New York University Kimmel Windows Galleries presents We They, a collaborative artwork between the Open Arts Studio of Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI) and the Department of Art & Public Policy (APP) of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

We They

New York University Kimmel Windows Galleries presents We They, a collaborative artwork between the Open Arts Studio of Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI) and the Department of Art & Public Policy (APP) of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The work will be exhibited in the Kimmel Windows at the corner of West 3rd Street and LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village from March 22 through May 10, 2018.

Organized by Pato Hebert, APP associate arts professor; Leesa Tabrizi, teaching artist and project coordinator, Arts and Culture at HMI; and Anooj Bhandari (APP ’17) artist and organizer, the project brought together young queer people of color from HMI and NYU, starting with a set of workshops over several months and culminating in a series of lenticular photographs and text interventions.

The artwork features images and words created with Evie, Je’Jae, Lemuel, Nene, Shromona, Sol Patches, and Troizel. The content of the work emerged from discussions about their similar yet distinct experiences in navigating educational institutions, the Village neighborhood and the challenges of our current historical moment. Simultaneity, juxtaposition, and flow are key aspects of the work.

Lenticular technology allows the layering of multiple photographic images into a single artwork. As viewers move in front of the image, different layers appear, animating space. Such layers enable a viewer to trace the presence and disappearance of bodies or beings within a single site. Artist Pato Hebert has utilized this technology on numerous occasions in previous exhibitions, both in museums and in public street-facing presentations. The impact on sidewalk audiences is striking.

The images were created collaboratively with student participants and synthesize three different approaches to visual storytelling: studio portraits, environmental portraits of the students in a public context of their choosing (e.g., their neighborhood, their favorite part of the city, a site of significant personal memory, etc.), as well as close-up still life images of the maidenhair fern, a delicate plant native to Manhattan and vital to the health of forests. These three different kinds of photographs have been combined into lenticular images which constitute complex shared “portraits” of the cohort of participants. The text works in turn present the ideas and stories exchanged during the workshops, including notions of interdependence, super powers, states of transformation, and belonging.

“Conceptually we want the work to embody how the young people understand their own growth and evolution. How might they feel at once challenged and resilient? How is their sense of being drawn from different spaces, communities or life forces? Cumulatively the work aims to animate the blocks of West 3rd Street and LaGuardia Place, foregrounding some of the very people who circulate and claim the neighborhood in their daily movements while navigating a host of perceptions, tensions, and possibilities.” states Hebert.

The exhibition will run through May 20, is visible 24 hours a day, and is free and open to the public.

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Cheryl Feliciano
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