An exhibit on Art and Gentrification

• OPENING PARTY: February 15, 2019 6PM - 8PM
• ON VIEW: February 15, 2019 through May 3, 2019
• Gallery hours: Monday through Friday 11AM to 7PM

The Latinx Project is pleased to present it’s first exhibition PELEA: Visual Responses to Spatial Precarity. The show is curated by the project’s inaugural artist in residence Shellyne Rodriguez and the Latinx Project curatorial team and features New York City artists working with the theme of gentrification. PELEA is co-sponsored by King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at NYU.

The show consists of eight artists and one collective contributing works that reflect on their perspective as New Yorkers witnessing the displacement of long time residents and rapid shifts in class demographics, aesthetics, and overall character of their neighborhoods. Works in the show range from installation sculptures to paintings to photography to found objects. Artists in the show are Melissa Calderón, Roy Baizan, Alicia Grullón, Groana Melendez, Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez, Shellyne Rodriguez, Francisca Benítez, Jehdy Anne Vargas, and Mi Casa No Es Su Casa.

The exhibition opening will take place on February 15th from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. The exhibition will be on view from February 15th through May 3rd with gallery hours from 11am to 7pm Monday through Friday. There will be several curator-led tours February 21st, March 5th, and April 5th at 10-11am and 11-12pm each day. You can get your tickets via Eventbriteand choose the time slot you would like to take the tour.

About The Latinx Project:

Founded by Professor Arlene Dávila in August 2018, The Latinx Project is an initiative within NYU Arts and Sciences dedicated to fostering critical and comparative Latinx studies, research, and transnational, interdisciplinary networks linking scholarship, culture, art, and activism.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @latinxprojnyuand visit our website at

https://wp.nyu.edu/latinxproject/

Contact LatinxProject@nyu.edu

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

The exhibition PELEA: Visual Responses to Spatial Precarity gathers work from artists grappling with the violence of hyper speculation and displacement unfolding throughout the city. Working through performance, photography, drawing, painting, and sculpture, these artists engage the lived experience of spatial precarity from a range of perspectives. From an individual experience to a collective resistance, as an observation or as a call to action, the artists in PELEA offer visibility to those communities and their enclaves under threat of erasure. In so doing, they challenge us to take notice of the encroachment of the private onto the public, and of the colonial character of gentrification as it appears in the quotidian experience by evoking at once the realms of home, hallways, domestic spaces, the spiritual, housing policy, courts, labor, bodies, pride, and more. Through their varied takes, the artists in PELEA push us to think about alternative imaginaries of value, and enduring visions of resistance and community. They tell us it may be a struggle, it may be a fight, but no one is bowing out.