Artists: Tatiana Arocha, Kevin Quiles Bonilla, Esteban Cabeza de Baca, Rachelle Dang, Athena LaTocha, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Allison Maria Rodriguez, Christine Howard Sandoval, and Kiyan Williams.
Gallery Hours: Exhibition is now open regular gallery hours, Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6 PM. No reservations required.
Land Akin features BIPOC artists who are making work through embodied practices that convey cultural ways of knowing by engaging deep connections with land and place. Their work challenges us to reenvision our relationship to the land from a decolonial perspective. In this exhibition, kinship operates as a joining dynamic that aligns decolonial views of race and ecology, attempting to subvert the western capitalist mentality of land as property to be owned, conquered, or exploited for its natural resources. Instead, Land Akin advocates for a reimagining of the land as family or ancestry, to be respected and treated with reverence. Learning to foster our relationship with the natural world is a strategy for developing kinship among ourselves as people who share the earth, and ultimately, for recognizing that we are all part of nature. Contending with the generational trauma of colonialism, the artists in this exhibition employ hybrid artistic modes that emerge from the tactics of resilience and adaptation often mirrored in the impacted landscapes they are from. Their work shares an investment in remaking a vision of ecological, Black, Brown, and Indigenous futures, where fragmented and intersectional modes of cultural knowledge can be rebuilt, embodied, and revived.
We acknowledge the traditional, ancestral, unceded homelands of the Lenape, the Munsee, the Manahatin, the Canarsie, the Matinecock, the Shinnecock, and other Indigenous nations. We respect that many Indigenous people continue to live and work on this land and recognize their ongoing contributions to this area.
Image above: Athena LaTocha, Bulbancha (Green Silence), 2019, Ink, Spanish moss, earth on paper, 132” x 206”. Courtesy of the artist.
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Stephen Levin, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Jerome Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts. In-kind donations are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education.
Smack Mellon would like to extend a special thanks to all of the individuals, foundations, and businesses who have contributed to the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
