Allure of the Land

Featuring works by Sarah Ahmad, Maude Corriveau, Rachel Frank, Giuseppina Giordano, Visaya Hoffie, Shohei Katayama, Tina Lam, Celeste Viv Ly, Kanthy Peng, Heather Renée Russ, Sao Tanaka, Shuai Yang, and Jeehee Yoo.

Home to the First People’s nation of the Lenape-Algonquian people, the Sunset Park neighborhood sits along the waterfront where it has been favorable for its rich, fertile land and prime geographical position. In the neighborhood’s recent history, the development of the Bush Terminal, or Industry City today, situated the area as a major shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing nexus. Recently, with shifting urban developments and real estate rebranding, the neighborhood has been subject to ongoing transformations: its historical, and cultural fabric upended, mended, and worn out from systems of industry and displacement. From the Chinatown Friendship Archway backed by the borough and Beijing to the impositions of an emergent “innovation district” with Industry City, the maintenance of the neighborhood has been driven by outside projections placed onto the land. Keeping this in mind, Allure of the Land reckons with the need to grapple and reconcile with the shifting forces onto the land beneath us, here in the neighborhood and around the world.

Artists in Allure of the Land examine and navigate the complexities of the land, from the visible to the imagined, that have shaped the projection of narratives and realities, across exploitation and colonization, topography and landscapes, and ecological forces of healing. The exhibition is centered on the multidimensionality of land, which Lucy Lippard describes in The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society as “an amalgam of history, culture, agriculture, community, and religion, incorporating microcosm and macrocosm:” all facets being linked with the whole.

About the Curatorial Fellow:

Dylan Seh-Jin Kim lives and works in New York. He currently serves as a Bandung Resident at Asian American Arts Alliance & MoCADA and the Institutional Giving Coordinator at Independent Curators International. He has organized and worked on exhibitions and programs at MoMA PS1, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Unclebrother, Tutu Gallery, Columbia University, brownstones, restaurants, and elsewhere. He received a B.A. in Philosophy and Film and Media Studies from Columbia University.