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Confronting History through Herstory

ecofeminism(s) at Thomas Erben Gallery

Installation view of ecofeminism(s) curated by Monika Fabijanska, left to right: Eliza Evans, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Hanae Utamura, Betsy Damon, Aviva Rahmani, and Jessica Segall. Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, June/July 2020 (photos: Andreas Vesterlund).

The exhibition ecofeminism(s), on view at Thomas Erben Gallery from June 19th to July 24th, will reopen Tuesday, September 8th through Saturday, September 26th, 2020. Curator Monika Fabijanska brings together works of sixteen artists in graceful, yet dense and thoughtful way as a museum show would. Albeit in the gallery consistently staging pivotal and sophisticated exhibitions,including among many others shows of Senga Nengudi, Dona Nelson, Painting Forward and Looped and Layered – Contemporary Art from Tehran.

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Artists on Coping: JinJin Xu & Jiaoyang Li (Silkworm Pupas)

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.


Performance still from “In America, You are Asked Why Leaves are Green,” February, 2020; from left, artists JinJin Xu, Jiaoyang Li. Photo courtesy of artists

Silkworm Pupas is a new media arts collective consisting of NYC based Chinese poets Jiaoyang Li and JinJin Xu. Our projects strive for intimate ways to envision attainable, inclusive, and bleeding-edge futures through innovative storytelling, documentary poetics practice, sound installation and video-performance art.

Jiaoyang Li is a Chinese poet and visual artist. Her literary work has appeared in LA Reviews of Books-China channel, 3:AM, Spittoon Magazine, Voice and Verse poetry magazine, and others. Her interdisciplinary practices have been supported by the New York Foundation of Art, The Immigrants Artist Biennial and others. She co-founded the interdisciplinary poetry journal 叵CLIP.

JinJin Xu is a poet and filmmaker from Shanghai invested in docu-poetics. Her work has been featured in The High Line Public Arts, The Harun Farocki Institute, The Immigrant Artist Biennial, and anthologized in Nasty Women Poets. Honors include The Poetry Society of America’s George Borgin Prize and fellowships from The Thomas J. Watson Foundation and the Flaherty Seminar. She teaches hybrid workshops at NYU where she is a Lillian Vernon Fellow.

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Artists on Coping: Ronit Levin Delgado

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.


Ronit Levin Delgado by Written in Water (detail), site-specific installation at SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2018, NY.

Ronit Levin Delgado is an Israeli–born, New York–based multidisciplinary visual artist and a Fulbright Scholar. Her work explores conditions and experiences of instinctual human interactions through the use of the body, rituals, and the intimacy of a kiss. In performances, videos, paintings and sculptural objects, she calls into question the personal narratives of vulnerability and desire. In immersive installations she invites the viewers to engage and share a private intimate moment in a collective environment experience. The artist’s personal rituals fuse the fragments of cultural traditions, rituals and beliefs into performative actions and objects.

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Artists on Coping: Jessica Segall

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.


Reverse alchemy in Conga (Màxima), 2019, Photograph. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Jessica Segall is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is exhibited internationally including recent/ current shows at The Fries Museum and The National Museum of Jewish American History and upcoming at Thomas Erben Gallery, The Coreana Museum of Art and The Center for Art Research. Jessica received grants from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, The Harpo Foundation and Art Matters and attended residencies at The Van Eyck Academie, The MacDowell Colony and Skowhegan. Her work has been included in Cabinet Magazine, The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Mousse Magazine and Art in America. Jessica will have a work in a show on ecofeminism in June 19th at Thomas Erben Gallery and she will also participate in the Virtual 2020 Dumbo Open Studio that was postponed (TBA) due to solidarity with the movement of Black Lives Matter.

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A Studio 54 Reject Is At It Again 40 Years Later

Lisa Levy in dialogue with Art Spiel

A person standing in front of a building

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Studio 54 Reject Re-Performance by Lisa Levy, Photo Credit: Phil Buehler.

Right before the Coronavirus outbreak prompted a mass-shutdown of New York City’s galleries and museums, multidisciplinary artist, radio show host and (self-proclaimed) psychotherapist Lisa Levy recreated her classic guerrilla art project ‘Studio 54 Reject’. On the opening night of the “Studio 54: Night Magic” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, Levy stationed herself outside the institution’s main entrance. Standing behind a small table encircled by red velvet ropes and four stanchion posts, she gestured toward a sign reading “Studio 54 Reject T-Shirt, $20” while imploring passersby to take pride in “reject status” with the purchase of a shirt, newly re-designed in gold glitter and the official logo.

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Artists on Coping: Alison Lowry

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Alison Lowry

Alison Lowry, with handmade glass awards at the Business to Arts awards ceremony in Belfast

Alison Lowry is a glass artist living and working from her studio, ‘Schoolhouse Glass’ in Saintfield, Co. Down in Northern Ireland. In 2009 she graduated from Ulster University with an Honors degree in Art and Design. Since then she has won numerous awards including first place in the category, ‘Glass Art’ at the Royal Dublin Society in 2015 and 2009, the Silver Medal at the Royal Ulster Arts Club’s Annual Exhibition in 2010, the Warm Glass Prize in 2010 and 2011 and more recently the Bronze Award at Bullseye Glass’ exhibition for emerging artists, ‘Emerge’. Alison exhibits nationally and internationally, and her work is held in several public collections. Her current exhibition, ‘(A)Dressing our hidden truths’ is currently on display at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin

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Artists on Coping: Ellen Hackl Fagan

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue, Installation during Bushwick Open Studios, 2018. Photo: Charles Geiger

Ellen Hackl Fagan is an artist and the creator of ODETTA, a contemporary fine art gallery in Harlem, NYC. Fagan builds connections between color and sound using color-saturated paintings, sculpture, installations and collaborative projects that explore our potential for synaesthesia, often resulting in ad hoc performances with viewers. Balanced between randomness and intention, like jazz music, Fagan’s art reveals limitless possibilities for improvisation. Fagan also invented The Reverse Color Organ (RCO), a web app that enables viewers to playfully interact aurally with color. Fagan exhibits her work extensively, curates, writes, and creates opportunities for collaborations with artists, curators, musicians, and coders to further her projects.

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Artists on Coping: Keren Anavy

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

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Keren Anavy by Written in Water (detail), site-specific installation at SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2018, NY, jacket design by Ori Anavy. Courtesy of the artist, photo: Nomi H Rave.

Keren Anavy is a multimedia artist working in drawing, painting, installation and performance. Her process and research-based practice scrutinize the relationship between nature, culture and site. Seeing landscape as a metaphor for political and personal narratives, her interest is how nature can function as a cultural agent in different societies. Anavy has written art reviews in Basis magazine (Hebrew), the New York artistic Director at Radio28, located in Mexico City, and currently a mentor at New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), IAP. She is working on a site-specific installation planned for display at the Museo de la Ciudad de Querétaro, Mexico, and was selected Artist in Residence at Guild Hall of East Hampton, New York, and at Marble House Project, Vermont. During the Coronavirus pandemic Anavy was invited by ZAZ10TS to share personal messages on the ZAZ Corner Times Square billboards at 41St & 7Av, every night starting May 8 and for the next two weeks from 7PM-8PM. 

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Artists on Coping: Barbara Lubliner

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Barbara Lubliner, "Two Zips" 2019, paper relief with staples and zipper, 12 x 16 inches, photo courtesy of Paul Takeuchi

Two Zips, 2019, paper relief with staples, zipper, 12 x 16 inches. Photograph by Paul Takeuchi

New York artist Barbara Lubliner transforms traditional and nontraditional materials into thought-provoking expressions that are both iconic and quirky. She moves fluidly from performance art to works on paper to sculpture, both large and small. Solo exhibitions include Gibson Gallery Museum at SUNY Potsdam; Carter Burden Gallery, NYC; Drawing Rooms, Jersey City, NJ; and Pierro Gallery, South Orange, NJ. Recent group exhibitions include City Reliquary Museum, NYC; Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY; Edison Price Lighting Gallery, L.I.C., NY; and Ceres Gallery, NYC. Performance venues include the Brooklyn Museum and the Après Avant Garde Festival on the Staten Island Ferry.

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Michael Alan is New York’s Past, Present and Future

Michael Alan In conversation with Markella K

(The American Legend, Image courtesy of Michael Alan)

It’s time to question the nature of a city when everything you loved or heard about it has changed so much. NYC now has changed into a huge playground with high end food prices, fancy cell phones and luxury condos. I came here full of dreams just like everyone else, hoping to fit in and to see what Warhol left behind.

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