Closing Reception

Join us for a closing celebration with performances by E.Ko, Chanel Matsunami Govreau, and Kanami Kusajima.

Alison Clancy

Alison Clancy's haunting solo music performances weave tapestries of electric guitar into expansive, brooding drone-psyche Americana. Incantatory vocals express both delicate vulnerability and gritty volatility. Alison summons ghosts from her machines.

La Galli

Salvadoran Bronx based artist La Galli experiments across a diverse range of artistic mediums, giving melodies to her stories in song.

Ceremony - a Healing Space for Personal & Community Care

Rebecca KellyG, known for transcendent performances, uses her voice as a conduit for liberation and love. Weaving intricate harmonies into lush soundscapes, she invites listeners to tune into the wisdom of their hearts, find steadiness in their minds, and embrace the potency of love-rooted justice, accountability, self-compassion, and community care.

Along with the compositions, Rebecca incorporates guided meditation, intuitive movement, self-reflection, and activations on aligning actions with values for a more just and equitable world.

Love always,

In keeping with the EWB 2024 theme “I will always love you,” 'Love always,' is a love letter to the next generations. Grammy nominated singer/ artist / mother, Priya Darshini and dancer/ researcher/ artist/ mother Coco Karol, along with their children and Grammy nominated/ father, Max ZT, come together to create a performance using dance, music, and choreographic sound objects to reflect on the power of care to dismantle the legacies of trauma we refuse to pass down to our children.

Drawing on images and concepts from trees, ecofeminism, and queer ecology the choreography, costumes, and music all envision different root systems of care and meaning-making. The sound score will weave in language drawn from a ‘movement interview’ about mothering, ecological memory and resilience. Movement interviews are a methodology Karol developed around her artistic research and embodied inquiry practice. Costumes made by designer Claire Fleury connect mother and child and audience members utilizing recycled materials. The choreography is interested in gestures of care, the earnestness of human effort, and attachment/ separation to each other and our personal and cultural histories.

Love always,

Coco Karol & Priya Darshini

15 min

Posted In: Performance Art, Poetry, Dance, Music

Tagged: Music, dance

tokissme

The things we carry with us from childhood are often purely emotional, but some of our keepsakes are physical, too. Emrys Linden Holmes’ performance “tokissme” is an homage to all those physical reminders of childhood through an ode to my childhood bear, Kissme. Through the universal language of music, I hope to rekindle everyone's love of their childhood toys with a love letter to my own.

Talisman Workshop

Join our Talisman making workshop! Make one to hang in support of the Biennial and one to take home. Assemble your own small work of art using a variety of recycled materials and add your Talisman to the installation our 2024 EWB artsits made as a “love letter” to the Biennial. Inspiration guided by our own Artistic Director, Eddy Segal. Materials generously provided by Materials For The Arts. Appropriate for all ages.

Shimmer Small Anemones

Shimmer small anemones are an interactive inflatable architectural performance and installation. They are life-sized inflatable anemones that giggle, squeal, and sing to their audience, dance with you, and may invite you to step inside!

Shimmer Team

Director/Producer: Cari Ann Shim Sham*

Performers | Demetris Charalambous & Karsen Tengan

Inflatable | Design & Creation: Mary Hale

Voices from the Village Underground

Enjoy a taste of the West Village’s underground poetry and music scene with live performances from emerging female & gender expansive artists who perform at the Music Inn Open Mic Nights on West 4th St. Audience members will be encouraged to respond and participate in collaborative creative community by contributing to a collective poem which will be shared at the end of the night.

90 minutes

Multidisciplinary New York-based writer Alex Ford was born in St. Louis, MO on the longest day of the first year of the new millennium. At the University of Notre Dame, Ford received both a BA in Theology and English and the 2021 Richard T. Sullivan Award for Fiction Writing. Ford’s work has been featured in the 2023 One Page Poetry Anthology, NYU’s brio. Literary Magazine, and Notre Dame’s Re:Visions and Juggler publications. Ford’s work examines the interplay of phenomenology, myth, and metaphor in making meaning, especially concerning love, God, queerness, and the end of the world.

Clare Anella is 21 and goes by she/her pronouns. She was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and has been in New York City for three years. She is majoring in literary studies and contemporary music at the New School. She instated the weekly poetry open mic at the Music Inn in the spring of 2023.

Mahiri Fainke is a West African traditional and diasporic dancer and musician from Philadelphia studying art, history, and culture for the past 17 years. As a keeper of tradition, Mahiri works to bring the culture to our youth, pass it forward, and keep their traditions alive. Also providing to the larger community to instill joy and healing to people!

Colin Cahill (they/them) is a poet from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are currently a sophomore at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU. They are pursuing a minor in Creative Writing, and their major is still tentative. Last year, their poem “South of Houston Street’s Tuneless Turmoil” received the Honorable Mention for the Academy of American Poets Judith Lobel Arkin Poetry Prize. They primarily write poetry and dabble in prose. Their poetry explores very personal topics, such as mental health, loss, gender, romantic orientation, and sexual orientation, but they also write place-based poetry and ekphrastic poetry.

Collaborator Bios

Jaccoa Stills is a current student of Pace University for production design for the stage and screen. They’ve been writing for a few years but are new the New York as well as spoken word poetry, and are excited to share their work.

Zury Lowell is a nonbinary poet and filmmaker originally from South Salem, New York. They have a B.A. in filmmaking from Northwestern University and have also studied the Prague Film School in their narrative filmmaking program. As a committed anarchist, their work centers the radical and transformative power of care. Recent pieces of theirs have focused on themes of gender, grief, and environmental conversation. Their work has received recognition from Northwestern University, the New York International Film Awards, and the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences.

Thalia Tsai Renaker is currently a student at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, New York, studying painting and ceramics. Her work has been featured in Blue Space Gallery’s Passions exhibition, Pratt Institute’s Venice Summer 2023 exhibition, and Synchrony’s Flagship Exhibition. She works in the traditions of intuitive and surrealist art, and is continuously inspired by recurring patterns in nature like spirals and fractals, as well as the depths of the sea and space.

Posted In: Performance Art, Poetry, Music

Tagged: Music, Poetry

Drawing Blood | Drawing the Body with Ryder Cooley an Every Woman Biennial X Leech House Collaboration

$25 Ticketed Event

Come spend two hours drawing with us…drawing blood that is! Ryder Cooley’s bloodletting bio-performance art sets the stage for a unique sketching experience. Using Hirudu medicinal leeches Ryder will perform a bloodletting ritual while posing for class attendees. Please note, this is real blood and if you are squeamish, this is not for you. Also note, that these leeches are pets, well-cared for, and well-fed, and not harmed in any way during this performance.

The Leech House Series is a symbiotic transference ritual whereby the human parasite becomes guardian host to the hermaphroditic leech, inviting the leech to feast upon and cleanse the blood with hirudin venom and gender-neutralizing verve.

In these rituals and exchanges, the performer subverts her gender by opting to feed medicinal leeches, suggesting a departure from the conventional gender mandate to nurture the human infant/parasite. In turn, the leech offers the medicinal hirudin peptide in this re-presentation of parasitism as a symbiotic exchange. The Leech House Series is produced and performed by Ryder Cooley in collaboration with a selection of photographers & artists.

Artist Bios

Ryder Cooley is an inter-disciplinary artist, musician, performer and animal advocate based in the NY Hudson Valley. She participates in a variety of exhibitions, performances and collaborative projects. Her work has been presented at locations including: Museum of World Culture (Sweeden), El Paso Museum of Art (Texas), Taboo, Transgression & Transcendence (Malta Society of Arts, Valetta) and at the Robert Wilson Watermill Center (Long Island). Ryder has an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She frequently performs with her accordion-driven dark cabaret band Dust Bowl Faeries.

rydercooley.com | dustbowlfaeries.com

Dina Shirin is a photographer from Riga, Latvia and has been living in New York since 1991. She spends her time working on portrait projects and is drawn to experimental, surrealist compositions. In her work, she explores unpredictable points of view, dreamlike layering of images and organic textures. Dina is a member of the CMC photography collective in New York and a contributor to the Paris-based group Foto Femme United. She's exhibited her photographs in group shows in Chelsea and Tribeca in New York.

@dinashirin

Sarah Bachinger Pezdek is an award winning, internationally published and collected photographer. Her fine art photography is represented by Galerie Fledermaus in Chicago, IL and the Geras Tousignant Gallery in CA. Her work is collected by private collectors internationally. She has been published with Cosmopolitan, OUT Magazine, Vogue Japan, Vogue Italia and more. sarahpezdek.com

Richard Lovrich attended Parsons School of Design and works as an independent photographer, designer and producer of theatricals. studiolovrich.com

Robert Palumbo has been producing, directing, and shooting film and TV for over 20 years, and has been afine art photographer since the early 1990’s. He is an Emmy nominee and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Photography. As a still photographer, his work has been exhibited in New York, London, and Berlin, and is included in many prestigious private and public collections, including the New York Historical Society, the Smithsonian, and Lever House. He has worked for National Geographic, the New York Times, Du Magazine, Vice, YRB, The Fall, Gallimard, and many other clients. Robertpalumbo.com

Corey Aldrich is an artist, director, producer and experiential designer who works in the arts and cultural arenas, including music and fashion. His expertise is in designing environments that support story-based narratives. Deep research and materials / object sourcing are his typical approaches to accomplish this. Project partners of note include, but are by no means limited to, The Albany Symphony Orchestra, The Hyde Museum, The Alliance for the Creative Economy, the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company and WMHT

Public Television. @coreyaldrich

Annette Bragas is a freelance Hair & Makeup Artist based in New York and London. She graduated from London College of Fashion and specializes in film, music, theater and beauty/fashion.

annettebragasmua.com

Posted In: Performance Art

Open Gallery Performance: The Leech House Series with Ryder Cooley

Durational blood-letting solo performance with Hirudu medicinal leeches. The Leech House Series is a symbiotic transference ritual whereby the human parasite becomes guardian host to the hermaphroditic leech, inviting the leech to feast upon and cleanse the blood with hirudin venom and gender-neutralizing verve.

In these rituals and exchanges, the performer subverts her gender by opting to feed medicinal leeches, suggesting a departure from the conventional gender mandate to nurture the human infant/parasite. In turn, the leech offers the medicinal hirudin peptide in this re-presentation of parasitism as a symbiotic exchange. The Leech House Series is produced and performed by Ryder Cooley in collaboration with a selection of photographers & artists. Please note, this is real blood and if you are squeamish, this is not for you. Also note, that these leeches are pets, well-cared for, and well-fed, and not harmed in any way during this performance.

Artist Bios

Ryder Cooley is an inter-disciplinary artist, musician, performer and animal advocate based in the NY Hudson Valley. She participates in a variety of exhibitions, performances and collaborative projects. Her work has been presented at locations including: Museum of World Culture (Sweeden), El Paso Museum of Art (Texas), Taboo, Transgression & Transcendence (Malta Society of Arts, Valetta) and at the Robert Wilson Watermill Center (Long Island). Ryder has an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She frequently performs with her accordion-driven dark cabaret band Dust Bowl Faeries.

rydercooley.com | dustbowlfaeries.com

Dina Shirin is a photographer from Riga, Latvia and has been living in New York since 1991. She spends her time working on portrait projects and is drawn to experimental, surrealist compositions. In her work, she explores unpredictable points of view, dreamlike layering of images and organic textures. Dina is a member of the CMC photography collective in New York and a contributor to the Paris-based group Foto Femme United. She's exhibited her photographs in group shows in Chelsea and Tribeca in New York.

@dinashirin

Sarah Bachinger Pezdek is an award winning, internationally published and collected photographer. Her fine art photography is represented by Galerie Fledermaus in Chicago, IL and the Geras Tousignant Gallery in CA. Her work is collected by private collectors internationally. She has been published with Cosmopolitan, OUT Magazine, Vogue Japan, Vogue Italia and more. sarahpezdek.com

Richard Lovrich attended Parsons School of Design and works as an independent photographer, designer and producer of theatricals. studiolovrich.com

Robert Palumbo has been producing, directing, and shooting film and TV for over 20 years, and has been afine art photographer since the early 1990’s. He is an Emmy nominee and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Photography. As a still photographer, his work has been exhibited in New York, London, and Berlin, and is included in many prestigious private and public collections, including the New York Historical Society, the Smithsonian, and Lever House. He has worked for National Geographic, the New York Times, Du Magazine, Vice, YRB, The Fall, Gallimard, and many other clients. Robertpalumbo.com

Corey Aldrich is an artist, director, producer and experiential designer who works in the arts and cultural arenas, including music and fashion. His expertise is in designing environments that support story-based narratives. Deep research and materials / object sourcing are his typical approaches to accomplish this. Project partners of note include, but are by no means limited to, The Albany Symphony Orchestra, The Hyde Museum, The Alliance for the Creative Economy, the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company and WMHT

Public Television. @coreyaldrich

Annette Bragas is a freelance Hair & Makeup Artist based in New York and London. She graduated from London College of Fashion and specializes in film, music, theater and beauty/fashion.

annettebragasmua.com

Posted In: Performance Art

Year Of Woman Book Launch

La MaMa Galleria and The Every Woman Biennial are thrilled to present a year of exhibitions by women and nonbinary artists. Beginning in March 2022, the gallery’s Director C. Finley (artist, curator, and founder of the Every Woman Biennial) organized a series of eight exhibitions, each with a program of art classes and events to engage the La MaMa community.

This series of exhibitions by a diverse selection of women and nonbinary artists explores questions of light and space, process and phenomena, matter and materiality, grief and healing, and resilience and transformation, as well as more poetic themes, including dreams and the divine feminine.

THE ARTISTS

Liz Liguori, Sarah Anderson, Jessica Mitrani, Nichole Washington, Tura Oliveira, Alex Chowaniec, Our Mother the Mountain Group Exhibition Artists, and Itziar Barrio.

The evening will include a champagne toast, a live-streamed conversation with the artists, and an acknowledgement of our dedicated designer Beck Feibelman. Music by Tina Romero.

This project was made possible by a generous grant from the Deborah Buck Foundation.

SOUL WORKS

A solo exhibition by Mashell Black

New York, NY, February 1, 2024 – La MaMa Galleria is honored to present the opening of artist Mashell Black in his solo exhibition SOUL WORKS, curated by Alyssa Alexander. The opening for this exhibition is scheduled for Thursday, February 1st, and will be on view through February 23rd, 2024.

As we embark on a new year, with the echoes of recent global events following in tow, Newark-based artist Mashell Black’s energetic painting practice employs empathy as a guiding medium. Processing a range of emotions across canvas and panel, Soul Works is a visual journey and reflection on the interconnectivity of human experience.

Trained in classical figure painting, Black approaches abstraction with the human body in mind - obliterating arms and legs with swaths of vibrant colors. Originally conceived as commissioned portraits from the ancestral realm, many works suggest a figure compositionally but dissolve into the artist’s signature use of geometric motifs and active brushstrokes. For Black, channeling the pain and frustration of contemporary issues into a painting means more decisive work - a work that hones in on a specific “gripe” and goes about explaining it imaginatively. While the artist doesn’t feel he has earned the right to paint about certain issues (acknowledging the privilege of being free to express himself creatively) he insists that it is his duty to do that work for those in the world who can’t. Humanness, that is more than just the figure, is foundational to Black’s practice. As he developed these “portraits” over the past few years, he considered how they interacted with our diasporic histories as well as the intricacies of the present. Perhaps more importantly, he questions what they will represent when future generations look back at this current iteration of humanity. How do his amalgamations of fear, fantasy, and disillusion translate to tangible evidence of having lived through this time? Unsurprisingly, human interaction is essential to his process. Black often thinks of painting as assemblage, an active putting together of images, people, and experiences. The interactions and interventions of his peers, family and sometimes strangers all find their way into the works. While working on murals, he often invites passerby to add to the piece, noting the varied intensity at which individuals engage. This practice evolved into what the artist describes as a collaborative, ceremonial space of creating temporary murals with loved ones at home in the aftermath of COVID-19 lock-down isolation. Black recognizes this facet of his artmaking as the most fulfilling, and in turn the most successful, and he works diligently to disassociate making art from selling art. For Black, art is something you do to heal the soul.

Celebrate the life and contributions of Corky Lee, artist advocate and ancestor of Kinding Sindaw’s legacy.

Sponsored by Asian American Arts Alliance

An introductory dance and history class led by tradition bearer, Potri Ranka Manis, for children of any age and their families.

Sponsor: National Federation of Filipino American Associations

Resilience is a part of us. Why? In response to injustice, what motivates you to mobilize, strategize and offer pathways forward? How is activism connected to culture? How is activism connected to artistry? In this panel, we will discuss critical insights on defending human rights, exploring the political dimensions of culture and fostering dialogue on the transformative power of culture and art in activism.

This panel will invite the newest generation of Kinding Sindaw company members to reflect on the impact Kinding Sindaw has made on their path. Hear directly from Kinding Sindaw Company Artists as they share personal stories, their relationship to the indigenous culture of the Southern Philippines, the role folk art plays in their everyday life and their hopes for Kinding Sindaw’s future.

Celebrate the life and contributions of Ellen Stewart, La Mama Founder and a Kinding Sindaw creative ancestor. The evening will feature performances and speeches that honor Ellen Stewart and her contributions to Kinding Sindaw.

This panel will invite visitors to discover not only the beauty of indigenous living traditions, but also the need to protect them. How do ancestral oral traditions weave inseparably through everyday life? What models can be offered in resisting the commodification of intangible cultural heritage? A genuine exploration into the challenges and victories of keeping our living traditions alive in NYC across communities.

INTO THE WILD Essay by Jennifer Baahng

Into The Wild presents the pathbreaking, allegorical works of protean painter and ardent colorist Deborah

Buck. It is a focused solo exhibition showcasing nearly two dozen recent works. An exploration into

contemporary concerns, the works are incarnations of Buck’s inquiries on social attitudes, culture and

blasphemy, and emotional freedom at once personal and universal. Elegant and polemical, the art

included in Into The Wild attests to Deborah Buck’s arrival at a distinctive narrative filled with fantastically

Fauvistic personas and cautionary tales. Colliding secular with the sacred, the exhibition hints at essential

codes that unravel the icons and slogans of our time; protest and provoke. Into The Wild invites a raw and

fresh conversation with playful aesthetics, humor, and imprudence. It is a baroque fantasy fortress that

upholds active pursuit and the joy of queueing.

Born in Mount Holly, New Jersey, Deborah Buck grew up on a farm that provided a fertile environment for

creative exploration, which led to the distinctively unique, sculpted, archetypical visual motifs later in her

art. In 1975, she attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, where, at age 18, she was

mentored by Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still, who told her: “Nobody can teach you to paint – you

already know how. But to be taken seriously, you should learn everything about the world around you –

religion, politics, design, science.” She moved to New York City in 1990 and joined the wave of female

artists who gained prominence in New York in the 90s.

ABSURDITY

Into The Wild is Deborah Buck’s response to the absurdity of life. At the exhibition, first up is an elongated

convex wall dedicated to a bizarre, vibrant scene of solo works painted with exuberant colors on 300-

pound, hot-pressed Arches paper. The works, each measuring 45 x 55 inches, bear joy, nostalgia, anger,

frustration, and love. They are the ethos of the artist’s thinking and grounding moments: “Bite-Sized,” the

virtuoso vision of war; “The Judge,” a sense of primal justice; wacky “House Plants”; “Deep Space

Hedges,” the Hamptons; “Coffee (Talk) Clutch;” and “Mr. Nervous,” a possible self-portrait.

THE WILDS AND THE LAURELED

Deeper into the exhibition is a forest of wilds; “Throw Me A Bone,” “Pig Never Wins,” and “Royal Flush.” A

march of sexy retro magenta and Barbie pink therianthropes who conjure melancholy and compassion.

The tall feature wall unveils three portraits on wood, embellished with period frames; a laureled

threesome: “Widow’s Peak,” “Page Boy,” and “Dark Roots.” As part of Buck’s new and ongoing series of

portraits of contemporaries, these harken back to the inventor of Cubism, Pablo Picasso’s perspective on

abstraction and deconstruction. Both artists paint their thoughts rather than what they see.

CRASH IS DIVINE

The apotheosis of the exhibition is Deborah Buck’s eclectic tour-de-force murals: “Heavy is the Head” and

“The Eyes Have It.” Striking and enormous, the two murals, which mirror each other and occupy the vast

main gallery, are cinematic spectacles depicting nuanced performers, unleashed, intense, and intimate.

They contain shifting facades, overlapping planes, and fragmented, condensed flat surfaces that snap

into surprisingly coherent compositions, a conference of pictorial intelligence. A visual constant in the

murals is the strands of pearls, which signify the currency and the agency women hold.

“Heavy Is the Head” is a commemorative majesty that commands the first wall in the main gallery,

comprised of a half dozen of the artist’s solo works cut and collaged. At about 5 feet tall and 13 feet wide,

it is a Surrealist dreamscape of a free-flowing connection to wisdom and knowledge passed down

generations of women saints and personages: After Botticelli, Queen Elizabeth I, Empress Dowager Cixi,

Venus of Willendorf, Cleopatra, a Bedouin woman, a futuristic female robot, and the artist herself.

“The Eyes Have It” is a multifaceted phosphorous display that commands the second wall. Also, at about

5 feet tall and 13 feet wide, it contains fragmented visuals that insist on conjecture to be fathomed. The

symbols range from the alchemical to the astrological and the heretical to the folklore. Grand and

engrossing in its spatial genres, the mural is born from the artist’s dozen solo works that were chopped

and coalesced back – “The Mechanical Girl and Her Mechanical Dog,” “Easter Bunny Bandit,” “In the

Land of Peacock Trees,” “Proud Parents,” and “Enchanted Forest” – and dares us to see the complexity

of the objects and ideas in the work. Notable is the extravagant staging and devising within the flat, two-

dimensional work. Reminiscent of Japanese manga and anime that uses flat planes of color to emphasize

the surface, à la Superflat by Takashi Murakami, the mural reinforces Deborah Buck’s commentary on

culture with little distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low.’

INFECTIOUS GLEE AND RENEGADE

Into The Wild is a wild west, where convention and fiat are unchained and released, and the world’s

traditional satire and viral lampooning are surpassed. Alluding to Hieronymus Bosh’s “The Garden of

Earthly Delights,” the exhibition is a three-wall-triptych of drawings and murals of fantastical figures and

anthropomorphic forms, and portraitures, living on Abstract Expressionistic dripping and scuffed-up

grounds. Combining abstraction and surrealism, Deborah Buck creates rich narratives and invented

creatures that quiver with life amongst dreamlike landscapes and allegorical scenes imbued with meaning

and emotion. Through her masterful employment of sumi ink and skilled craftsmanship, she advocates

the value of discourse on femininity and identity. The exhibition is a glimpse into the elusive conquest of

making the world to our liking. Into The Wild is a clever farce that joyously upends normality and delivers

infectious glee. And Deborah Buck relishes being a renegade.

- Jennifer Baahng | Jennifer Baahng Gallery

Deborah Buck

Into the Wild: To Crash is Divine
September 28 - October 27, 2023

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 28, 2023 at 6PM

Curated by Jennifer Baahng

For press inquiries, images and interview request, please contact: office@baahng.com

Deborah Buck is represented by Jennifer Baahng Gallery

Artist Discussion with Muyassar Kurdi
Saturday, September 9, 2023 at 4:00pm
Moderated by Art Jones and Anna Lustberg

Join artist Muyassar Kurdi for a conversation on her solo exhibition ‘Love Is Blue’, with moderators Art Jones and Anna Lustberg, engaging in lively dialogues on her works of art, currently on view at La Mama Galleria.

Free Admission
La MaMa Galleria 47 Great Jones Street

Muyassar Kurdi

LOVE IS BLUE
August 31 - September 22, 2023

Opening Reception: Thursday, August 31, 2023 at 6PM

Curated by Yvena Despagne

New York, NY, August 31, 2023 – La MaMa Galleria is honored to present Love Is Blue. Love is Blue, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Muyassar Kurdi, is an interdisciplinary exhibition which meets at the intersection of film, photography, and painting - blurring the lines and connecting across modalities. At the center of these cinematic works is embodiment, liberation, and a process of decolonization through the lens of an Arab-American woman. It presents a meditation on the color blue, literally and figuratively, and aims to move beyond borders and walls. Experimentation, intuition, and improvisation is at its heart, stepping into the unknown: a ritual and an act of rebellion. 

Love is Blue presents aliveness across mediums that emanates empowerment and freedom. Analog photographs paired as diptychs explore nature in relation to the body by pulling the viewer into intimate spaces juxtaposed with vast open landscapes. The geography of the body, boundless, shameless, an attempt at reclaiming her narrative. "Love is Blue", a song by the jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby, adds to the musicality behind this exhibition displaying large-scale oil paintings with sounding gestures and featuring graphic scores that were recently performed at Roulette Intermedium as part of Kurdi’s 2022-23 artist residency. This will be Muyassar Kurdi’s first solo exhibition at La MaMa Galleria. 

Artist CV

Artist Website

For press inquiries, images and interview request, please contact the gallery at

lamamagalleria@gmail.com

PROGRAM:

Artist Talk with Muyassar Kurdi
Saturday, September 9, 2023 at 4:00pm
Moderated by Art Jones and Anna Lustberg

Join artist Muyassar Kurdi for a conversation about Love Is Blue with moderators Art Jones and Anna Lustberg, with lively dialogues on her works of art on view in the galleria.

Free Admission
La MaMa Galleria 47 Great Jones Street

BODY POETICS: Voice, Movement, and Improvisation Workshop (1hr 30min)
Saturday, September 16, 2023 at TBA
Instructor: Muyassar Kurdi

Muyassar Kurdi’s workshop focuses on the relationship between body and voice with an emphasis on awareness through movement, spontaneity, and meditative improvisation. Participants will explore sound and movement through exercises built on trust, deep listening, and slow, concentrated, ‘soul’-generated theatrics. 

Admission: Adults 18+ | $25 per person
Note: Advanced registration is required. Space is limited; first come, first served. Participants should bring water and wear comfortable clothing. No previous training necessary, all are welcome.

La MaMa Galleria 47 Great Jones Street

"C to Kingston-Throop"

July 6 - August 13, 2023

New York, NY, July 6, 2023 – La MaMa Galleria is honored to present "C to Kingston-Throop", an exhibition featuring the works of twelve  accomplished alumni of Bed-Stuy Art Residency. These amazing artists have brought life into their craft through their dedicated work ethic and distinctive artistic voices. Each artist has a deeply rooted and personal connection to their work, which radiates an enriching authentic emotive power. Their narratives are informed by their individual journey through various life situations, speaking on their personal growth and their ability to navigate and contribute to the contemporary art landscape. The participating artists are esteemed alumni of the Bed Stuy Art Residency, based in Brooklyn, NY. 

Their work has been displayed in galleries, museums, art fairs and has received awards and recognition around the world. This exhibition opens Thursday, July 6, from 6:00pm - 9:00pm and will be Bed-Stuy Art Residency’s first group exhibition with their artists.

NEW INC. - DEMO2023: Collective Abundance
EMERGEN-C Archive

June 21 - July 2, 2023

DEMO2023 is NEW INC’s festival presenting the next generation of creative projects and enterprises through exhibitions, installations, performances, and talks by industry leaders and NEW INC members at the New Museum and partner venues across New York City. 

NEW INC’s members each take part in program tracks: areas of specialization that are guided throughout the year by a mentor-in-residence. Members in the Collective Abundance track are creatively reimagining new models for wealth, health, and justice. This track spans many disciplines, including architecture, hardware design, urbanism, art, and education. Through practices of community engagement, artistic immersion, and cultural critique, this creative cohort is building newly formed pathways for healing, social care, economic empowerment, and joy. Their work—culminating in the exhibition “Emergen-C Archive”—is rich in non-traditional approaches to archiving from and for underrepresented perspectives, and forefronts the voices, memories, and abilities of the disempowered.

The infrastructures of mapping, zoning, land-use—and the urban social policies that comprise each—contain opaque mechanisms for recording and stratifying information that is rarely known to the public. In contrast, Collective Abundance’s take on these subjects is iconoclastic and subversive: Lafayette Cruise utilizes afrofuturist imaginary to speculate life in a future Chicago; Eliza Evans questions the politics of property records; Amina Hassen and Muvaboard Studios confront representation and visibility in public policies; Melody Stein and Cara Michell problematize the erasure of social and ecological narratives inherent in Western cartography; MICROPOLITAN studio reimages the psychogeography of the playground; Smita Sen activates memories of caregivers and loved ones through objects; Office Party considers the temporality and ephemera of nightlife. All of this is housed beneath Philip Poon’s playful reproduction of a Chinatown awning and Ana Ratner’s curving bookshelf, which holds a reimagined Old Farmer’s Almanac and a miniature library of living medicinal and local plants.

"Emergen-C Archive" illuminates elements of the past, present, and even future that we deem, collectively, to be important, and that are often excluded or expunged from traditional record-keeping. In this, we recognize the need for an emergent-emergency-strategy that, in keeping with the writings of adrienne maree brown, borrows from biomimicry in order to survive and embrace change with abundance.

DEMO2023 is created and presented by NEW INC. The Collective Abundance Showcase is presented in partnership with La MaMa Galleria with fabrication supported by WORTHLESSSTUDIOS. Visit DEMO2023.ORG for more information.