Join us for the opening of Zeelie Brown: Queer Mothers’ Space, the first solo presentation of work in New York by Alabama raised and NYC-based artist Zeelie Brown. The opening will feature a reading by poet Dre Cardinal.

RSVP via Eventbrite (Recommended)

The exhibition is accompanied by an original zine publication by the artist featuring a commissioned essay by Katherine Adams and poetry by Dre Cardinal. Framed as a conversation between Brown and figures both living and historic, the solo project will include performances by Brown and guests, a public dinner, talks, and a gallery-spanning installation of lush inter-media, tactile, and sonic works that confront the intersectional realities of climate injustice, oppression, and anti-Blackness in contemporary American society. Brown focuses on the potential for transformative and restorative justice through acts of resistance and care, as a means to “(re)form the world.” Brown refuses polite forms of permission-seeking to exist and to be visible, or as Brown writes in their artist statement, “You’ll forgive me if I want to destroy things…” 

This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by Jerome Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

PARTICIPANT BIOS

Zeelie Brown’s first art museum was the pine woods in Alabama. They make Black&queer wilderness refuges called "soulscapes" to (re)imagine what nature might be. Zeelie is currently working with the MIT Department of Architecture, NOMAS, and Group Project to create sustainable human waste solutions in her native rural Alabama. Queer Mother's Space is their first Manhattan solo show.

Dre Cardinal is a half-Korean, quarter French-Canadian, quarter German published poet who has won numerous awards, most notably the highly competitive creative thesis mentorship under her favorite poet Josh Bell while (not) studying at Harvard College. A Gemini military brat who moved around the South, she mostly grew up in San Antonio where Zeelie was her next door neighbor. Dre has also lived in Germany, South Korea and Madagascar. She is the last of a long line of first-born surviving females. Her life’s purpose is to clear heart chakras through her writing -- and bring love. She’s known Zeelie for 31 years.

Please join us at EFA Project Space on Saturday, March 12, 2022 for the opening reception of Sprout Hinge Nap Wobble, curated by Dylan Gauthier, Radhika Subramaniam, and Marina Zurkow, with exhibition design by Universal Solvent Studios.

The exhibition features installations by Gaye Chan + Nandita Sharma, Anna Rose Hopkins + Marina Zurkow, Del Hardin Hoyle, and Sal Randolph, and during its run performances, talks, and interventions by Ron Broglio, Heather Davis, Matt Evans, Ellie Irons, Anne Randolph, David Richardson, Tanika I. Williams, Brett Gui Xin, and others.

The gallery will be open from 12 pm, with a durational performance of Acts of Service by Anna Rose Hopkins from 12 - 5 pm, an ongoing plant swap by Eating in Public/Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, and a sound performance/activation by Del Hardin Hoyle beginning at 7 pm. Bring a plant to swap!

RSVP Encouraged, not required. Masks and proof of vaccination required for entry to EFA Center.

The opening will coincide with the reception for Dread In The Eyes, curated by Deric Carner, on EFA’s 3rd Floor, featuring work by EFA Member Artists Samira Abbassy, Allen T. Ball, Michael Eade, Sally Egbert, Jason File, Katya Grokhovsky, Edgar Jerins, Kosuke Kawahara, Greg Kwiatek, Dana Levy, Cheryl Molnar, Nazanin Noroozi, and Whitney Oldenburg.

About the exhibition

Sprout Hinge Nap Wobble is a group exhibition that invites the public to feel planetary relationalities at a time of planetary crisis. The vicious systems and willful actions that are responsible for today’s planetary catastrophe have spawned an attendant industry of planning—preparedness, scenario planning, emergency management—that directs itself to the future, to anticipation, to fear, to escape. Sprout invites your participation to inhabit ways of being that are soft, wild, caressing and off-kilter. We ask if and how we can prepare in the now—think with the emergent boldness of the sprout, with the casual yet crucial pivot of the hinge, with the sensual nonchalance of the nap—both as siesta and as the luxurious pile of a rug—and approach the world with a wobble—uncertain, intoxicated, unsteady and open. 

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This is Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland and gathering place for many Indigenous nations and beings. When the unceded earth breathes again, there will be Indigenous lives here, as there are now and have always been. It will still be Lenapehoking. We learn from the bedrock and commit to uplifting, honoring, and listening to those who are seen and unseen, present and future.

ACCESS INFO

EFA Project Space is located on the second floor of 323 West 39th Street. It is accessible via an elevator (whose door width is 32” and car width is 65”) or two flights of stairs. At the building’s ground-level front desk, you will be asked to sign in with your name but not to provide ID. 

The exhibition is free. Chairs with backs are available to guests upon request by speaking to a gallery attendant. There are two non-gender-segregated bathrooms on the building’s third floor, accessible via the elevators, outside the Project Space. The bathrooms are cleaned twice daily. One bathroom is wide and long enough to accommodate a wheelchair; the other cannot. Neither bathroom has grab bars. Though we cannot guarantee a scent-free space, we ask that all guests, who are able, to attend the exhibition fragrance-free, out of consideration for guests with chemical sensitivities. Fragrance-free soap is available in the restrooms on the third floor.

For the health and safety of our staff and the general public, attendance at events requires advanced RSVP. All attendees must show proof of vaccination. Masks are obligatory for entry.

Please join us on Thursday January 13, 2022, 3-4:30 pm for a Virtual Exhibition Opening Reception of Cosmic Geometries, organized by Hilma’s Ghost.'

Join the curators, artists, and EFA staff for a virtual reception and curatorial walkthrough celebrating the opening of Cosmic Geometries. RSVP.

RSVP Required for Zoom link (provided via Eventbrite)

About the Exhibition

EFA Project Space is thrilled to present Cosmic Geometries, organized by Hilma’s Ghost, a feminist collective project by Sharmistha Ray and Dannielle Tegeder, and featuring a diverse, intergenerational group of artists, with work by: Natessa Amin, Yevgeniya Baras, Lisa Beck, Biren De, Grace DeGennaro, Evie Falci, Anoka Faruqee & David Driscoll, Rico Gatson, Diana Guerrero-Maciá, Xylor Jane, Valerie Jaudon, Laleh Khorramian, Julia Kunin, Marilyn Lerner, Anne Lindberg, Mahirwan Mamtani, Carrie Moyer, Stephen Mueller, Sky Pape, Dorothea Rockburne, A.V. Ryan, Laurel Sparks, Barbara Takenaga, Jackie Tileston and Johanna Unzueta. 

Cosmic Geometries is a group exhibition of intergenerational and intersectional artists that examines the spiritual and aesthetic functions of abstract painting and geometry in art. The artists deploy a range of painterly devices to create cosmic and transcendental visions that combine esoteric world traditions with the language of Modernism. Their motifs are inspired by sources as divergent as Islamic architecture, Buddhist mandalas, Hindu yantras, medieval Christian stained-glass windows, and quantum mechanics, rendering formal devices that range from tessellations, optical illusions, to elaborate ornamentation techniques. These artists primarily work with the language of painting, but also draw from languages and materials adapted from sculpture, installation, craft, textiles, and ceramics. Within these works lies a rich sensibility for color, shape, and compositional elements, which reveal the daring sensibilities that artists are bringing to the historically overlooked arena of the spiritual in art. These artists' practices build upon palimpsest legacies of alternative power structures that are constantly being erased.

Join us for the opening of Dark Data, curated by Gee Wesley, with curatorial fellows Bianca Dominguez and Mae Miller. Work by American Artist, Hannah Black, Stephanie Dinkins, Mimi Ọnụọha, Sondra Perry, and E. Jane.

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 11, 2021, 4-8 pm (mask & proof of vaccination required for entry)

Join us for the opening of BOY BOX, curated by Angela Conant, wIth work by: Jared Buckhiester, CAConrad, Deborah Czeresko, Karen Hall, BB Kenda, Rose Nestler, Sarada Rauch, Marion Scemama and David Wojnarowicz, Vincent Tiley, Christopher Udemezue, Angela Washko.

4-8 pm - Opening

5 pm - Curatorial Walkthrough

7 pm - Drag castrato performance by Daren

RSVP and Masks Required.

For the purposes of this exhibition, masculinity is defined as a constructed and perceived set of traits as evaluated by a cis-dominated, colonized Western culture, in which masculinity is imposed from external perspectives, and translated into individual performances across the gender spectrum. BOY BOX optimistically proposes broader access to the joys and benefits of fluid, detachable masculine traits. The exhibition is not an astigmatic celebration of maleness, but rather a deconstruction of masculinity’s history of power, and a rejection of its stigma, one that has fueled racism and the marginalization of people who do not conform to binary constructions of gender. Addressing the hypocrisy of a masculine archetype that, in Western culture, is reserved for white cis-male people, this exhibition aims to complicate and bend masculinity across intersections of identity. To those ends, BOY BOX aims to carefully bring the fragility and preciousness of masculinity down to earth, catching it as it falls from its cultural pedestal. On view are artworks that address masculinity’s myriad iterations, frustrating ideas of  gender, the male sex, and toxicity.

The United States’ surge of mass killings in recent years evinces the damage wrought by the Western tradition of violence as a masculine craft. Where research into the causes of mass violence is inadequate, an observable commonality is that most perpetrators are male-identifying. Meanwhile, modern sensibilities replace and flip archaic gender roles. Heterosexual romance, for example, is the old-fashioned process of quieting hyper-masculine impulse in order to sweeten and garner interest from a prospective sexual partner. This cloak to accessorize the performance of masculinity is a forefather of what we now call consent.

Working to move outside its conventional constraints, this exhibition offers a group of artists’ observations and performances of masculinity. Their work shows that we each have not only a unique relationship with the masculine, but a right to its power, swagger and strength.

Saturday, February 6, 2021, 7-9:00 PM EST, presented via Zoom. Featuring a curatorial walkthrough, a live discussion with Tela Troge, Tribal Attorney of the Shinnecock Nation and organizer of Warriors of the Sunrise, and a DJ set by Aerial (Devin Ronneberg) and DJ bb buffalo (Suzanne Kite).

For the full schedule of public events, visit: efaproject.space/speculations-on-the-infrared

PARTICIPANT BIOS

Christopher Green is a writer and art historian based in New York. His research and writing focus on modern and contemporary Indigenous art and primitivisms of the historic and the neo-avant-garde. His criticism, essays, and reviews have appeared in Aperture, Art in America, Frieze, and the Brooklyn Rail, among other publications, and he has contributed catalog essays to the Heard Museum, New Museum, Artists Space, the James Gallery. His scholarly research has been published in ARTMargins, Winterthur Portfolio, ab-Original, and BC Studies, and in 2019 he co-edited issue 11 of SHIFT: Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Culture, “BLOOD AND EARTH AND SOIL.” His research has been supported by the Dedalus Foundation, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Museum of the American Indian, the International Council for Canadian Studies, the Sealaska Heritage Institute, Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. He holds a PhD from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and currently serves as Visiting Assistant Professor of art history at the University of North Texas.

Kite aka Suzanne Kite is an Oglala Lakota performance artist, visual artist, and composer raised in Southern California, with an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School, and is a PhD candidate at Concordia University, Research Assistant for the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, and a 2019 Trudeau Scholar. Her research is concerned with contemporary Lakota ontologies through research-creation, computational media, and performance practice. Recently, Kite has been developing a body interface for movement performances, carbon fiber sculptures, immersive video & sound installations. Devin Ronneberg is a multidisciplinary artist born, raised, and living in Los Angeles, working primarily in sculpture, sound, image-making, networking, engineering, and computational media, his work is currently focused on the unseen implications of emergent technologies and artificial intelligence, information control and collection, and the radiation of invisible forces. Ronneberg’s work has most recently exhibited at MoCNA, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and Imaginenative 2019. Ronneberg co-founded the Los Angeles underground imprint Private Selection Records, and produces, djs, and performs live under the Aerial moniker. He holds a BFA in music technology from California Institute of the Arts and is an experimental aircraft designer / builder at Berkut Engineering.

Tela Loretta Troge, Esq. is a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation and a member of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Tribe. She recently organized the Warriors of the Sunrise Sovereignty Camp 2020 in an attempt to raise awareness about the plight of the Shinnecock people. Tela graduated from Michigan State University College of Law with a Juris Doctor and certification in Indigenous Law and Policy from the Indigenous Law Program. She has been fighting for tribal sovereignty for the past 5 years as the attorney with the Law Offices of Tela L. Troge, PLLC. 

RELATED EVENTS

EFA Project Space is pleased to present EFAbstract, curated by Bill Carroll, featuring nine member artists of the EFA Studio Program. Please join us for the opening and a curatorial walkthrough led by Carroll. RSVP here.

About this Event

Each of these artists approach abstraction differently, speaking in a clear and highly individual voice. From the minimalistic style of Clytie Alexander, to the stitched-together baroque works of Heather Bause Rubinstein, the exhibition spotlights the range of abstraction present in the work of contemporary painters, as well as that of the artists working in the Studio Program. Rather than an abstraction derived from esoterics, the artists in EFAbstract are inspired by the world around them: nature, industrialism, poetry and our own perception forms the basis of this work. Dannielle Tegeder is influenced by mechanical drawings she observed growing up in a family of steamfitters, while Sally Egbert’s subdued lyricism comes from her sharp observations of nature. Marjorie Welish approaches her patterned geometries through a poetic lens, derived from her parallel writing practice. Katinka Mann’s abstract shapes make use of subtle geometries to blur the line between painting and sculpture. Suzan Frecon’s work focuses on the relationships between light, perception, and matter. The simple compositions of Suzanne Song’s paintings imply the spaces we encounter in our surrounding environment, reflecting grey floors and white walls ubiquitous to most interior spaces. Vicky Colombet’s work takes the abstract energy, topography, and sensibility of landscapes as a source of inspiration. Together, the nine artists featured in EFAbstract reinvent, reinvigorate, and expand the definition of abstract art.

EFAbstract is presented in celebration of Bill Carroll's ten years as Director of the Studio Program for the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. The EFA Studio Program provides subsidized studios to over 70 members and fosters a cooperative community. Members of the Studio Program must be professional artists with an established studio practice. The members represent over 30 countries and a wide range of visual media and artistic sensibilities. EFAbstract represents this plurality of practice.

Join us for a curatorial walkthrough and opening reception for our exhibition Soft and Wet, curated by Sadia Shirazi. The walkthrough will start promptly at 5pm with the reception to follow. Light refreshments will be served.

Image Credit: Ana Mendieta, Corazón de Roca con Sangre, 1975, Super-8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media, color, silent, Running time: 3:14 minutes © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC, Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co., Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York