May 2021 Grantee Events
Experience a wide range of virtual art activities by supporting our Creative Engagement and UMEZ Arts Engagement grantees and their events this month.
Carriage Trade
Hearts & Minds
On View: April 15 - June 13, 2021
277 Grand Street, 2nd Floor, New York, New York 10002
Civilization and barbarism are never far apart. As the spoils from subjugating distant countries fill closets, living rooms, and dinner tables, citizens of the empire are encouraged to witness the "improvements" offered by their way of life bestowed upon the many invisible hands responsible for producing it. Employing the tools of public relations to invert standard meanings into their opposites (slavery = freedom, war = peace) the minds of those at home are massaged while villages abroad undergo “pacification”. Living within a kind of informational breakdown, many are now questioning how we got here. Linking past to present through artwork and archival material that collectively address links between the diversions of consumerism and techniques of propaganda in the service of empire, Hearts and Minds, a joint project of Carriage Trade and Rectangle, Brussels, reflects on the inseparable rapport between public relations and social control both abroad and at home.
Find more information at http://carriagetrade.org/hearts-and-minds.
Grant Program: Creative Engagement
Zahra Nazari
Unification
On View: May 1 - 15, 2021
Public Openings: May 1, 2021 at 4:00 - 8:00 PM & May 2, 2021 at 12:00 - 7:00 PM
High Line Nine Gallery 9.1, 507 W 27th St, New York, NY, 10001
Unification is an artistic project rooted in the formal blending of Persian and Western influences. It emerges from Zahra Nazari’s exploratory practice in painting and sculpture and her identity as an immigrant from Iran in the U.S. In the paintings and works on paper, Nazari represents architectural forms with flowing, abstract lines. She derives inspiration from the spectacular 17th-century monuments of the Safavid dynasty in Isfahan, such as the Shah Mosque, the Ali Qapu Palace, and its Music Room. Traces of Persian archways, niches, vaults, lattices, and the eight-pointed star are combined with fractured and deconstructed architectural shapes. Nazari’s sculptures are a fusion of 17th-century Persian monuments and Western and postmodern architecture. Built from stainless steel and displayed directly on the ground, the geometric patterns of the sculptures cast shadows and reflect lights onto the surrounding areas enabling a multidimensional experience.
Find more information at https://highlinenine.com/exhibitions
Grant Program: Creative Engagement
Untitled Theater Company No. 61
The Iron Heel
May 1, 2021 at 3:00 PM
Virtual
THE IRON HEEL: A three-part audio drama adaptation of the first modern dystopian novel, written as a socialist propaganda piece in 1908. Jack London envisioned a world in which the oligarchs form a fascist regime in America, told from the perspective of two young socialist lovers. Anotonia Meredith, a historian from a utopia in the far future, provides dubious historical context. A mixture of romance, rhetoric, and revolution, accompanied by the folk music of the IWW Songbook. Written and directed by Edward Einhorn.
Find more information at http://www.untitledtheater.com/previous-productions/the-iron-heel.html
Grant Program: Creative Engagement
East Winds, Inc.
Japanese Music Concerts Series
May 2, 2021 at 5:00 - 6:00 PM
Bruce's Garden (Across from 10 Park Terrace East, New York, NY 10034)
Live concert in Bruces' Garden with social distancing. The garden will be open with plenty of social distancing and some seats available to hear the music. Music will be played on the Shakuhachi bamboo flute, and the 13 string instrument, the Koto. Contemporary and traditional music will be performed.
Find more information at taikoza.com
Grant Programs: Creative Engagement & UMEZ Arts Engagement
Ekmeles, Inc.
Ekmeles in Manhattan 2021
May 8, 2021 at 5:30 - 7:00 PM
Virtual
Ekmeles performs "A Time For Everything", a program of sacred works, live on YouTube from Washington Heights. Wolfgang Rihm's Sieben Passionstexte is a wrenching set of Latin texts relating to the biblical Passion, or crucifixion story. Weaving between evocations of renaissance polyphony and stirring dissonance, the piece exists in a unique stylistic world. Courtney Bryan's A Time For Everything, written for Ekmeles, is a work on biblical texts drawing from the composer's experience as a New Orleans-born jazz pianist and church musician. The movements range in harmonic language from austere atonal shimmers to rich chorales. Shades of Aka pygmy music via Herbie Hancock, funeral wails, and groans mix with more traditional classical vocalism. Finally, the late radical gay Black American composer Julius Eastman is represented with his 1989 work Our Father. Built on a sacred text of his own devising, the work echoes ancient traditions while reaching towards the future.
Find more information at http://ekmeles.com
Grant Program: Creative Engagement & UMEZ Arts Engagement
Andres "Jay" Molina
Open Doors Presents: The Spotlight
May 10, 2021 at 7:00 PM
Virtual
A conversation to explore the parallel struggles of nursing home residents and workers for better working and living conditions, and to bolster solidarity. Watch as Coler residents and union leaders, labor experts, and members of grassroots organizations discuss shared issues within nursing homes and strategies for cross-movement unity. Rather than allowing a wedge to be drawn between workers and residents, we hope to draw attention to what unites us and to channel that unity toward a movement for a better, safer Coler.
Find more information at facebook.com/opendoorsnyc
Grant Program: Creative Engagement
Regina Nejman
BUBBLE
May 15, 2021 at 7:00 PM
Virtual
BUBBLE/the film: A dream-like experimental/contemporary dance choreographed and performed by Regina Nejman in which live dance interacts with projections of animated figures by Theodore J. Newby and cinematic sound by Luke Santy. BUBBLE explores the capacity for imagination and connection, moving through an increasingly chaotic world.
Find more information at https://www.hunterdances.com/5-15-mfa-performance-presentation
Grant Program: Creative Engagement
Christine Toy Johnson
EMPRESS MEI LI LOTUS PARTY Watch Party and Talkback
May 25, 2021 at 7:00 PM
Virtual
Presenting a free watch party of the short film EMPRESS MEI LI LOTUS BLOSSOM, written and directed by Christine Toy Johnson, in celebration of AAPI Heritage Month. A talkback about representation and stereotypes with the writer/director and cast will follow.
Find more information at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9BaLBsWldW7h_fwB169tMQ
Grant Program: Creative Engagement & UMEZ Arts Engagement
Notch Theatre Company
Voices Of A Pandemic
May 28 - May 30, 2021 at 4:00 PM - 12:00 AM
Virtual
This Memorial Day weekend, Notch Theatre Company presents Voices from a Pandemic, an artistic time capsule to commemorate the real lives lived and lost in 2020. For the past year, Voices has been inviting artists and cultural workers to remotely collect testimony from people on the frontlines, to hear their experiences during this worldwide pandemic. Those testimonies were woven into multi-part plays featuring actors and community stories from all over the world.
Find more information at https://notchtheatre.weebly.com/voicesfromapandemic.html
Grant Program: Creative Engagement