Shifting Sands at ChaShaMa

Art Spiel Photo Story


From left to right: Spandita Malik ‘Salwar-Kameez on Clothesline’ 2021 Sun-printing, Phulkari silk thread embroidery on Khaddar fabric, 32 x 40 inches ; Geuryung Lee‘The movement’ 2019 Drypoint on paper 18 x 24 inches; Sofia Luisa Suazo Monsalve ‘Post-photographic landscape #1,2,3’ 2019 Digital chromogenic print on paper, 9 x 18 inches; j.p.mot ‘Stool + boogey’ 2017 Mixed media, 7ft x 5ft x 6ft; Hyun Jung AhnBlanket Windows’ 2021 Felt and linen, 72 x 62 inches

SHIFTING SANDS is a group exhibition showcasing the creative breadth of 20 artists from the 2020 New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. Each of these artists has crossed physical borders, leaving one part of the world for another – in doing so, they hold space for various identities and shifting realities. From this common experience emerges unique perspectives on identity, belonging, home, memory, hope and resilience. Many of the pieces exhibited were created during the pandemic. They express the rollercoaster of emotions, the shifting states of being, and new possibility.

Exhibiting artists: Zeshan AhmedKatya AkumaIvana Brenner, Hedwig BrouckaertZorica ColicCarin Kulb DangotBel FalleirosNathier FernandezVinay HiraJaejoon JangHyun Jung AhnAe Yun KimGeuryung LeeJiaoyang LiiSpandita MalikLevan Mindiashvili, j.p.motGhislaine SabitiLeila SeyedzadehSofia Suazo

Curated byYvette MolinaGhislaine Sabiti and Hedwig Brouckaert

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Sammy Lee: Remind Me Tomorrow at the Emmanuel Art Gallery

In Dialogue with Sammy Lee


BTS (Beating Tadumi Station), 2014, video projection, immersive installation at BMoCA, photo by Tricia Rubio

Denver-based, Korean American artist Sammy Lee’s solo exhibition at the Emmanuel Art Gallery explores motherhood, domesticity, immigration, and prejudice through installation, artist books, performance art, and sculptures. The artist is using a multitude of textures and mediums that re-contextualizes familiar objects, ritual, and scenes into art. Remind Me Tomorrow opens May 25, during Asian American and Pacific Heritage (AAPI) month to celebrate Asian culture and speak out against the alarming bigotry manifested against Asian people. The exhibition runs through July 15th, 2021.

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Scherezade Garcia: Navigating Histories


Las Meninas and War, from the series Tales of Freedom,1997,Acrylic, charcoal, and ink on camouflage fabric, 58 x 39 inches.

For New York based artist Scherezade Garcia drawing gives rise to visual codes, which lead her to spontaneous compositions and meanings at the same time. Scherezade Garcia loves stories. The books she grew up with still provoke her imagination, words inspire a continuous production of images – “from The Arabian Nights to Greek Mythology, to Hans Christian Andersen to Crusade tragedies, to El Cid, Don Quijote, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Balzac, to Alejo Carpentier, Allan Poe, Garcia Marquez to so many others, I cannot imagine life without it,” she says. Through a variety of media, Scherezade Garcia evokes in her artworks the physicality of art making while alluding to layered narratives of history.

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Daughters of Lam at FiveMyles

In Dialogue with Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow and Rachelle Dang


Rachelle Dang and Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow in front of Dang’s work at the opening of their exhibition Daughters of Lam at Five Myles.

Daughters of Lam at FiveMyles features work by two artists of Chinese descent – one from Jamaica and one from Hawai`i – paying tribute to Wifredo Lam, an artist who drew on an Afro-Cuban and Chinese heritage to create works evoking spirituality and the power of nature. Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow and Rachelle Dang reflect in their installation work on notions of landscape, history, and myth.

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Jennifer Macdonald: We Met in Kaarthijenkia at Sala Projects

In Dialogue with Jennifer Macdonald


Jennifer Macdonald, We Met in Kaarthijenkia installation at Sala Projects, 2021, photo courtesy of Tania Cross

Jennifer Macdonald’s solo inaugural exhibition at Sala Projects features a group of unique cast bronze sculptures, made by using prototypes that are built from textured wax and wax-coated materials such as card stock, pasta, balsa wood.

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Nandini Bagla Chirimar: Becoming Who We Are


Nandini Bagla Chirimar, in her studio

Nandini Bagla Chirimar’s richly layered drawings, prints, paintings and installations draw on her daily life as a mother, daughter, homemaker and artist living in New York. She grew up in Jaipur, India and came to the USA to complete her undergraduate art education at Cornell University. Here, she found herself working with many of the elements she had encountered in her daily life growing up in India — homes she lived in, her relationships, events, color, block prints, miniature and folk paintings.

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Melissa Joseph: Née at REGULAR•NORMAL

In Dialogue with Melissa Joseph

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Intergenerational, 42 x 131 in, needle felted wool and sari silk on inkjet print on Indian duppioni silk, 2020-2021

Née, Melissa Joseph’s first solo show in New York, features 27 wall based works and 5 sculptures, utilizing mostly wool felt and textiles assembled through a highly intuitive process. The show runs at REGULAR•NORMAL through May 2, 2021.

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Brandon Graving: Honing Viscosity and Air Currents


Brandon Graving, Mother: Earth 2 detail, 2021, embossed monoprint, 41”x 108”, photo by artist

Brandon Graving aims to transfer and translate a sense of wonder in her artworks. She describes her process of making as exploring the connectedness of all things with ongoing “delight, immediacy and a sense of virginal untamed discovery with a nod towards Humbolt.” Some of her sculptural works are kinetic and turn, revealing elaborate intricacy and shadow play, while other works, including monoprints with handmade inks and semiprecious stones, alter dramatically in different light. She does not intend to depict nature but rather hone ideas and objects into simplified essential forms, some with elaborate treatment. Through her extensive attention to detail, she reflects on how the micro and macro within the work suggest a system that is both diverse and similar, how these dualities interrelate or even duplicate in nature.      

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Kat Chamberlin: TRANSACTIONS

In Dialogue with Kat Chamberlin


BEVERLY’S: Under Construction Sessions Peephole

Kat Chamberlin: TRANSACTIONS for BEVERLY’S: Under Construction Sessions includes works in drawing, glass and aluminum created in response to a year in quarantine and loss of work. In exchange for the year’s shifted labor conditions and loss of independence, the artist uses her 5-year-old daughter’s ideas as payback. The show runs through April 20th, 2021.

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