SaveArtSpace, collaborating with Art At A Time Like This, is presenting artworks on billboards around NYC for the public art exhibition, Ministry of Truth: 1984-2020. Launching October 12th, 2020, just in time for the election featuring artworks that comment on the current state of U.S. politics and that will stimulate dialogue about the increasing polarization of our society. In addition to the public art project, Ministry of Truth will be featured on artatatimelikethis.com, accessible to over 120,000 viewers around the globe.

The SaveArtSpace x Art At At Time Like This selected artists are Dread Scott, Deborah Kass, Marilyn Minter, Shirin Neshat, Sue Coe, Abigail DeVille, Akinbo Akinnuoye, Angela Portillo, Ruj Greigarn, V.L. Cox, Rachel Hsu, Lola Flash, Aaron Gilbert, Helina Metaferia, Terry Berkowitz, Ileana Doble Hernandez, Dan Perjovschi, Guerilla Girls Broadband, Mel Chin, and Holly Ballard Martz.

Curated by Barbara Pollack, Anne Verhallen, Jerome Lamaar, Larry Ossei-Mensah, Sophia Marisa Lucas, & Carmen Hermo.

Ministry of Truth: 1984/2020 is a reference to George Orwell’s dystopian novel as artists feel compelled to address the lies, fake news, trolling and propaganda in today’s political rhetoric. 50 years ago, Orwell predicted a Ministry of Truth announcing WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, horrifyingly relevant in 2020. It is up to artists with their creative imagination to envision a different future for our country.

Participating Organizations

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a progressive message of social change. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.

Art at a Time Like This Inc. is the leading nonprofit virtual art institution providing a platform for free expression for artists to respond to times of crisis.  We have over 110,000 views reaching over 100 countries.  We have received widespread coverage including reviews in the New York Times,  the New Yorker,  Garage,  Whitewalls, Artsy, Artnet, Elle Décor Italy, the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, the Jakrata Post, Capital Ethiopia,  Cobo Social and Bijutsu Techo.  [links] Most recently,  on June 15,  we were a featured segment on Spectrum NY1. During the past three months we have also been frequent speakers at online events including ArtTable,  School of Visual Arts and Chris-ties Education.  Our own LIVE events have included such prestigious speakers as Jerry Saltz, artist Judith Bernstein, artist Dread Scott,  photographer Laurie Simmons and curator Jasmine Wahi of Abortion is Normal,  artist Elektra KB with curator Carmen Hermo, curator Barbara London and artist Mary Lucier, Grey Art Gallery director Lynn Gumpert and artist Noel Anderson and curator Leeza Ahmady and Natasha Ginwalla, co-artistic director of the Gwangju Biennale.

www.artatatimelike.com

Info@artatatimelikethis.com

You can connect with Art At A Time Like This on Instagram at @artatatimelikethis

Curators

Barbara Pollack, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Art At A Time Like This Inc., is a leading authority on global art movements. Since 1994,  she has written extensively on art from non-western centers for such publications as The New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Washington Post, Artnews, Art in America, Airmail and many others. She is the author of two books on Chinese contemporary art: Brand New Art from China: A Generation on the Rise (I.B. Tauris, 2018) and The Wild, Wild East: An American Art Critic’s Adventures in China (Timezone 8, 2010.)

Pollack was the lead curator of the groundbreaking My Generation: Young Chinese Artists, the first exhibition of the 1980s generation of Chinese artists in the U.S.  which was shown at the Tampa Museum of Art and Museum Fine Arts, St. Petersburg in 2014 and traveled to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and the Orange County Museum of Art in 2015. Other recent shows in the U.S. includes WeChat:  A Dialogue in Chinese Art at Asia Society Houston and Lu Yang: Delusional Mandela at MOCA Cleveland.  She has also curated in China most notably Tu Hongtao: A Timely Journey, at the Long Museum West Bund in November 2018and Sun Xun:  Prediction Laboratory at Yuz Museum, also in Shanghai in 2016.  In 2022, she will present Mirror Image:  Changing Chinese Identity at the Asia Society Museum in New York

Due to her extensive expertise, Pollack has lectured frequently, including participating as a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum’s Summer Davos in China in 2012 and 2013. In 2015, she spoke at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum and at Christie’s headquarters in New York. She has also presented talks at Asia Society, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Sotheby’s Institute, Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, NYU Museum Studies Program, NYU Shanghai, Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Art Basel Miami Beach, College Art Association, Louis Museum of Contemporary Art, Berkeley Art Museum, Milwaukee Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Toronto Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum She. is quoted regularly as an expert including a radio interview on PBS-WNYC.

You can connect with Barbara on Instagram at @BXPollack

Anne Verhallen, is a New York-based curator, writer and artist agent. As director of the fine art division at CXA, she has worked on projects for many leading artists, including Kehinde Wiley, Robert Wilson, Friedrich Kunath, DRIFT and Lily Kwong. As director of CXA+ART, Verhallen has overseen many large scale activations and installations in collaboration with brands in the luxury industry. She also writes monthly for Arte Fuse, and has contributed to other magazines such as Artshesays. 

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Verhallen started her career as a high-fashion model working for Vogue, Hermes, Marc Jacobs, exclusively for Givenchy and with leading photographers such as Inez and Vinoodh, Roe Etheridge and Daniel Jackson.

Currently, as an independent curator, she seeks to cultivate the intersection between technology, design, art, and health. In her curatorial work, she often brings different art disciplines together; a recent example is the extensive work she has done alongside curator Roya Sachs, director of Mal-fa Miles, for the performance Virtually There at Mana Contemporary with collaborating artists the Campana Brothers and Kate Gilmore and Heather Rowe.

You can connect with Anne on Instagram at @Anne_Verhallen

Jerome LaMaar, is a Creative Director and Futurist. Born and raised in the Bronx, NY.  His career began in 2001, at the age 15 working for Baby Phat by Kimora Lee Simmons as a high school intern and later the Junior Creative Director / Brand Coordinator. 2008, Jerome  became a trend forecaster traveling the globe to contribute to some of the world's leading brands such as Adidas, L'Oreal, Uniqlo ,Calvin Klein and many more lending his perspective on art, culture, concepts and colors to push new ideas in technology and style. In 2013, his created his own brand called 5:31 Jérôme, which was admired by Beyonce, Jay-z, Hailey Baldwin-Bieber, Kim Kardashian-West, Swizz Beatz, Missy, Rihanna and many others. In 2015, he opened his luxury pop up boutique in the South Bronx called 9J, which shifted the image of the Bronx merging art, music, design and new thought landing him on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Styles section.  His collaborative spirit has led Jerome to land long term partnerships with Google, FAENA Hotels, Samsung, LG, Lyft, Lincoln, Puma, Pinterest, HULU, NIKE, Alife New York and Swarovski. Recently, Lamaar sits as the youngest trustee on the board for The Bronx Museum of Art and also acted as the lead Creative Director & Designer for the super successful 2020 launch of Beyonce's Ivy Park x Adidas collection. 

Follow your dreams, not people. " - JEROME LAMAAR

You can connect with Jerome on Instagram at @JeromeLamaar

Photo by Anthony Artis

Larry Ossei-Mensah uses contemporary art as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. The Ghanaian-American curator and cultural critic has organized exhibitions and programs at commercial and nonprofit spaces around the globe from New York City to Rome featuring artists such as Firelei Baez, Allison Janae Hamilton, Brendan Fernades, Ebony G. Patterson, Glenn Kaino, and Stanley Whitney to name a few. Moreover, Ossei-Mensah has actively documented cultural happenings featuring the most dynamic visual artists working today such as Derrick Adams, Mickalene Thomas, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Federico Solmi, and Kehinde Wiley.

A native of The Bronx, Ossei-Mensah is also the co-founder of ARTNOIR, a 501(c)(3) and  global collective of culturalists who design multimodal experiences aimed to engage this generation’s dynamic and diverse creative class.  ARTNOIR  endeavors to celebrate the artistry and creativity by Black and Brown artists around the world via virtual and in person experiences.  Ossei-Mensah is a contributor to the first ever Ghanaian Pavilion for the 2019 Venice Biennial with an essay on the work of visual artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Ossei-Mensah is the former Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at MOCAD in Detroit. He recently co-curated in 2019 with Dexter Wimberly the critically acclaimed exhibition at MOAD in San Francisco Coffee, Rhum, Sugar, Gold: A Postcolonial Paradox in Spring/Summer 2019.   Ossei-Mensah currently serves as guest curator at BAM's Rudin Family Gallery. He also will be co-curating with Omsk Social Club 7th Athens Biennale in Athens, Greece in Spring 2021. 

Ossei-Mensah has had recent profiles in such publications like the NY Times, Artsy, and Cultured Magazine, which recently named him one of seven curators to watch in 2019.

Follow him on Instagram/Twitter at @youngglobal or www.larryosseimensah.com

Sophia Marisa Lucas is Assistant Curator at the Queens Museum, where she has led, co-organized, and supported over 20 exhibitions including, Queens International 2018: Volumes (Fall 2018 with guest artist curator Baseera Khan), the eighth iteration of the museum's biannual exhibition of Queens-based artists, mounted in partnership with the Queens Public Library; and projects for the Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship. Upcoming exhibitions include newly commissioned projects QM-Jerome Fellow Sydney Shen (Spring 2021), and Kenneth Tam (Spring 2021). Previously, she contributed to exhibitions and programming at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Art and Design, New York; The Artist’s Institute, New York; and Slought Foundation, Philadelphia.

You can connect with Sophia on Instagram at @QueensMuseum

Carmen Hermo is the Associate Curator for the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. She curated Roots of “The Dinner Party”: History in the Making, formed part of the Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall curatorial collective, and co-organized Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 and Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection, among other exhibitions. Previously, Carmen was Assistant Curator for Collections at the Guggenheim Museum. Carmen received her B.A. in Art History and English from the University of Richmond and her M.A. in Art History from Hunter College. She lives in Jersey City.

You can connect with Carmen on Instagram at @CarmenHermosa

Artists

Location: Morgan Ave & Harrison St, Brooklyn

Dread Scott makes revolutionary art to propel history forward. His work is exhibited across the US and internationally. In 1989, his art became the center of national controversy over its transgressive use of the American flag, while he was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dread became part of a landmark Supreme Court case when he and others defied the new law by burning flags on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. He has presented at TED talk on this. Dread's studio is now based in Brooklyn. His work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Walker Art Center, Jack Shainman Gallery, and Gallery MOMO in Cape Town, South Africa, and is in the collection of the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. His performances have been presented at BAM and on the streets of Harlem, NY. He is a 2019 Open Society Foundations Soros Equality Fellow and has received grants and fellowships from United States Artists and Creative Capital Foundation. In 2019 he presented Slave Rebellion Reenactment, a community engaged project that reenacted the largest rebellion of enslaved people in US history. The project was featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Christiane Amanpour on CNN and highlighted by artnet.com as one of the most important artworks of the decade.

Website: www.dreadscott.net

Connect with Dread on Instagram at @DreadScottArt

Location: Atlantic Ave & Classon Ave, Brooklyn

Deborah Kass is an artist whose work examines the intersection of art history, popular culture and the self. Her work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum, The Museum of Fine Art, Boston, The Cincinnati Museum, The New Orleans Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institute, Fogg/ Harvard Museum, as well as other museums and private collections. Kass’s work has been shown nationally and internationally including at the Venice Biennale, the Istanbul Biennale, and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. The Andy Warhol Museum presented “Deborah Kass, Before and Happily Ever After, Mid- Career Retrospective” in 2012, with a catalogue published by Rizzoli. Her monumental sculpture OY/YO became an instant icon and is now permanently installed in front of the Brooklyn Museum and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. In 2018 Kass was inducted into The National Academy. In 2014 Kass was inducted into the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame. She was honored with the Passionate Artist Award by the Neuberger Museum in 2016 and was the Cultural Honoree at the Jewish Museum in 2017. She serves on the boards of the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Website: www.deborahkass.com

Connect with Deborah on Instagram at @debkass

Location: 11th Ave & W 45th St, Manhattan

Marilyn Minter (b. 1948, USA) is an artist and activist based in New York. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and has been included in group exhibitions in museums all over the world. In 2006, Marilyn Minter was included in the Whitney Biennial, and installed several billboards in Chelsea, New York City in collaboration with Creative Time. Her video Green Pink Caviar was exhibited in the lobby of the MoMA from 2010-2011. It was also shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. and on the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York. In 2015, Minter’s retrospective Pretty/Dirty opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, TX. Pretty/Dirty traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, the Orange Country Museum of Art, and finally the Brooklyn Museum in November 2016. Minter is represented by Salon 94, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Baldwin Gallery, Aspen.

Website: www.marilynminter.net

Connect with Marilyn on Instagram at @marilynminter

Location: Grand St & Catherine St, Brooklyn

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker living in New York. Neshat works with the mediums of photography, video and film. Neshat has held numerous solo exhibitions at galleries and museums worldwide, including the Museo Correr in Venice, Italy; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Detroit Institute of the Arts; the Serpentine Gallery, London; and most recently a major retrospective of her work was held at The Broad museum, Los Angeles, and at Goodman Gallery, London. Neshat has been the recipient of the Golden Lion Award - the First International Prize at the 48th Venice Biennial (1999), The Davos World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award (2014), and the Praemium Imperiale (2017). Neshat has directed two feature-length films, Women Without Men (2009), which received the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 66th Venice International Film Festival, and Looking For Oum Kulthum (2017). In 2017, Neshat also directed her first opera, AIDA at the Salzburg Music Festival, in Austria. Shirin Neshat is represented by Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels and Goodman Gallery, London, Johannesburg, and Cape Town.

Connect with Shirin on Instagram at @shirin__neshat

Location: Morgan Ave & Harrison St, Brooklyn

Since the 1970s, Sue Coe has worked at the juncture of art and social activism to expose injustices and abuses of power. Born in England in 1951, she moved to New York in the early 1970’s and made it her home; in 2012 she became an American citizen. Sue Coe has always been ahead of the curve on social issues, her art a conduit for her progressive politics. Thinking of herself as an activist first and artist second, Sue has trained her gaze on a wide variety of ills from the first, translating such diverse topics as the perils of apartheid, the life of Malcolm X, and the horror that is the American meat industry into artworks, exhibitions and books. Coe’s graphic art and unblinking politics struck nerves when it appeared throughout the 1980’s and continues to do so today. An illustrator since moving to the United States from England in 1972, Sue’s reputation by the early 90’s allowed her to set her own agenda with her editors, and Sue’s illustrations from that time period reflect this conflation, with politically pointed illustrations gracing the pages of a variety of disparate publications, including The New York Times, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, The Progressive, The Nation among countless others. By the late 80’s Sue had been featured on the cover of Art News and her work appeared in numerous museum collections and exhibitions, including a 1992 retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington.

Through printmaking, Coe found a way to serve a broad audience, disseminating her messages through affordably-priced prints accessible to people of all financial means. Numerous books and visual essays published over the years have served a similar purpose; over the past two decades, book projects have included Bully: Master of the Global Merry-Go-Round (2004), a scathing critique of the Bush administration, as well as the book Sheep of Fools: A Song Cycle for Five Voices (2005), which gives a broad history of sheep farming, highlighting the abuses of the animals for human gain. “MAD AS HELL!,” Coe’s 2012 exhibition at the Galerie St. Etienne, concomitantly published by O/R Books in book form as Cruel, is a continued, critical look at the animal industry, built upon her groundbreaking book Dead Meat (1996). The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto, published in 2016, features close to 100 original woodcuts and linocuts advocating for animal abolition; Zooicide: Seeing Cruelty, Demanding Abolition, published in 2018, uses original drawings and linocuts to show why the solution is not to reform Zoos, but to abolish them. Other publications include How to Commit Suicide in South Africa (1983), X (1986), Police State (1987), and Pit’s Letter (2000), The Ghosts of our Meat (2013).

In 2013, Coe was awarded the prestigious Dickinson College Arts Award in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Sue also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art in 2015, and more recently, was awarded the 2017 Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking Award by The Southern Graphics Council in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2018, Coe’s solo exhibition at MoMA PS1, “Sue Coe: Graphic Resistance,” received rave reviews. Since 2016, the artist has focused on documenting the misdeeds of the Trump administration and, more recently, its failure to adequately address COVID-19.

“The tectonic plates are shifting and colliding, allowing us to see the primordial depths below. The question is whether we can rise to the occasion.”—Sue Coe

Website: suecoe.gseart.com

Connect with Sue on Instagram at @suecoeart

Location: Webster Ave & Belmont St, 
Bronx

Abigail DeVille was born in 1981 in New York, where she lives and works. Maintaining a long-standing interest in marginalized people and places, DeVille creates site-specific immersive installations designed to bring attention to these forgotten stories. DeVille often works with objects and materials sourced from the area surrounding the exhibition site, and her theatrical aesthetic embodies the phrase, “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” Though collected objects are essential to her installations, DeVille’s priority is the stories her installations can tell. Her most recent exhibitions include The American Future PICA, Portland OR (2018), Empire State Works in Progress The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2017), ICA LA, Los Angeles, CA (2017),Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2017), Momentum 9, Moss, Norway (2017), Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MO (2017), Cooper Gallery at Hutchins Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (2017) Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MO (2017), The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, New York, NY (2017), Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, New York, NY (2016); Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY (2016); The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD (2016);Hauser Wirth, Los Angeles, CA (2016) DeVille has received the United States Artists Fellowship (2018), The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2018), Rauschenberg Artists in Residency (2017), Chuck Close Henry W and Marion T Mitchell Rome Prize(2017- 2018), OBIE Award for Design, (sets& costumes) for Prophetika: An Oratorio at LaMaMa (2015), Creative Capital Visual Artist Award recipient (2015), The Radcliffe Institute for Advance Study Fellowship (2014-2015), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2014) The Studio Museum of Harlem Artist in Residence (2013- 2014), The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2012).

Website: www.art21.org/artist/abigail-deville

Connect with Abigail on Instagram at @victoriouspurple

Location: Richmond Terrace & York Ave, Staten Island

Akinbo Akinnuoye - I've worked with collage for almost 20 years, mostly to pass the time or make into gift wrap for presents. As I became more disciplined and confident in my abilities I began to show my work publicly—first in Brooklyn, New York at a street fair followed by a wine store. In 2008 I completed my Bachelors degree in Antique Restoration from the Fashion Institute of Technology then attended art classes at Hunter College in New York City. Since 2014 I’ve been showing mostly around the New England area, as well as California, Las Vegas, New York City, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Ohio.

Artist’s Statement

I like working with images in unexpected ways. Some work tells a story, while others are whims of immediate subconscious.  Much of my work is a commentary on culture and how the subjects of my works interact with the environments that I've created for them. Color and perspective play a major role. 

It has been therapeutic for me, bringing a certain harmony to an unlikely assortment of images. I don't always create for shock value per se, but to make the viewer ponder things, a little seasoning for their visual meal.  

Looking at my collages may feel like dreamscapes, shaping the way the mind alters what it deems important for its own "reality" and present it with some kind of narrative.  Although you may see only one scene or place, the mind creates multiple interpretations. 

About This Artwork

With any work I do that has social commentary, I want my message to sneak up on the viewer. I want them to see it, scan it with their eyes several times to take in its meaning. 

With this work you’re initially drawn to the center, where the violence is—police against the protesters. This image is flanked by two families, representing a segment of our population (the white middle class) who is oblivious or ignorant of issues regarding racial inequities in our society. 

However, in the far right corner of the frame you see a man, an older black man—who represents servitude, deference to these people. He doesn’t protest, riot, causes a fuss, or seen as an inconvenience to white sensibilities. 

In the windows, people still go about their business, except for the one woman to the left filming it all—a stand-in for the average person not in news media who can document events through the use of the ubiquitous smartphone.

Connect with Akinbo on Instagram at @hrpaperscraps

Location: Flushing Ave & Porter Ave, Brooklyn

New York City-based artist, Angela Portillo , has dedicated herself to her artwork since the age of four. An avid student, she received her bachelor of fine arts degree from Parsons the New School for Design and later completed her master’s degree in global fashion supply chain management at LIM College.

Having been raised in the tropical, balmy city of Miami, Angela experienced heavy displacement and homesickness when moving to NYC. She found comfort in delving deep into the history of her Honduran heritage, merging it with the nostalgia that consumed her at the time in order to make art that allowed her to experience rebirth by recreating her emotional state.

Angela Portillo is a contemporary artist who works with mixed media. Through her assimilation of different textures, colors, even live objects such as flowers, she captures a scenery through each of her artworks that redirects her to a specific moment in time. However, it’s her passion in embracing her family’s Central American background that encompasses each of her works – an element which merges memory, perception and social commentary.

Website: www.angelaportillo.com

Connect with Angela on Instagram at @portillo.ange

Location: Myrtle Ave & Cornelia St, Brooklyn

Ruj Greigarn is a Thai Multidisciplinary Artist and a Photographer. His work mostly focuses on social issues, especially about mental health disorders in the global community. He was a teacher assistant at Chulalongkorn University, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Department of Visual arts. Since Ruj was 14 years old, he had an OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder. After suffering from this disease for several years, he finally overcame this mental sickness by getting treatment from a psychiatrist and professional therapist. Aiming to help others experiencing the same problems about mental health, he applies various techniques in his work as a form to reach out to the societies. Furthermore, his significant goal is to inform the public about its importance and how to be supportive of each other. Ruj is also working on the field of environmental issues and cultures in the 21 century. For instance, political issues, the racism problem, human equality, social equality, gender equality, justice, and freedom. Currently, Ruj is studying at the School of Visual Arts, MFA Fine Arts. He lives and works in New York City, USA.

Website: www.rujgreigarn.com

Connect with Ruj on Instagram at @ruj_greigarn

Location: 21st St & 44th Rd, Queens

V.L. Cox was born in Shreveport, Louisiana and raised in Arkansas. She acquired a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Henderson State University in 1991. A professional artist of 29 years, Cox’s recent work has been highly active in projects that involve Human Rights and Equality. In 2015 in protest of HB1228, a dangerously written Religious Freedom Bill, she launched her National End Hate Project, a narrative body of work that looks at our history of past and present discrimination, gender issues, and social culture.

The End Hate Door Installation, based on segregation era doors, was installed twice on the steps of the Arkansas State Capitol then twice at the base of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The response was overwhelming. Images of the door installation went viral and were seen on Yahoo News, USA Today, in numerous newspapers across the country and as far away as India and South Korea. This powerful series employs authentic and found objects that create a visceral presentation commenting on raw emotions and relevant human rights issues that are still relevant today. They convey messages that are aggressive, violent, disturbing, irreverent, and even humorous, but all show us as a society where we’ve been before and where we can’t allow ourselves to go again.

The project which has now grown to over 53 pieces, is currently on its fifth year of a nationwide tour. It has opened at prominent locations such as: • The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. • The LGBT Center, New York, New York. • The Virginia Longwood Center for the Visual Arts Museum in collaboration with the Moton Museum. • The Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama coinciding with the opening of the Equal Justice Initiative National Memorial for Peace and Justice. • The Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia. • The Delta Cultural Center in Helena, Arkansas coinciding with the 100-year Anniversary of the Elaine Massacre and Memorial unveiling.

Cox understands how to draw the viewer into her work through her experience with working with large audiences. While working as an artist in Dallas, Texas, Cox worked in the scenic industry constructing and painting large backdrops for theatrical organizations such as the Dallas Opera, the Dallas Ballet, and the Los Colinas Film Studios. Some of the productions include: The Nutcracker and Phantom of the Opera. Cox also painted the background for the National Civil Rights Humanities Awards in Memphis, Tennessee where Leah Rabin, wife of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, spoke and presented the award for freedom. V.L. is on the Advisory Board of the Mattachine Society in Washington D.C. it would be greatly appreciated.

Website: www.vlcox.com

Connect with V.L. on Instagram at @vlcoxart

Location: E 180th St & Webster Ave, 
Bronx 

Rachel Hsu was born in Seattle, WA and is currently based in Philadelphia, PA. Her work weaves narratives of lived experience—exploring identity and absence through employing familiar objects that accumulate meaning over extended periods of use in everyday life. She is a cofounder of the cross-disciplinary online arts platform, Open Window.

and counting expresses sentiments of loneliness, endurance, and anticipation. What protects our bodies hurts our human impulse to touch and be touched in return. What should be about tenderness becomes about power. What should be about justice becomes about upholding unjust systems. When this part is over, I hope we don’t embrace amnesia again. I hope there will be touching and kissing and dancing. For now, there is waiting.

Website: www.rachelhsustudio.com

Connect with Rachel on Instagram at @rs_hsu

Location: Utica Ave & Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn

Lola Flash is working at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics for more than three  decades, my photography challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual and racial preconceptions. My practice is firmly rooted in social justice advocacy.

An active member of ACT UP during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, I was notably featured in the 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster. My art and activism are profoundly connected, fuelling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of color worldwide.

This self-portrait series entitled “syzygy, the vision”, examines far reaching facets of intersectional disadvantage that manifest through an enduring history of unsettling cultural conflicts and legacies.  This series defines and memorializes a universal cosmos of a conscious past, present and future as an adaptable contemplation of Afrofuturism for the twenty first century. 

Syzygy is the reflection of the truth seeker in a world where equity and humanity continue to be denied and ignored.  Can our truth-seekers lead us to the place where we are superhuman – shedding our black bodies of institutional “isms”? Why do black bodies have to be superhuman today, tomorrow or yesterday? This series reflects my hope for a divine future where we can soar far away from hashtag chatter into a narrative of substantive pure joy and value.

Website: www.lolaflash.com

Connect with Lola on Instagram at @flash9

Location: Flushing Ave & Waverly Ave, Brooklyn

Aaron Gilbert is a painter whose work depicts symbolic and psychological narratives.  He is a 2015 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award recipient, and has been awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters as the 2010 ''Young American Painter of Distinction.''  Gilbert has exhibited paintings at Lyles and King, Lulu, Deitch Projects, and galleries internationally.  His work is currently in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.  Residencies include 2013 Fountainhead Residency, 2012 Yaddo, 2008 LMCC Workspace Residency as well as a 2008 Affiliate Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. 

Aaron holds an MFA in painting from Yale, and a BFA in painting from RISD. 

Website: www.aaron-studio.com

Connect with Aaron on Instagram at @aarongilbertarnold

Location: Webster Ave & E 173rd St, 
Bronx

Helina Metaferia is an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, video, collage, and assemblage. Her work interrogates the politics of the body in space, particularly as it relates to notions of identity and citizenship. Helina has exhibited her work internationally at venues including Museum of African Diaspora (San Francisco), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Smack Mellon (New York), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit), NOMAD Gallery (Brussels, Belgium), and Modern Art Museum Gebre Kirtos Desta Center (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). 

Helina completed her MFA at Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been reviewed by The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, Artnet News, Hyperallergic, Bmore Art, and Performa Magazine. Her work has been supported by residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, MASS MoCA, and Triangle Arts Association, among others. She is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow / Assistant Professor at Brown University and lives and works in New York City.

My work examines the impact of civil rights eras of the past on today's social justice movements. The project centralizes women of color as its main protagonist. It combines archival research with performative gestures to produce mixed media collages. 

My process begins with library research within Black liberation archives. This prompts me to facilitate performance workshops for those who identify as women of color at institutions around the country. The workshops deconstruct historic protest gestures in an effort to heal trauma stored in the body. I then produce mixed media collages, where images of historical activism are transformed into crowns of adornment on top of images of contemporary women, all of whom were workshop participants. 

This work feels urgent to me. In our trying political climate, where black lives are continuing to fight to matter in the eyes of white supremacy, and women are summoning the courage to speak out against sexual violence, my work seeks to combine the fiery of previous generations with the direness of today in order to imagine a better collective future. 

Website: www.helinametaferia.com

Connect with Helina on Instagram at @helina.metaferia

Location: Pulaski Bridge (11th St) & 53rd Ave, Queens

Terry Berkowitz - If there is a problem that needs to be solved; if there something that I need to understand more clearly; if there is something that is broken and needs fixing… these are the things that attract me and permeate my work. I look between the lines to find connections. I look for glue to put the broken pieces back together. My work focuses on social and political issues; and I use whatever means or media necessary ranging from installation to single-channel video, from audio objects to photography.

My professional career began with public works in urbanscapes and short films reflecting on sociological issues. Working principally with the installation format, I utilize whatever media will best serve the content of the work. blending sculptural elements, audio, slide projections, film projections, photography and/or video. Dealing with social and political problems that were, for the most part, invisible at the time, I was a pioneer in working with social injustice of all types.

The content of my works has included subjects as varied as rape and its resonances in women’s lives, forced expulsions, the lives of Palestinians under occupation, the reality of life in refugee camps in Western Sahara, the Inquisition, terrorism, microeconomies and identity. The works often include interviews as a main component. More recently, I have been exploring photographic installation and producing single-channel videos.

Website: www.terryberkowitz.com

Connect with Terry on Instagram at @terry.berkowitz

Location: Jersey St & Corson Ave, Staten Island

Ileana Doble Hernandez is a Mexican artist working with photography, video, installation and experimental media. Last year she graduated from the top-rated MFA in Photography and Related Media program from Rochester Institute of Technology. She’s also an alumna from Massachusetts College of Art and Design Post- Baccalaureate in Photography. An artist and an activist, Ileana believes that art has the power to make people care, she uses her practice to advocate for harder gun reforms and for the fair inclusion of immigrants within the American society. Ileana’s works are part of public and private collections and have been exhibited in more than 50 group exhibitions in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, France and South Korea. Due to her artistic and academic achievements Ileana is the recipient of several awards, including the 2019 RIT College of Art and Design Outstanding Graduate Student.

Website: www.ileanadobleh.com

Connect with Ileana on Instagram at @ileanadobleh

Location: 43rd Rd & 11th St, Queens

Dan Perjovschi lives and works in Bucharest and Sibiu Romania. His solo exhibitions include: “The black and white Cape Town Report” A4 Art Foundation Cape Town (2019), The Prize Drawing“ Kunsthalle Hamburg (2016), “Unframed” Kiasma, Helsinki (2013); “Not over” MACRO, Rome (2011); “What Happen to US?” MoMA, New York (2007); “I am not Exotic I am Exhausted” Kunsthalle Basel (2007), “The Room Drawing” Tate Modern, London (2006) and “Naked Drawings” Ludwig Museum, Cologne (2005). He has participated in numerous group shows including the Jakarta Biennial (2015); the Sydney Biennial (2008); “The Magelanic Cloud” Cetre Pompidou (2007); the Venice Biennale (2007) and the 9th Istanbul Biennial (2005).   Perjovschi received George Maciunas Prize in 2004, The European Cultural Foundation Prize in 2012 (with Lia Perjovschi) and Rosa Schapire Prize/Kunsthalle Hamburg in 2016

Website: www.artatatimelikethis.com/dan-perjovschi

Connect with Dan on Instagram at @perjovschidan

Location: Flushing Ave & Forrest St, Brooklyn

Guerrilla Girls Broadband

“Provoke, Protest, Prevail”

Towards the end of the 20th century, the Guerrilla Girls sought out new frontiers in their fight for truth, justice and the feminist way, forming three wings to accommodate their broadening interests. Guerrilla Girls BroadBand, one of these sister organizations, is a diverse band of next-generation feminist artists. The Broads use their wit, website and interactive multimedia events to combat sexism, racism and social injustice, focusing attention on such taboo subjects as workplace discrimination, campus rape, armed forces recruitment tactics in schools, and abortion access.

Committed to bringing dead women artists back to life by taking their names, Guerrilla Girls BroadBand includes such fascinating characters as Gerda Taro, Umm Kulthum, Minnette De Silva, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and Josephine Baker. We are a collective of women in love with new media, at home with hacking. Taking advantage of cutting-edge web-based technologies we bring our subversive ideas and signature graphic style to a wired world.

Website: www.guerrillagirlsbroadband.com

Connect with Guerilla Girls Broadband on Instagram at @guerrillagirlsbroadband

Location: Jackson Ave & Pulaski Bridge, Queens

Mel Chin conveys complex ideas and themes through a mutative strategy, working alone or employing different disciplines and people, compelled by researched concept. From such critical means, actions, films, to objects are realized as necessary. His Revival Field (1991), pioneered “green remediation”, using plants to remove toxic metals from the soil. From 1995-1998 he formed the collective the GALA Committee that produced In the Name of the Place a public art project conducted on American prime-time television. His actions for the Fundred Project (2008-2019) to end childhood lead-poisoning, activated mass public engagement as a means for policy-maker education. He has produced original films such as 9-11/9-11 (2007), to decenter preoccupations that engender nationalism and L’Arctique est Paris (2015), to deliver the poignant warnings of a Greenlandic subsistence hunter to an international audience. In 2018 he filled New York’s Times Square with, Wake, on the ground, and Unmoored, in the air, creating an experiential portal into a past maritime industry and a future of rising waters. All Over the Place, a 40-year survey, was named by Hyperallergic as the best NYC exhibition of 2018. He is the recipient of many awards, grants, and honorary degrees including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2019.

Website: www.melchin.org

Connect with Mel on Instagram at @mel.chin

Location: Calyer St & McGuinness Blvd, Brooklyn

Holly Ballard Martz is a multidisciplinary artist who uses language and found objects to create iconic works about deeply felt social, political, and personal issues, including mental illness, gun violence, and reproductive rights. Her two-dimensional, sculptural, and installation-based practice includes casting, sewing, metalwork, and encaustic. She is the recipient of the 2019 McMillen Foundation Fellowship and in 2020 was commissioned by the Gates Foundation to create work celebrating their 20 th Anniversary. Her large-scale installation danger of nostalgia in wallpaper form (in utero) is installed in the Bellevue Arts Museum Forum through winter 2022. Based in Seattle, Martz has exhibited nationally and her work is held in many private and public collections. She is represented by ZINC contemporary in Seattle WA.

Website: www.hollyballardmartz.com

Connect with Holly on Instagram at @hballardmartz