Art in Odd Places(AiOP) 2022: STORY is scheduled for September 23-25, 2022, curated by Atlanta artist Jessica Elaine Blinkhorn for its seventeenth annual public visual and performance art festival featuring 40+ local, national, and international artists’ projects from the Disabled, Incarcerated, Elder, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and Allied communities taking place along 14th Street in Manhattan, NY – from Avenue C to the Hudson River.
Some of the 40+ projects include Yu-Ching Wang’s performative action Breathing in New York covering her head with a colorful plastic bag as protection against COVID and disguising her identity. In artist Wes Holloway’s Community Ties passersby are engaged by his attempts to tie his tie and encouraged to tie one on each other addressing gender, disability, and ableism. Ellice Patterson of Abilities Dance Boston will improvise along 14th Street letting the sounds, people, and overall city energy inspire her movements.
Incarcerated Chicago artist Juan Hernandez asked Latino artists at Dixon Correctional Center to respond to the prompt “What’s your story?” in the form of art or writing. He collected their responses printing them on the front of a postcard. During the festival, the postcards will be displayed publicly so 14th Street passersby can browse and write or draw responses to whatever story calls to them. The postcards will be collected and mailed back to the incarcerated artists, providing a rare opportunity for them to share their stories and receive feedback and correspondence.
In the participatory installation Healing Altar, Toba, artist Julia Justo invites pedestrians to write stories placing them in the box as an act of solidarity and community storytelling. The collective Poets, of Course’s The Armchair Salon, is a public pop-up poetry room that invites the transient 14th Street community to sit, take a breath, and listen to some neurodivergent word-craft.
Through a durational feat of endurance and strength carrying a large heavy object (body) across the length of 14th Street from East to West, Noah Ortega wrestles with the material, metaphysical, emotional, and psychological weight of trans* embodiment and asks the question “how do we make ourselves a body?” in their public project [you]phoria, part ii.
Participating artists include Yasmeen Abdallah | AnimaeNoctis | Clover Archer | Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Balitrónica, & La Pocha Nostra | Haifa Bint-Kadi | Leopoldo Bloom | Suzanne Joy Clark | Nick Daniels | Dr. Evilletown | Jana Greiner | Juan Hernandez & Mai Tran | Wes Holloway | Natalie Jauregui-Ortiz | Julia Justo | Christopher Kaczmarek | Niki Lederer | Feixue Mei | MiSWiP & Kiki | Traci Molloy, Karen Oh & Tina Lee Hadari | Ana De Orbegoso | Noah Ortega | Ellice Patterson | Lone aka Bryan Pettigrew | Gina Peyran Tan | Poets, Of Course | Shana Robbins | Vivek Sebastian | Heather Sincavage | Yeseul Song & Jesse Simpson | Tilted Axes | Emily Tironi | Theo Trotter | Ramona Jingru Wang | Yu-Ching Wang | Chen-Yi Wu, Shou-An Chiang & Hsiao-Chu (Julia) Hsia | Tamara Wyndham | Iren Yu | Geraldo Zamproni | 3rdHouse: Oh-Kyung & Deena.
About the Curator ~ Jessica Elaine Blinkhorn was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy at a young age. The muscle-wasting disease has left her as a wheelchair user. She uses living with a disability to inform her work and educate society about differences. Jessica began to explore Performance Art in Graduate School to assist with creating and constructing a social narrative to promote change, equity, and inclusion. She has been featured on ABC World News(2010), was the subject of the award-winning documentary short “Grounded by Reality”(2010), and has received grants from Change, Inc., FL(2012), Artist Fellowship Grant, NY(2013, 2014, 2015, 2021), Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, NY(2018, 2020, 2021), C4 Atlanta, GA(2020). Blinkhorn is an Art in Odd Places veteran (AiOP 2018:BODY, 2021: AiOP NORMAL) and most recently, was named a Franklin Furnace Awardee, NY(2019-20), Artist in Residence at the Momentary, AR(2020), Artist in Residence for the Paseo Project, NM(2021), Atlanta BeltLine Artist, GA(2021-22), and an ELEVATE Artist, GA(2021).
Art in Odd Places 2022: STORY (Community. Identity. Endurance. Merit. Perception) is the 16th annual NYC festival featuring 40+ local, national, and international artists from the Disabled, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and Allied communities telling her, his, their STORY. Featuring live performances, symphonic manipulations, visual installations, video, sound, and more in public spaces. ALL EVENTS ARE FREE.