On April 18, 10:30-7pm, join LMCC at the Arts Center at Governors Island for a day of free, environmentally-focused activities and artmaking honoring Earth Week!
In the morning, the winners of the 2026 NYCHA Resident Climate Action Grants share their community-focused sustainability projects. Then, environmental artist Greg Corbino leads a hands-on, family-friendly puppet-making workshop. In the afternoon, LMCC’s president, Moe Yousuf, will be in conversation with Stony Brook University professor and author Joseph M. Pierce about his new book Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair.
On display throughout the day are exhibits from Stony Brook faculty, LMCC’s Stony Brook University Scholars-in-Residence. Additionally, visitors are also invited to drop in to Open Studios and meet LMCC’s newest cohort of Arts Center Residents, offering a glimpse into the early stages of their time in residence. The day will culminate in a closing reception with food, drink, and live music from the Jazz Loft All Stars.
All events are free and open to the public, and RSVPs are strongly recommended.
LMCC’s Earth Day Celebration is presented in partnership with Stony Brook University and the New York Climate Exchange.
Program Lineup
Celebrating the 2026 NYCHA Resident Climate Action Grants
Upper Gallery, 10:30am-12:30pm
Join us on Governors Island on April 18 during Earth Week for a celebration of the winners of the 2026 NYCHA Resident Climate Action Grants and support them in the next steps of their projects!
You can register separately for this event HERE.
Hudson River Fish Workshop: Transforming New York Harbor Debris into Puppets
Lehman Gallery, 1-3pm
Join artist Greg Corbino for a hands-on puppet-making workshop inspired by the epic migrations of Hudson River fish such as the Atlantic sturgeon, American eel, and striped bass. Fish migrations and spawning cycles remind us that ecosystems depend on collective movement and shared effort. In that spirit, participants will create their own migrating fish puppets while reflecting on how collective action can spark new ideas for climate resilience in our communities. Participants of all ages are invited to drop in and build their own migrating fish puppet. All materials will be provided.
Presented in partnership with NY Climate Exchange
In conversation: Moe Yousuf, LMCC President, and Joseph M. Pierce, Stony Brook University Professor and author of Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair
Upper Gallery, 3:45-4:45pm
LMCC President Moe Yousuf speaks with author and Stony Brook University professor Joseph M. Pierce about his new book, Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair. Drawing on Cherokee thinking, Indigenous queer theory, literary and cultural studies, and art criticism, Pierce illuminates pathways for understanding and resisting the ongoing damages of colonialism while pointing to future worlds and imaginaries that breathe life into Indigenous thought and practice.
Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation citizen) is Associate Professor and Founding Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Stony Brook University.
End of Earth Day Party
Upper Gallery, 4:45-7pm
All guests are invited to cap off Earth Day at the Arts Center with an afternoon party. Meet and mingle with LMCC artists, Arts Center Residents, and friends from Stony Brook University and the New York Climate Exchange. We’ll celebrate Earth Day with food, drink and live music from the Jazz Loft All Stars.
All Day ↓
On Display: Work from Stony Brook University Faculty and Arts Center Artists & Scholars-in-Residence
Upper Gallery
Work from Stony Brook University faculty Joseph M. Pierce and Karen Levitov, in collaboration with BioBAT Art Space Curator Elena Soterakis, plus work from the Arts Center Stony Brook University Scholars-in-Residence Darla Migan and Nobuho Nagasawa.
Arts Center Residency Open Studios
Residency Studios
Throughout the afternoon, visitors are also invited to drop in to Open Studios and meet LMCC’s newest cohort of Arts Center Residents, offering a glimpse into the early stages of their time in residence.
LMCC’s 2026 Arts Center Residents are: Garrett Allen, Rachel Garber Cole, Nicole Cooper, RedMoon Arts Movement Inc, Duy Hoàng, Derek Lee McPhatter, Tijay Mohammed, Sari Nordman, Sabrina Merayo Nuñez, Phoebus Osborne, Marie Lloyd Paspe, Gabriela Salazar, Lisa Ann Schonberg, Sara Stern, Nora Treatbaby, Tanika I. Williams, Darla Migan (Stony Brook University) Nobuho Nagasawa (Stony Brook University), Seaweed City, (Organization-in-Residence), and Noga Cohen (On-Site Assistant).
Featured Artists & Scholars
Nobuho Nagasawa
Professor of Art, Stony Brook University
& LMCC Artist-in-Residence
Luminescence, 2018
Model for seven lunar phases for Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park, Long Island City
Recipient of the Excellence in Design Award and “Women Designed NYC” recognition from the New York City Public Design Commission, as well as the Best Urban Landscape Masterworks Award
Actual Size: 72” (diameter) × 16” (h)Located within the 30-acre waterfront park along the East River,
Luminescence unfolds as a field of cast dome-shaped forms marking the seven phases of the moon. Each six-foot-diameter surface is shaped from high-density urethane foam, translated from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter topographic data into a tactile lunar landscape of craters, ridges, and valleys. Infused with phosphorescent pigments and reflective silicon carbide grains, the material absorbs daylight and slowly releases it at dusk. As evening arrives, each form begins to glow from within, revealing the lunar sequence as pale blue points of light emerging into a soft atmospheric radiance.
Voyage through the Void, 2013
Model for a large-scale boat installation, Shōdo Island, Japan
Exhibited at the Setouchi Triennale in 2013, 2016 and 2025
A permanent collection of Shodoshima MOCA, Shodo Island, Japan
Actual Size: 2' (h) × 13' (|) × 3.7' (w)
Exploring themes of journey, memory, and rebirth through the metaphor of the vessel, this 13-foot-long boat is constructed from steel and woven optical fiber for the Setouchi Triennale on Shōdo Island in the Seto Inland Sea. The form recalls traditional wooden boats once used to ferry goods and people between the islands. The Japanese title Umi no Utsuwa carries a double meaning: “Vessel of the Sea” and “Vessel of Birth” (womb). Resonating with wave sounds recorded from the Inland Sea, the boat emits a pulsating light that shifts like breath—from deep indigo to pale blue.
Visitors are invited to lie within this luminous form, enacting a symbolic journey: a voyage through the void that is also a passage of birth from the sea. Personal, bodily experience merges with the collective memory of the island’s seafaring culture, transforming the boat from a historical reference into a timeless vessel for contemplating life’s transitions. The English title turns the gaze outward, evoking a threshold between life and death—awakening elemental perception and drawing the viewer toward the depths of existence.
About the Artist
Raised between Europe and Japan and based in New York since 2001, Nobuho Nagasawa is a transnational, transdisciplinary artist whose practice moves across sculptural installation, architectural intervention, time-based media, social practice, and public art. She studied art in Europe, completing her degree at the Berlin University of the Arts before being invited to the California Institute of the Arts in 1986. This bi-continental formation—across Europe, Japan, and the United States—has shaped a practice grounded in movement across cultural and geographic thresholds, where space, material, and community are understood as relational fields rather than fixed or bounded systems.
Nagasawa’s work unfolds between temporary installations and permanent public artworks, from large-scale site-responsive environments to more intimate sculptural works. In recent years, her practice has increasingly engaged the sensory and natural phenomena, expanding the language of sculpture into fields of light, sound, wind, and rhythm. Wave recordings, bird song, wind pattern, the human heartbeat and voices are integrated as forms of communication, activating environments that are experienced as much through the body as through sight. Her works emerge from a sustained inquiry into how perception, memory, and place intersect and resonate.
Her work has been exhibited internationally across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Japan. Selected venues include the Royal Garden of Prague Castle, the Ludwig Museums in Germany and Hungary, the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico, the Alexandria Library in Egypt, and the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Los Angeles, alongside numerous institutional and museum presentations worldwide. She has participated in major international biennials and triennials including the Asian Art Biennial (Bangladesh, 2002), International Art Biennial (Egypt, 2002, 2004, 2005), Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates, 2003), Echigo-Tsumari Triennial (Japan, 2003), Sinop Biennial (Turkey, 2006), Fukushima Biennial (2012, 2014), Setouchi International Art Festival (2013, 2016, 2025), and Nakanojo Biennial (2019). From 2026 to 2028, her work will be presented at Mudam (Museum of Contemporary Art Luxembourg), Lenbachhaus Munich, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.
She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and grants, including from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the Berlin Senate, the Rockefeller Foundation, the California Arts Council, the Brody Arts Fund, and the Japan Foundation, as well as the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation and stablished Artist Fellowships in New York.
Nagasawa has completed more than forty public art projects internationally in collaboration with architects, landscape architects, and engineers. These works span civic-scale interventions in public institutions and infrastructure, as well as integrated sculptural and environmental installations in parks, waterfronts, and urban landscapes. She has received three Design Excellence Award for Architecture and Public Art and has been widely published and reviewed in Art in America, Art Asia Pacific, Sculpture, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The New York Times (Holland Cotter).
Darla Migan
Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, and LMCC Scholar-in-Residence
Darla Migan presents Artist Zella Vanié & Experimental School for Black Imagination
About the Exhibit
How have we learned to make a way out of no way? In my curatorial practice at the 2026 LMCC Residency, I understand the theme of ‘climate change’ as another pathway to learning the arts of flourishing from my Black ancestors.
Empire after empire, we have lived through poly-catastrophe and were taught to be ashamed of identifying with our Mother Earth. Kith and kin! Now Indigenous and Black peoples of the global majority will save you from the civilizations we were once told were beyond our ken.
How might learning expand beyond our current imperial institutions in support of engaging civic life and tuning in to make and nourish the networks of trust we will need to survive?
As a teacher of philosophy and curator of exhibitions led by collaborating with artists, I am deeply drawn to the cultural producer Zella Vanié’s community-activation practices. As one of the founding organizers of the Experimental School for Black Imagination (and a fellow queer Southerner meandering on the loving path of Black migrations) an ethos of ease guides the way.
Join us at Open Studios on Governors Island to learn more about ESBI’s contributions to Black creators, including a rotating library of “revolutionary print, critical theory, poetry, and moving pictures spanning Black feminist thought, ” as well as invite-only workshops and the open call zine series We Be Comin’ Free.
About The Artists
Zella Vanié is an artist, cultural organizer, and designer working across painting, zines, and portal-making. Their work asks what it means to be free: how communities embody knowing, seed care across time, and create conditions for Black queer folk to see our beauty, divinity, and the boundless worlds that have always been ours to inhabit.
Zella’s paintings have been exhibited internationally, with support from Mass MoCA, Flux Factory, the Canopy Program, and The Other Art Fair. Zella earned an MFA in Interaction Design from the School of Visual Arts, has taught design at New York University and California College of the Arts, and splits time between Brooklyn and Abidjan. Zella is a co-founder and design lead with Black Veterans Project.
Darla Migan’s independent curatorial practice takes up an interdisciplinary approach to creating aesthetic experiences, wherein philosophizing also means learning from artists. As a participant in the Arts Center Residency, she is considering ‘climate change’ through the lens of her current research on Black disinheritance to curate an exhibition on flourishing.
Dr. Migan is based in New York City and holds the inaugural PRODIG+ Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Philosophy at (SUNY) Stony Brook University. She enjoys teaching artists and scientists in courses such as PHI:104 Moral Reasoning, PHI 264: Philosophy and the Arts, and PHI 501: Theories of Race. Learn more at darlanyc.com
Joseph M. Pierce
Associate Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literature
& Founding Director, Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative, Stony Brook University
About the Exhibit
Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative (NAIS) Place Card Series
Where are you from? What land nurtured you, formed you? What does the land you are on ask of you? These questions are central to the work of Native American and Indigenous Studies as an interdisciplinary field of study. They invite us, as scholars, artists, and community members, to ground ourselves. And in that grounding, to be responsive to the land where we live and to recall our responsibilities to human and more-than-human kin.
As part of this overarching effort, the NAIS Initiative at Stony Brook University commissioned a set of cards in the fall of 2025. We invited four faculty members and one alumnus to reflect on a place that was significant to them, and to contribute both an image and a written response. We collected those contributions and designed a series of cards to be shared with others.
These are gifts from us to you.
As you take one, we invite you to think about your relations to land, place, migration, displacement, and memory. If you feel inclined, you can create your own card, your own reflection on where you live or a place that has impacted your life. Feel free to send us that reflection on our Instagram: @sbu_nais or by scanning the QR code below.
Place Cards on View
NAIS 01 Shinnecock Community Center by Jeremy Dennis, BA in Studio Art, Class of 2013, (Shinnecock Nation)
NAIS 02 California Redwoods by Darcey Evans, Assistant Professor, Anthropology (Karuk, Quartz Valley Indian Reservation)
NAIS 03 Welikia by Valeria Meiller, Assistant Professor, Hispanic Languages and Literature
NAIS 04 El Paso, TX/Manso, Suma, Tiwa by Vick Quezada, Assistant Professor, Art
NAIS 05 Southwest Cherokee Nation by Joseph M. Pierce, Associate Professor, Hispanic Languages and Literature (Cherokee Nation)
About the Artist
Joseph M. Pierce is Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature and the Founding Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Stony Brook University. He is the author of Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair (Duke University Press, 2025) and Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890-1910 (SUNY Press, 2019), and co-editor of Políticas del amor: Derechos sexuales y escrituras disidentes en el Cono Sur (Cuarto Propio, 2018) and the 2021 special issue of GLQ, “Queer/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable.” He has published work in Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, Latin American Research Review, and Art Journal, and in popular outlets including Hyperallergic, TruthOut, and Indian Country Today. With S.J. Norman (Wiradjuri), he is co-curator of the performance series Knowledge of Wounds, and in 2024-2025 he was a Ford Foundation Scholar in Residence at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He is a citizen of Cherokee Nation.
Karen Levitov & Elena Soterakis, Curators
Director & Curator, Zuccaire Gallery, Staller Center for the Arts (Levitov)
Director & Curator, BioBAT Art Space (Soterakis)
About the Exhibit
BioFuturism: A New Operating System for Being Human
An Art–Science–Research Collaborative Exhibition
Zuccaire Gallery, Stony Brook University, in collaboration with BioBAT Art Space
Opening October 2027
This presentation introduces BioFuturism, a curatorial and philosophical framework that calls for new aesthetics and explores how life itself is becoming a medium for design, culture, and knowledge production. Bringing together art, climate science, and interdisciplinary research, the project reframes the exhibition as a living system, where the gallery becomes a laboratory, institutions behave as organisms, and humans are understood as ecosystems.
BioFuturism is a conceptual framework developed by Elena Soterakis that emerged from seven years of programming at BioBAT Art Space, a non-profit living laboratory embedded within a biotechnology incubator in Brooklyn. This work proposes a shift from mechanical to biological ways of thinking—foregrounding adaptation, mutualism, and interconnected systems as essential to navigating the 21st century.
Rather than predicting the future, BioFuturism invites us to inhabit it differently.
About the Curators
Karen Levitov is the Director and Curator of the Zuccaire Gallery and Professor of Practice in the Art Department at Stony Brook University. Prior, she was a curator and senior administrator at The Jewish Museum, New York. At the Zuccaire Gallery, she has presented over twenty-five exhibitions of contemporary art with a focus on social justice issues, collaborative projects, and interdisciplinary programming. She has published essays and exhibition catalogues; served as juror and panelist for national exhibitions, symposia and competitions, including MTA Arts for Transit; and has received grants and awards for her work, including a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence.
Elena Soterakis is an artist, curator, and co-founder of BioBAT Art Space, an interdisciplinary living laboratory embedded within a biotechnology incubator at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in New York City. Her work centers on ecology and the evolving relationship between biological life, culture, and civic infrastructure. Her work and leadership focus on building inclusive, interdisciplinary platforms that explore urgent environmental and scientific themes. She has spearheaded numerous exhibitions, residencies, and public programs, as well as STEAM educational initiatives that champion emerging forms of bioart and experimental design, while fostering community engagement and cross-sector dialogue.
Her artwork and curatorial projects explore themes of ecology and the relationship between nature and technology. Soterakis' work has been exhibited at venues, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, the Museum of Art and Design in Atlanta, the Torrance Art Museum, and the New York Hall of Science. In February 2024, her open-source project documenting the COVID-19 pandemic, The Great Pause, was permanently placed on the Moon’s South Pole, engraved in nano-fiche as part of Arch Mission’s Lunar Library, alongside the Rosetta Stone and Wikipedia.
Soterakis has collaborated with institutions such as the Interstate Environmental Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, Reativity Space, and Space Perspective, blending scientific research with artistic expression. Her 2021 project, To Space, From Earth — DNA Capsule, was sent to the International Space Station, where her artwork was encoded into DNA through a collaboration with Twist Bioscience.
