings County Supreme Court. You can enter the plaza from the North at Johnson Street and Cadman Plaza, or from the south at Court St and Montague Street. It is close to where the Brooklyn Borough Hall Greenmarket is held.

Click here for Google Map directions.

By Subway: Take the 4/5 or the 2/3 to Borough Hall, or the A/C/F to Jay St, MetroTech.

By Bus: Take the B38, B41, B25, B52, B26 to Cadman Plaza West/Montague St.

accessibility.

The closest accessible subway station is the 4/5 2/3 Borough Hall Subway Station (Manhattan and Bronx-bound only).

The Jay St-MetroTech Subway Station is also an accessible station, however, it is a 7-minute walk away.

The sculpture site and plaza is paved and single-level with bench seating nearby.

Accessible public restrooms are available until 6pm on Wednesday evenings at the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, located one block away at 286 Cadman Plaza W, Brooklyn, NY 11201. For hours, visit the BPL website.

Please contact info@moreart.org with any accessibility needs or inquiries.

Networks of Collective Care: Work from More Art’s 2022 Fellowship

Posted on Monday, February 20th, 2023

NETWORKS OF COLLECTIVE CARE

Join us on March 11th, 2023 for Networks of Collective Care, a showcase of the work of More Art’s 2022 Engaging Artists Fellows, featuring work and conversations by María Bonomi y Lucía Cozziayo Ohs, and Buena Onda Collective (Camila A. Morales & Dominika Ksel) with contributions from Tanika WilliamsYeseul Song, and Maya Simone Z.

Networks of Collective Care serves as an introduction to the evolving practices, research findings, and specific projects of More Art’s 2022 Fellows while also emphasizing the impact and importance of connection, storytelling, and contact among all living beings in order to begin to create a more just ecosystem and world. This public presentation of ongoing work exemplifies the 2022 cohort’s exploration of and attention to themes of community, empathy, and mutual support. 

Networks of Collective Care will be presented at Recess in Brooklyn, NY on March 11th, 2023 from 12-4pm. Click here to register and to learn more about this event! Follow along on social media and subscribe to our newsletter for updates and Fellow spotlights. 

This presentation features artwork from half of the 2022 Fellows—stay tuned for more information on the public presentations of the rest of the cohort (Maya Simone Z., Tanika Williams, and Yeseul Song), which will be featured in May 2023 as activations of Fred Wilson’s Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds.


LOCATION & ACCESSIBILITY

Networks of Collective Care will be presented at Recess, located at 46 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205. Click here for Google Map directions. 

By subway*: Take the G to Clinton-Washington Avs; F to York St; A/C to Jay St-MetroTech; B/D or Q/R to Dekalb Av; 2/3 or 4/5 to Nevins St. *All subway stops require a walk of at least 15 minutes or transfer to a bus line below.  

By bus: Take the B57 to Flushing Av/Waverly Av; B62 to Park Ave/Washington Av; B54 or B69 to Clinton Av/Park Ave; B67 to Market St/9th Ave.

By ferry: Take the Astoria (AST) route to Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Parking: On-street and metered parking are available on Flushing Avenue, Washington Ave, and on many of the adjacent streets. Non-metered parking is available underneath the BQE along Park Avenue. The nearest parking garage is located at 275 Park Ave. Click here for more parking options.      

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The presentation space is ADA accessible, though there is a small slope from the sidewalk level to the front door opening but no step. The main doors do not have automatic options, but can be locked in open position and are wide enough to accommodate walkers and wheelchairs. There is an ADA-accessible, gender-neutral restroom on the ground floor. 

A digital, screen reader-friendly program will be circulated prior to the event and will be available on the day of the event via QR code or shareable link. Visual descriptions of each artist’s presentation will also be included in this program.    

Artist’s presentations and conversations will be available to experience virtually on Zoom at this link, which will be active at the presentation times specified in the program. Closed captioning will be available on Zoom.       

Please send any additional accessibility needs and requests to info@moreart.org at least one week prior to the event. 

Allergen-friendly lunch and refreshments will be available.

Masks are recommended while not eating or drinking, though not required. Masks and hand sanitizer will be available at the entrance and throughout the space.


Featuring work by:

BUENA ONDA COLLECTIVE

We are excited to invite you to Temporalities of Atmospheric Attunement—a performance and installation that reveals the invisible circuitry, shared evolution, and future paths for interspecies unity through an interactive multi-species symphony. Unravel the mechanisms of fear by communing with our fungal counterparts during an evocative afternoon where we hope to satiate both your psyches and belly’s. Here, we will transfer bodies, energies and ideas around how humans, fungi, AI and other intelligences communicate, cooperate and find mutual structures of support and care in an ever-growing state of ecological crisis and dominator culture.

Buena Onda Collective is an eco-centered, paradigm shifting,transmedia collective that uses sculpture, installation and interactivity to playfully explore ideas around restoration, remediation and interspecies communication during the Anthropocene.

We work with media and design techniques including: 3D Modeling, Architecture, Digital and Physical Fabrication, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Sound Composition, Video, Animation and more. Our influences span interstices of science, art, architecture and consciousness. We enjoy subverting and transforming ideas around ‘sustainability’ into more intimate, transhuman experiences where the consciousness of non-human species is more deeply considered. We do this by mapping out the invisible landscapes of our interdependent, rhizomatic relationships via various community-based artworks and workshops.

We are Rockaway based educators and artists with over 10+ years in the art and architecture realm. Our eco-centered community oriented practice values process and collaboration to help facilitate more equitable and dynamic ways of integrating and communing with sentient and non-sentient life.

MARÍA BONOMI & LUCÍA COZZI

surfaces of contact: art towards a collective affect

In 2020, encuentros came into our lives as an artistic practice to explore contact and affect collectively. Coming together, we deepen beyond the virtual connection that we achieve daily, and we contact each other through shared sensorial languages. Encuentros, as a method for collective expansion, gives us breadth to imagine new ways of bonding and acting through support and mutual care.

Inhabiting public spaces, we gather to create collectively and we establish networks that enable us to play and reflect together in the creation of small visual worlds full of new possibilities, dreams and affect. From the inside out, we come together with others by coincidence or by mutual agreement, and we stop being one, to be collectively. Encuentros remind us that we are not alone, that united we are stronger and that there is no affective hope without collective commitment.

María Bonomi and Lucía Cozzi are a Brooklyn-based artist duo from Argentina. They came into contact in 2019 as collective members of Mil Mundos Books and began to establish a loving and collaborative bond. They see that first meeting as the starting point of a spiral that extends with each new encounter, emphasizing the spiral as a symbol of movement, transformation and growth. Their practice explores collective public art as a channel for reflection, action and affect. In their collaborative pieces, encuentros, they co-create spaces of research and dialogue using the shared surface as the conversation space. They value process over output, as it is the catalyst for collective contact, expression and generative bonds.

AYO OHS

The Silent Unseen Audio Tour: An Embodied History of Asian America is an Audio Tour and Soundwalk tracing the history of Asian immigration through facts, stories, and somatic experience. The tour, set at the location of the Queens Museum and available later this year, will invite participants to follow narration, travel to various places throughout the museum, and relate somatically to the space and architecture—correlating place with important feelings, sensations, and historical events in Asian immigration history. On March 11th, ayo will present excerpts of the work, and invite participants to leave their own stories or recordings for future iterations of the project. To access the excerpts, please bring a smartphone and your personal headphones. 

ayo ohs is a socially engaged artist and director, working in performance, sound, movement, and healing arts. ayo is currently working on The Silent Unseen, an interdisciplinary project addressing the history and silencing of Asian women. 

ayo has presented choreography and spatialized audio compositions in venues throughout NY and San Francisco, where their work was described as “feisty, clever and poignant” by the SF Bay Guardian. 

As a close collaborator with Andrew Schneider, ayo developed the lead role in AFTER (The Public Theatre) and co-directed NERVOUS/SYSTEM (BAM Next Wave). From 2013-2018, they were an original cast member in Faye Driscoll’s Thank You for Coming series.

As an anti-racist facilitator and somatic healer, ayo is a founding member of Movement Research’s Artist of Color Council, a co-facilitator of Radical Love and Equity, and the founder of Anti-Oppression Yoga, a network of free online videos and classes.

With contributions from:

YESEUL SONG

On March 11th, Yeseul will present a sketch of her signature work that was created or presented during her time at More Art.

  •  Invisible Sculptures (2018-2021): A series of non-visual sculptures that are made of sound, warmth, air, smell, and thought.
  • Invisible Sculpture On Wheels (2020-2021): During the pandemic, Yeseul brought an invisible sculpture to outdoor spaces on a cart to activate public spaces.
  • Two Subtle Bodies (2022): An interactive experience where two strangers wearing sensor-embedded capes get to know each other through auditory & tactile interaction.

Yeseul Song is a South Korean-born, NYC-based immigrant, artist, and educator who uses technology, interaction, and participation as art media. She uncovers creative possibilities of non-visual senses and creates new sensory languages using technology to advocate for imaginative and equitable views of the world. With the belief that art needs to be accessible to everyone, she explores and occupies non-traditional public spaces to challenge commonly held ideas about access to and accessibility of art.

Her participatory work has created surprising and delightful moments of reflection for people from all over the world. She’s worked with a wide range of arts organizations including Clayarch Museum (South Korea), Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum (D.C.), PASEO (NM), Wave Farm (NY), Brooklyn Arts Council, and Art in Odd Places (NY). Her on-going work has been shortlisted for the Creative Capital Awards.

Yeseul is an Assistant Arts Professor at New York University Tisch’s Interactive Telecommunications Program & Interactive Media Arts (NYU ITP/IMA).

TANIKA WILLIAMS 

“Traces of Yarrow” meanders through remnants of Downtown Brooklyn’s Underground Road, leaving gifts of yarrow as a tribute to the memory and activism of New York abolitionists. The 4-minute piece calls attention to the enduring work of everyday people advocating for freedom, liberty, and justice for all.

Tanika I. Williams (b. St. Andrew, Jamaica; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) is an award-winning filmmaker and performance artist. She investigates women’s use of movement, mothering, and medicine to produce and pass on ancestral wisdom of ecology, spirituality, and liberation.

Williams holds a BA from Eugene Lang College, New School, and an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary. Her films have been screened in national and international festivals and broadcast on American television.

Williams has been awarded fellowships and residencies at NYU Tisch School, New York Foundation for the Arts, Hi-ARTS, Cow House Studios, MORE Art, and BRIC. Her additional awards and appearances include En Foco Media Arts Fund, 99.5 WBAI, Art in Odd Places, Creative Time, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Civic Art Lab, GreenspaceNYC, Let Us Eat Local, Just Food, and Performa.

MAYA SIMONE Z.

On March 11th, Maya Simone will present a rotating series of images documenting their past projects and collaborations, including “Give It A Go” (2022, dir. Lisa Fagan), “Waters of Oblivion” (2021 & 2022, dir. Cinthia Chen), and other recent works – such as “state of water: brooklyn waterfronts” (current, created by Maya Simone Z.).

Maya Simone Z. is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, choreographer and educator from the South. Having come up dancing in church, their movement-based practice centers queer, Black diasporic emotional and spiritual connections between the brain, body and spirit. Their work interweaves movement, writing, sound, installation, video, and performance. They have worked with Sydnie L. Mosley, Jasmine Hearn, Lisa Fagan and Cinthia Chen. Maya has developed and performed in works presented at Green Space, Corkscrew Theater Festival, Theater Mitu and more.

Maya Simone has completed residencies with MODArts Dance Collective (NYC), Hambidge Center (GA), Mudhouse Art (Crete, Greece), and GALLIM (NYC). They are currently an Engaging Artists (EA) Fellow with More Art and 2022 artist-in-residence with the FloodNet Deluge program at NYU Tandon. With support from More Art and the FloodNet Deluge program, they are currently developing an oral history collection and archiving project titled state of water: brooklyn waterfronts, centering experiences of NYC residents in relationship to water, city infrastructure, and flooding.


ABOUT ENGAGING ARTISTS

More Art’s year-long Engaging Artists Fellowship is designed to help emerging NYC artists and community organizers develop and sustain a socially engaged and public art practice. The Fellowship program curriculum includes mentorship, peer networking, access to programming opportunities in New York City, and workshops and artist talks tailored to the interests/needs of the cohort. The infrastructure and laboratory provided by More Art allow selected emerging and underrepresented artists to gain a deeper understanding of the history and vitality of public and socially engaged art and encourage artists to expand and develop social practice.

Announcing our 2023 Commission Artist!

Posted on Saturday, February 11th, 2023

Emmanuel Oni 2023 Commission Artist

We are thrilled to announce More Art’s 2023 Commission Artist: Emmanuel Oni!

More Art’s Engaging Artists Commission* is an opportunity for early career artists focused on the incubation and commissioning of a public art project and carries an $8000 award to realize the project, plus curatorial, conceptual, budgetary, and logistical mentorship. The infrastructure and laboratory provided by More Art allow one selected early career and underrepresented artist (or collective) to gain a deeper understanding of the history and vitality of public and socially engaged art. Click here for more info on the Engaging Artists program. *Formerly known as the EA Residency

Meet Emmanuel Oni

Emmanuel Oni is a first-generation Nigerian-American artist and spatial designer living in New York City. He believes art is not about what he is making, but who he is making it for. His work explores loss and its deep connection with space. His canvas consists of repurposing existing public space infrastructure such as light posts, fencing, underutilized green areas or mobile spaces to prompt community dialogue and connection. He has led and participated in international art and urbanism workshops in Venice, Hong Kong, and Lagos. He has been a Fellow for the Design Trust for Public Space, Culture Push, New York for Culture and Arts, and received awards from Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY, Youth Design Center, Architectural League of New York, and the New York State Council of the Arts. He is a former Director of Community Design at the New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and Adjunct Professor at Parsons the New School for Design. He is the co-founder and Creative Director of Liminal, a non-profit that works at the intersection of art, unity, and space.


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Meet our 2023 Engaging Artist Fellows!

Posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2023

We are excited to announce our 2023 Engaging Artist Fellows: Carrie Sijia Wang, Chava DiMaio, Danielle Cowan, Jessica Angima, Mei Ling Yu, Nava Derakhshani, and Ray Jordan Achan.

More Art’s year-long Engaging Artists Fellowship is designed to help emerging NYC artists and community organizers develop and sustain a socially engaged and public art practice. The Fellowship program curriculum includes mentorship, peer networking, access to programming opportunities in New York City, and workshops and artist talks tailored to the interests/needs of the cohort. The infrastructure and laboratory provided by More Art allow selected emerging and underrepresented artists to gain a deeper understanding of the history and vitality of public and socially engaged art and encourage artists to expand and develop social practice. Click here for more info on the Engaging Artists program.

Meet our 2023 Fellows

Carrie Sijia Wang

Carrie Sijia Wang (she/her) is an artist and educator based in New York. Combining art, technology, and research, she makes performances, videos, and participatory experiences to explore the humanization of machines and the mechanization of humans. 

Wang is a Year 8 member of NEW INC, 2021 Pioneer Works resident, and 2020 Mozilla Creative Media Award recipient. She has shown and presented work with venues including Rhizome, New Museum, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Onassis Foundation, ACM SIGGRAPH, and A.I.R. Gallery. Her work has been featured in publications including the Business Insider, Slate, and Computerworld. She teaches Interactive Media Arts at NYU. www.carriesijiawang.com

Chava DiMaio

Chava DiMaio (he/they) is a trans-masc Filipino/Brazilian storyteller, who possesses the worst memory imaginable. 

His work is a direct defiance to that sentiment.

A guerilla approach to interdisciplinary collaging; jazz/folk melodic fusion littered with missed calls + undeniably New York soundscapes.. receipts, letters, and pressed flowers caress 35mm stop motion animations.. each frame, hand cut with love and care, in an effort to personify the present moment.

Blending the convenience of digital software + textural nostalgia of analog formats to evoke the emotional recall of shared human experiences. Love, pain, joy, despair.. change and our acceptance of the fact.. our subjective differences showcased through universally emotional similarities. 

He received his AA in Classical French Horn/Studio Recording Technology before leaving to serve as the youngest of 20 artists in the ‘2021 Stonehenge NYC’ artist residency program. He works as a freelance audio engineer at ‘moon studios’ (NY), and can be found hand roasting coffee beans at ‘Gentle Brew’ (Long Beach, NY). www.chavadimaio.com

Danielle Cowan

Danielle (she/they) is a blind, queer and Blackarican native New Yorker dabbling in organizing, performance and poetry. Her art comes from fascination with what it means for a body or place to hold multiple sometimes conflicting identities and playing with ways to write within shared histories and trauma. Her work has been published in Causeway Lit’s Revolution Issue, Mobius: the Journal of Social Change and elsewhere. She was an artistic investigator for Rattlestick Playwrights Theater’s Block by Block Project and was a spring 2022 Office Hours Poetry Workshop fellow.

Jessica Angima

Jessica Angima (she/her) is a first-generation Kenyan American organizer, meditation teacher and social practice artist. In a constant state of process, she facilitates intimate community through the exploration of art, justice, and contemplative practice.

Her identities as the daughter of Kenyan immigrants and a Black American woman deeply inform her community-based practice. Her work primarily focuses on deep vulnerability, using meditation and creative practices as methods of awakening consciousness. Jessica blends dharma, ancestral wisdom and poetics to decenter European thought frames and lead herself and others toward liberation.

With over 400 hours of meditation instruction training, she has worked with BRIC, Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Dia Art Foundation, Google, SELF Magazine, SHAPE Magazine, theSkimm, Tricycle Magazine and more. Jessica was a 2019 Create Change Fellow at The Laundromat Project and holds an MA in Arts Politics from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She is a member of Inner Fields Collective and serves as Deputy Training Director at Arena.

Jessica lives in Brooklyn, NY on unceded Lenape territory with her cat and her books. www.jessicaangima.com

Mei Ling Yu

Mei Ling (she/they) self-identifies as a cis-gender, queer Chinese-American and Gong Fu Cha Practitioner. Born, raised and based in New York City, on unceded Lenapehoking land. Mei Ling is deeply passionate about radical healing, spirituality, and well-being. A life-long devotee of Tea, Cha, the healing arts, somatic practices and experienced in practicing Gong Fu Cha, 4 years now.

Mei Ling is a child of Toishanese immigrants, coming from an ancestry of village farmers and Chinese medicine people. Mei Ling aspires to study spiritual herbalism and farming to reconnect and deepen their practice with medicine of the East and West, integrating ancient and modern practices.

Nava Derakhshani

Nava Derakhshani (she/her) is a multimedia artist with a background in Architecture and Sustainable Development. Born to Iranian parents in eSwatini, her work explores themes of migration, identity, belonging, and gender. She is a 2020 graduate of the International Center for Photography, NYC, and works in images, as well as form and sculpture. www.navaderakhshani.com

Ray Jordan Achan

Ray Jordan Achan (he/him/his) is an Indo-Caribbean, Brooklyn based theater-maker. Ray is the Founding Artistic Director of EXILED TONGUES, a performance collective that provides financial, artistic and collaborative support to artists of the global majority who center diasporic consciousness. Ray’s performative work primarily deals with the intersection between racial and climate justice, particularly as they relate to the NYC coastline. He is the recipient of the 2022 NYSCA Individual Artist Grant for his site-specific documentary theater project, “Our Bang for Their Buck: No Pipeline for LNG”, the 2022 Creative Equations Fund from the Brooklyn Arts Council and a commissioned artist with Works on Water for his site-specific documentary theater project, “(Re)Imagining Greenpoint’s Green Waters”. Ray is a Rising Producer Fellow at the Creative & Independent Producer Alliance, and an Associated Artist at Culture Push. Ray is a graduate of Wesleyan University with a BA in Government and Theater with Honors. www.rayjordanachan.com | www.exiledtongues.com

Save the Date! Pablo Helguera: Untitled (Comedy Show)

Posted on Wednesday, December 28th, 2022

Save the Date! Pablo Helguera: Untitled (Comedy Show)

We’re very excited to announce a special project by Pablo Helguera, Untitled (Comedy Show), a 3-night off-broadway performance February 1st, 3rd & 4th. The performance takes the form of a late-night talk show. Each show will feature performances by actress and off-Broadway singer Pheonix Vaughn, sidekickery by artist Gabriela Galván, a smattering of guest interviews with art world luminaries, audience games, and musical performances that honor the (off-)Broadway tradition.

For this unique project, More Art has commissioned a limited edition collectible plate featuring a new Artoon—Pablo Helguera’s iconic series of cartoons about the art world. 

Limited edition plates will be available for sale and included in a special Collector Ticket. More details coming soon!

Known as an instigator, polymath, and multi-disciplinary practitioner, over more than two decades Pablo Helguera has used social observation to reflect on core issues around artmaking, presenting them in a range of media which include drawing, writing, performance, installation, and socially engaged art.

More 2023 announcements coming soon!

Join us on October 12th! Gates, Borders, Barriers: george emilio sanchez and Patty Ortiz

Posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2022

Gates, Borders, Barriers: george emilio sanchez and Patty Ortiz

Join us on Wednesday, October 12th for unlocking the cages of captivity while sitting on a park bench—a performance and site-specific installation created by performance artist george emilio sanchez and visual artist Patty OrtizThe piece explores the intersection and interplay between our dreams and the realities of our existence. This piece is intended as a companion work to Fred Wilson’s Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, on public display in Columbus Park, located near Borough Hall, Brooklyn. unlocking the cages of captivity while sitting on a park bench will be performed in a 2-hour cycle between 5pm and 7 pm on Wednesday, October 12, in recognition of Indigenous Peoples Day.

The performance acknowledges the geographic location of the public space of Columbus Plaza, and the ancestral homelands of which they lie upon/over. sanchez will spend 2 hours stationed on a park bench in the plaza at Columbus Park, at times silent and observing passers-by, other times seemingly sleeping. During active moments he will address each of the three historic figures acknowledged by the park: Christopher Columbus, Henry Ward Beecher, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He will speak directly to the monuments regarding the history and legacy of each historic figure, as a counterpoint to Fred Wilson’s sculpture work, and draw parallels and contradictions between the legacies and realities of these figures, against that of underrepresented people and cultures who are more likely to experience the cages of captivity on view in Fred Wilson’s artwork on public display.

This event is part of Gates, Borders, Barriers, a series of public programs in connection with Fred Wilson’s year-long installation Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds. This program is presented in partnership with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, the Dumbo Business Improvement District, DTBK + Dumbo Art Fund, New York State’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, VIA Art Fund, and Pace Gallery.

george emilio sanchez

Image: george emilio sanchez; image by Maria Baranova.

george emilio sanchez is a writer, performance artist and social justice activist. He was born in Los Angeles, raised in Orange County, California, and became a New York transplant in 1978.  He began making original pieces in 1992 and has continued making performance work and social justice projects to this day. He is currently in the process of crafting a new performance series titled “Performing the Constitution.” The first installment of the series, titled XIV, premiered at Dixon Place in 2019. This work melds autobiography and history in a performance that gives narrative to the injustices racialized communities face as they fight for “equal protection of the laws.” The second performance in the series, titled In the Court of the Conqueror, confronts the over 200 year-old history of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have diluted the Tribal Sovereignty of Native Nations. This second installment premiered at Abrons Arts Center in the spring of 2022. As the Abrons Social Practice AIR he works with youth groups on the Lower East Side to use the arts as a restorative tool while addressing the reality and trauma of gun violence. For the past two years, he organized and facilitated BANG BANG GUN AMOK, a 24-hour performance filibuster on gun culture. George has been collaborating with More Art and the Center for Court Innovation/Brooklyn Justice Initiatives on a series of workshops and performances for participants in CCI’s/BJI’s alternative to incarceration program.

Patty Ortiz

Images clockwise from top left: Kal Ferretti, Jasper Grigsby-Schulte, Jackson Trout.

Patty Ortiz lives and works in San Antonio, Texas and Brooklyn, New York. Ortiz holds both a BFA and an MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally including in Mexico City, Valdivia, Chile, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The series Work Won’t Kill You (2018-15) has been presented at such venues as SALT Quarters, Syracuse, NY; Art Produce, San Diego, CA; Terminal Gallery, San Antonio, TX; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CO; and at Emmanuel College, Boston, MA. Collaborations with Dreamers—DACA recipients—include Citizenship Parade (2020) with MCA DENVER; I AM HERE, Luminaria Festival, San Antonio, TX and I EXIST, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CO. Recent collaborations and video projects with New York based performance artist george emilio sanchez includes the traveling performance project In the Court of the Conqueror (2022) and the durational performance unlocking the cages of captivity while sitting on a park bench (2022), Columbus Park Brooklyn, NY. Ortiz’s work has been recognized by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts Inter-Arts Program and the Colorado Council on the Arts. She has been an artist-in-residence at Ucross, Wyoming, Art Produce, San Diego, CA, and the Santa Fe Art Institute, NM. Public Art Commissions include The Jeppeson Corporation in Frankfort, Germany, the City of Boulder, CO and the Denver International Airport, CO.

Image: Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds, image by Kris Graves.

location.

The sculpture site is located in the plaza inside of Columbus Park, in Downtown Brooklyn, which is situated close to the Borough Hall subway station and near the Kings County Supreme Court. You can enter the plaza from the North at Johnson Street and Cadman Plaza, or from the south at Court St and Montague Street. It is close to where the Brooklyn Borough Hall Greenmarket is held.

Click here for Google Map directions.

By Subway: Take the 4/5 or the 2/3 to Borough Hall, or the A/C/F to Jay St, MetroTech.

By Bus: Take the B38, B41, B25, B52, B26 to Cadman Plaza West/Montague St.

accessibility.

The closest accessible subway station is the 4/5 2/3 Borough Hall Subway Station (Manhattan and Bronx-bound only).

The Jay St-MetroTech Subway Station is also an accessible station, however, it is a 7-minute walk away.

The sculpture site and plaza is paved and single-level with bench seating nearby.

Accessible public restrooms are available until 6pm on Wednesday evenings at the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, located one block away at 286 Cadman Plaza W, Brooklyn, NY 11201. For hours, visit the BPL website.

Please contact info@moreart.org with any accessibility needs or inquiries.