Work developed and presented at The Arts Center at Governors Island explores themes of sustainability and equity as they relate to Governors Island and New York City at large.
The 2021 season featured exhibitions by Meg Webster and Onyedika Chuke, a participatory installation by Muna Malik as well as The Take Care Series, a public program that reframes art curation as a mindful practice stemming from the concept of care.
The 2021 season presentations pushed us to examine the fixity of the surrounding world, prompting us to question our social, environmental, and personal structures of justice and our understandings of sustainability. In this exploration, water becomes the undercurrent of the exhibited works at The Arts Center: physically, as the vital life source with which we nourish and grow; and metaphysically, as the ever shifting entity whose flows inform new ways to interact with and reimagine the world around us.
2021 Exhibitions
Meg Webster:
Wave
June 12–October 31
Thursday–Sunday, 12–5 p.m.
Curated by Alice Russotti, LMCC
Meg Webster’s Wave brings nature inside, using natural materials a vehicle through which to address our relationship to nature, inside and outside of the gallery.
Onyedika Chuke:
The Forever Museum Archive_Circa 6000BCE
June 12–October 31
Thursday–Sunday, 12–5 p.m.
Presented in partnership with Pioneer Works
Curated by Gabriel Florenz
Part of an ongoing project that mines connections between history, archive, knowledge production and power, this iteration is focused on the US carceral system - its starting point and evolution.
Participatory Installation
Muna Malik:
Blessing of the Boats
June 12–October 31
Thursday–Sunday, 12–5 p.m.
We have an opportunity to set sail towards a new future. What society would you build and how do we get there?
Through active engagement and participation, this work asks the viewer to think about that society they would like to live within and how they might take steps to help shift it in that direction.
Heart on Your Sleeve
June 12–October 31
Thursday–Sunday, 12–5 p.m.
Curated by Molly Gross, of the creative duo Saint Flashlight, with support from The Poetry Project.
Heart on Your Sleeve features six short poems on coffee sleeves written by Cathy Linh Che, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Eileen Myles, Rochelle Owens, Nicole Sealey, and Irene Villaseñor. This project delivers poetry into people’s hands as we cautiously navigate communal city life. Drop by The Cafe at The Arts Center to grab Joe Coffee and a poem!
The Cafe at The Arts Center at Governors Island is open Thursday-Sunday from 10am-5pm.
SUPPORTERS
The 2021 season of programming at The Arts Center at Governors Island is made possible, in part, by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Con Edison.
Meg Webster: Wave is underwritten by UGG®.
Special thanks to Paula Cooper Gallery and GrowNYC.
Meg Webster’s Pollinating Garden, presented by LMCC in partnership with GrowNYC’s Teaching Garden, is part of the exhibition Wave presented at The Arts Center at Governors Island.
Onyedika Chuke: The Forever Museum Archive_Circa 6000BCE is presented in partnership with Pioneer Works.
Onyedika Chuke: The Forever Museum Archive_Circa 6000BCE is supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the ForGood Fund, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, Foster Pride, and Young New Yorkers.
Yto Barrada with guest artist Bettina:
The Power of Two Suns
Yto Barrada with guest artist Bettina reflects on our individual and collective reactions to the onset of disaster– can solace be found in the power of solidarity?
Through documentary abstraction channeled through clear lines, simple shapes and reduced palette, Yto Barrada with guest artist Bettina imagine a quieter beginning.
Michael Wang: Extinct in New York
The gallery becomes a greenhouse, a sanctuary of care, and a time capsule for the city's extinct flora in Michael Wang's reverent Extinct in New York.
2019 Participatory Project
Yoko Ono: Wish Trees
Situated at the entrance of the Arts Center, Yoko Ono's participatory project, Wish Trees was Ono’s open invitation to viewers to write their wishes on small tags and then hang them on a live tree–creating a living monument to all dreams, big and small.