A NYAE Curatorial Residency Program Exhibition

Artist: Nir Arieli, Adalgisa Campos, Lucille Colin, Anna Cone,
Máiréad Delaney, Jen Dwyer, Avihay Edry, Ahmed Kishore,
Dawn Kramlich, Jessica Matier, Yeji Moon, Kris Rac, Diana
Schmertz, Natacha Voliakovsky, Rachael Wren

Curators:
Shane Allen, Cecilia André, Hadassah Backman, Shwarga
Bhattacharjee, Gosha Karpowicz, A. Morgan McKendry, and
Alison Pirie

Residency Leaders:
Hayley Ferber and Luciana Solano

June 17th — July 10th, 2021
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 17th, 6 – 8 PM
245 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002

As we begin to emerge from a collective experience many of us are transformed. We have become more open and vulnerable as we undergo a reawakening and a healing metamorphosis. This exhibition displays a variety of works including sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, paintings, and drawings that challenge our existing perceptions of society, nature, and the individual.

Only If We Wish To brings together 15 artists of various backgrounds united by works that decontextualize and undress the layered complexities that center around forms, systems, bodies, freedom, and communal empathy. Each work is a relic; marking a different moment in time, a place on a map, or an expression of the human form, coming together to create a collective sense of understanding of our shared and disparate experiences.

The suspension before a release of energy: a feeling, an idea, an act of bravery, needs to gestate before it catalyzes. Twisting, constructing, and manipulating the threads of fate that intertwine each of us, our artists fabricate a recontextualized meaning of a common world. The works contemplate and give voice to our innate wish to communicate our inner dialogue of how we exist as individuals impacted by socioeconomic conditioning.

The gallery serves as a chrysalis purporting to us new depths of perception. Only If We Wish To is an entryway into a realm of reflection and insight, meditating upon our human need for freedom: freedom to exist in this multi-cultural complicated world, to feel and share our individual autonomous experiences, examining how we connect to each other.

Organized Hayley Ferber and Luciana Solano
245 Broome Street
New York, NY 10002
www.nyartistsequity.org