Opening & Performance: Xenoduo’s A Mobile Home

Join us on Saturday, September 14th from 1-3pm at Sunset Park for the opening of A Mobile Home by Xenoduo, our 2024 Engaging Artists Commission.

At 2pm: 60-minute performance featuring music by Daniella Barbarito and vignettes with other artists reflecting on their immigration and home-making journeys, curated by Xenoduo.

Click here to RSVP for the Opening Ceremony & Performance.

—

A Mobile Home is a temporary public artwork by creative collective Xenoduo resembling an emergency shelter tent that serves as both a sculpture and an immersive performance stage. The piece draws attention to the complex U.S. immigration process, offering a literal and metaphorical entry point into the current migrant crisis.

On view in Sunset Park through November 2nd, the multi-functional structure highlights the challenges faced by asylum seekers, especially those pursuing Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States. Sited in Sunset Park, one of New York’s most diverse neighborhoods, Xenoduo will also collaborate with refugee-focused organizations in New York City to host public workshops on the TPS process. The piece also serves as a performance platform, where Miguel and Xinan, in a Neo-futurist-inspired theater experience, navigate in short spoken and movement-based vignettes. Each vignette reflects the artists’ personal immigration journeys, their struggles to remain in the U.S., and the doubts they face as immigrants.

Daniella Barbarito is multi-disciplinary artist who was born and raised in Caracas and currently lives in Madrid. Her music reimagines Venezuelan tradition with a modern approach and deals with memory and identity with a humor, pathos and nostalgia that borrows from the bolero cannon. She accompanies herself on the Venezuelan cuatro, adding a touch of folklore to her post-modern approach.

Learn more about Daniella’s work and follow along at @daniellabarbarito.

This project is supported in part by the Lambent Foundation, the Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. More Art thanks our partner, NYC Parks. 

ABOUT NYC PARKS
For nearly 60 years, NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program has brought contemporary public artworks to the city’s parks, making New York City one of the world’s largest open-air galleries. The agency has consistently fostered the creation and installation of temporary public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, NYC Parks has collaborated with arts organizations and artists to produce more than 3,000 public artworks by 1,500 notable and emerging artists in more than 200 parks. For more information, please visit nyc.gov/parks/art.

A Mobile Home was selected through an open call as More Art’s 2024 Engaging Artist Commission. More Art’s Engaging Artists Commission is an annual 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 Commission is part of More Art’s Engaging Artists program which provides infrastructure and laboratory for artists to gain a deeper understanding of the history and vitality of public and socially engaged art. Previous commissions have included Immanuel Oni’s Beyond Memorial (2023), Lily & Honglei’s The Red String (2022), Sean Desiree’s Beam Ensemble (2021) and Nolan Hanson’s Trans Boxing (2020).