Shared Dialogue, Shared Space

601Artspace, 88 Eldridge Street
Dec. 17 - Jan 22, 2022

Opening Reception: Friday, December 16th, 6-8pm

601Artspace is delighted to partner with the Korea Art Forum to present Shared Dialogue, Shared Space, an exhibition of artworks produced through a series of outdoor, community-based art events that took place across New York City in Inwood, Manhattan, Flushing, Queens and Mott Haven in the Bronx during 2022. The works on display at 601Artspace illustrate a wide range of approaches to social practice and community bridge-building, addressing themes of nature, ecology, immigration and social justice. They featured artwork from:

Arantxa Araujo
Ana Paula Cordeiro
Cody Herrmann
Jeanne F. Jalandoni
Yeon Jin Kim
David Yonghwan Lee
Yunjeong Lee
Rejin Leys
Lily & Honglei
LuLu LoLo
Eunhae Mary Park
Minshik Shin
Quintín Rivera Toro

ABOUT THE EVENTS:

Here From Afar, guest-curated by Jennifer McGregor at Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan, explored varied experiences of nature in different cultural contexts. The Earth Is No Land, guest-curated by Nicolás Dumit Estévez at Inwood Hill Park, created a temporary space for participants to envisage the Earth as Gaia, a super-organic single system, rather than as a divisible and tradable commodity. The rest of the events were curated by one of Korea Art Forum’s co-founders, Heng-Gil Han. Building Together in Flushing, Queens, offered participatory arts activities intended to shift the dominant zero-sum worldview that causes competition, contradictions, exploitation of others and natural resources, and racial and social injustice towards people of color. Against Anti-Asian Sentiments, also in Flushing, invited participants to create art in resistance to the recent surge of hate crimes and incidents against Asian Americans. Mott Haven Project and Mott Haven Art Block Party in the South Bronx brought neighbors together to experience art, explore their own creativity, and confirm their presence in the area.

Shared Space, Shared Dialogue is driven by the belief that humans are defined by art(s) and that art is an indispensable requisite for life. This brick-and-mortar exhibition of artworks, originally created outdoors within communities across NYC in 2022, allows the artists and organizers to reflect on what they have created, and share the outcome with a new audience. It also provides a platform to discuss the unequal distribution of art resources as a broader issue of priority setting, and to challenge dominant narratives of anti-immigration and racial injustice deeply embedded in American culture today.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Arantxa Araujo is a Mexican artist whose work is multidisciplinary, feminist, meditative, and rooted in bio-behavioral research. Their work Cocoon (2022), a prop used for performance at the waterfront of Inwood Hill Park, was made with satin and chiffon connective wings.
IG: @ArantxaAraujo, Website: www.arantxaaraujo.com

Ana Paula Cordeiro makes books by hand, photographs with film, prints from lead type, and writes either sparingly or profusely on unbound folios, which she then binds by hand into volumes. Her exhibited work is Gathering of Impressions/Encuentro de Impresiones (2022).
IG:@anaco_dex, Website: https://anapaulacordeiro.com

Cody Herrmann is an artist and community organizer based in Flushing, Queens. Her work A Glimpse of the Future (it’s bound to come tumbling down), (2022), uses blocks of cardboard to represent the distribution of affordable housing, market-rate units, and hotel rooms in the Special Flushing Waterfront District (SFWD). The project empowers participants to speak on issues of overdevelopment and displacement.
IG: @americanbabe, @flushinbayandcreep, Website: http://codyannherrmann.com

Jeanne F. Jalandoni is based in NYC, and explores the idea of Asians as perpetual foreigners in her art. Her work Community Weaving (2022) is the output of a participatory activity that invited visitors to weave collectively and took place in Inwood Hill Park on April 23, 2022.
IG: @jfjalandoni.art, Website: http://jeannejalandoni.com

Yeon Jin Kim’s multi-disciplinary practice encompasses animated films shot from miniature sets, cut-paper works, drawings and plastic quilts inspired by Jogakbo (Korean traditional quilting). Her work Collaborative Jogakbo (2021-2022) are Jogakbos made by participants that are stitched together.
Instagram: @yeonjikim4, Website: www.yeonjinkim.com

David Yonghwan Lee is a visual artist whose current body of work focuses on personal experiences of relocation. His work Drawing Workshop (2022) is a 3D installation of the table used to invite immigrant passersby to draw their experience of the new city they recently immigrated to.
IG: @david_yonghwan_lee

Yunjeong Lee has been working on interactive art since 2019. Her work Love Is All (2022) is the result of a participatory activity that invited visitors to express their ideas about racial inequality and took place in Mott Haven, the South Bronx.
Website: www.bc12us.com

Rejin Leys is a mixed media artist and paper maker based in Queens. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is included in several public collections. Her work New Colossus Paper (2022) is a group of 3 prints made during an SDSS event at Murray Hill Station in Flushing on October 15, 2022
Instagram: @rejinl, Website: www.rejinleys.com

Lily & Honglei is an immigrant artist collaborative whose practice integrates Asian cultural heritages, traditional art mediums, and emerging technologies. Their work The Red String: Life of the Invisibles (2022) is inspired by "The Butterfly Lovers," an ancient Chinese folktale, and reflects Asian immigrants' cultural heritage and their search for a new identity in the western metropolis.
Instagram: @lily_honglei, Website: https://lilyhonglei.net

LuLu LoLo has been an international visual/performance artist and playwright/actor for over twenty-five years. Her work Listening to the Birds (2022) is presented as a photograph with a QR code next to it. The artist interviewed visitors at Inwood Hill Park, sharing conversations about their experiences and memories of birds.
IG: @thelululolo, Website: https://linktr.ee/LuluLolo

Eunhae Mary Park is a visual development artist. Her work 行雲流水 (Kou-un-ryu-sui) (2022) is a comic sharing the artist’s experiences of immigrating to the US. The artist was born to Korean immigrant parents in Japan. Due to Japanese Nationality Law, which is based on ethnicity and doesn’t recognize birth in Japan, she automatically became an immigrant from birth.
IG: @zmaa4, Website: http://emarypark.com

Minshik Shin is a Korean immigrant artist based in Flushing. He works with people to make paintings, focusing on immigrants who have been denied access to art due to their locality, language, or economic hardship. His work Awaken Tuxedo (2022) is a white tuxedo painted by participants. The artist bought the white tuxedo a long time ago with the hope of attending an upscale event such as an award ceremony. But as a blue-collar art worker, he has never had such an occasion. Thus, the tuxedo has been hanging in his closet. For the outdoor SDSS event on a sunny fall day, he finally took it out and used it for the art festival.
Instagram: @minshikfineart

Quintín Rivera Toro was born in Puerto Rico in 1978. He holds an M.F.A. in Sculpture from R.I.S.D. in Providence, Rhode Island (2013); and a Ph.D. in Art Production and Research from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain (2019). His work Mott Haven Project (2022) is a wall piece developed in honor of community activists. Quintin asked photographer Shian Cui to take portraits of community members. He arranged the portraits into a large-scale scaffolding shed banner. KAF’s and the South Bronx’s communities combined resources to produce the banner installed at a construction site at 349 E 140th Street, Mott Haven, the South Bronx.
IG: @quintinriveratoro, Website: http://quintinriveratoro.com

ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION:

Korea Art Forum (KAF) was founded in New York 2013, and is led by artists, scholars, and peacemakers committed to bridging the world through art, and advancing art’s indispensable social values of connectivity, relevance, and equity to create a peaceful world and enhance people’s quality of life and well-being. KAF aims to stem root causes of inequality found in the contemporary art field and promote an eco-human-centric framework of art as a social product of public engagement that enables the creation of a peaceful world of coexistence, cooperation, and shared prosperity. Operating at the intersection of the visual arts and humanities, KAF annually produces interrelated projects — commissions, exhibitions, forums, and publications — to bring together people from the art world and beyond to share dialogues, build an interconnected peaceful world and support inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.

Image: Arantxa Araujo, Cocoon, 2022. Documentation of a performance at the waterfront of Inwood Hill Park with satin and chiffon connective wings; C-print,16 x 24 inches.