50 Artists Art on the Grid

Nina Chanel Abney (b. 1982, Harvey, IL; lives and works in Jersey City, NJ)
Untitled, 2020
Relief print
Courtesy the artist and Pace Prints, New York

The French creators of the Statue of Liberty intended the statue to be a commemoration of the abolition of slavery in the United States. But Black critics were vocal about what they saw as the hypocrisy of a monument to liberty in a land that lacked opportunity. With this in mind, I created this piece imagining a renewed statue reflective of an acknowledged past and an equitable future.

Tunji Adeniyi-Jones (b. 1992, London, England; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Blue Sovereign, 2020
Watercolor on paper
Courtesy the artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York

I want to give something back to the city that has been so generous to me over the years. This work is my interpretation of a regal West African figurehead, the Benin Bronze. It is a symbol of Black strength, Black endurance, and Black revival. My hope is that this image will provide inspiration, harmony, and reassurance in a time when the world is in much need of restoration and healing.

Kamrooz Aram (b. 1978, Shiraz, Iran; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Composition with Lion and Griffin, 2020
Collaged paper and pencil on linen
Courtesy of the artist

My collage considers the importance of photography and design in the representation of Iranian museum objects in art historical publications. The work reveals how the formal elements of display and design influence the way we see and interpret an object or image. I am interested in the complex experience of the diasporic museum visitor—filled with cultural nostalgia, gazing at their long lost glorious past in an encyclopedic museum built through a fraught colonial history.

Leilah Babirye (b. 1985, Kampala, Uganda; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Namaganda owe Mbogo (Among the Beautiful Girls from the Buffalo Clan), 2020
Wood, wax, nails, screws, wire, plastic, and found objects
Courtesy the artist, Gordon Robichaux, New York, and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London

I am an artist-activist living in New York City, where I was recently granted asylum after fleeing persecution in my native Uganda. This new series of masks talks back to homophobia. Combining figurative and abstract elements, and employing a wide range of found objects, the masks portray queer archetypes that I’ve named after contemporary princes, princesses, and clans within the kingdom of Buganda’s royal family. Here, knotted plastic bags are woven through discarded tubing, and shredded to resemble hair.

Firelei Báez (b. 1981, Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic; lives and works in the Bronx, NY)
On rest and resistance, Because we love you (to all those stolen from among us), 2020
Oil and acrylic on canvas
Courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York

This work is in reference to the 70,000 Black women and girls in the United States currently missing. Who continue to be unnamed and uncared for, even though this should be a national crisis. The figure in this painting is inspired by an archival image of civil rights activist Freedom Riders sleeping in church pews taken by photographer Paul Schutzer around 1961. It is a particularly tender intergenerational scene of women resting and supporting each other.  In this place of respite, I center the transformative actions that can show ways beyond the spaces in our culture where care, love, and beauty are not naturally and equitably given.

Chloë Bass (b. 1984, New York City, NY; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Personal Choice (#2), 2020
Digital collage
Courtesy the artist

Personal Choice #2 is a digital collage combining an “excerpted” archival image from the New York Public Library’s Media Collection, and an original text I wrote. The image features the Broyards, a large multiracial American family previously unaware of each other due to legacies of slavery and its impact on mixed-race children, during their family reunion. The Personal Choice series is part of my larger project Obligation to Others Holds Me in My Place, a study of intimacy at the scale of the immediate family.

María Berrío (b. 1982, Bogotá, Colombia; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
From Such Soil It Blooms, 2020
Collage with Japanese papers and watercolor paint on canvas
Courtesy of the artist

New York City is a place populated by dreamers. Even in our tumultuous present, these dreams are as vivid and abundant as ever. Here, a carpet of flowers symbolizes the constellations of people within the City who help each individual to realize their dreams. The shoulders we stand on are often simply those we stand shoulder to shoulder with: the dreamer is sustained by the same hopes that sustain those around her.

Elizabeth Bick (b. 1980, Houston, TX; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Hawk Snipes and their Mother Mary Snipes, 2020
Digital photograph
Courtesy of the artist

A chance encounter with B. Hawk Snipes on 34th street and 8th Avenue two years ago has resulted in a portrait of their life and the final component of a work entitled Movement Studies. Our collaboration has documented B. Hawk’s transition from identifying as a gay man to a transgender non-binary femme and a social activist. This work is dedicated to the #blacklivesmatter and #blacktranslivesmatter movement, and to B. Hawk and their mother Mary Snipes.

Arielle Bobb-Willis (b. 1994, New York City, NY; lives and works in Union City, NJ)
West New York, 2020, 2020
Digital photograph
Courtesy the artist

This year has been a test for everyone’s mental health to say the least. The countless killings of Black men, women, and children, the carelessness of our government, and the virus are incredibly triggering. Having to adjust can be difficult. Although photography helps with my depression it isn’t a fix-all. My healing process is ever-evolving and I wanted to create something that captures the continuous effort needed to stay afloat. This work is just a reminder to all that we will never give up on the pursuit of peace and happiness.

Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. (b. 1993, Baldwin, NY; lives and works in Queens, NY)
Sound of the Rain, 2020
Digital photograph
Courtesy the artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York

My photographs privilege the interiority of individuals and communing groups, often investing in how people tend to their space and less so how they become clear to others. Sound of the Rain is a new commission that abstracts a direct view of the Mount Morris Fire Watchtower in Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park. As such, it references the history of its official use and its current informal and sentimental roles.

The work is titled after a song by Solange, which includes an animated video by visual artist Jacolby Satterwhite. As I reflected on the various functions of the park, I recalled the video’s use of fire as a medium for growth.

Zach Bruder (b. 1984, Cleveland, OH; lives and works in New York City, NY)
Pedlar, 2020
Acrylic and flashe on linen
Courtesy the artist and Magenta Plains

I love the hand-painted signs of New York City—they exude warmth and pride, signaling more than the services and products offered. In Pedlar, tools of different trades wait for the return of artisans to resume their craft. Pictured in isolation, these instruments call to mind bustling neighborhoods on pause, longing for the familiar.

Jordan Casteel (b. 1989, Denver, CO; lives and works in New York City, NY)
Minnesota, 2020
Oil on canvas
Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York

Minnesota, 2020, as part of my ongoing Subway Series, depicts a man, unknown to me, seen during my commute several months back. The word “Minnesota” is printed across his hat in bold letters. At the time, I didn’t process this language as anything more than a state. Now, this place couldn’t feel more meaningful—as the home state of George Floyd, whose wrongful death has forced a global reckoning with systematic racial inequities. Sometimes it feels like coincidence or a conjuring, and then I remember that my community has been speaking for a long time with intense clarity. These moments are right in front of us. We just have to be ready to receive them.

Sara Cwynar (b. 1985, Vancouver, Canada; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Scaffold Statue of Liberty, 2020
Digital photograph
Courtesy the artist and Foxy Production, New York

My photographs often take the form of sculptural constructions that are photographed, printed, tiled, and rephotographed as new images. This image is a reworked 1980s photograph of the Statue of Liberty covered in scaffolding. I have collaged into the image with objects from New York City stores, art from MoMA, and my own iPhone photographs of the recent protests in the City, among other things. I wanted to reanimate this old New York City icon and update it for the current time.

Jeremy Dennis (b. 1990, Southampton, NY; lives and works on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Southampton, NY)
Vincent (from the series Shinnecock Portrait Project), 2020
Archival inkjet print
Courtesy of the artist

This portrait of Vincent Cuffee is from a series titled Shinnecock Portrait Project. As Shinnecock tribal members, community members, and family members, we all share are misconceptions portrayed by the media. Photography has traditionally been used as evidence of truth, which has been used historically against the Shinnecock to threaten our sovereignty and self-determination. This portrait, and the ongoing series, celebrates our continued presence and resilience.

Rafael Domenech (b. 1989, Havana, Cuba; lives and works in Manhattan, NY)
Peripheral poem 68 (countermonument pavilion), 2020
Scanned laser-print on paper, tape
Courtesy the artist

I walked, I walk through the conurbated city to retrace his steps, to document the ecology of relationships that sustains this place. Time passed—time regained. And now, I construct a landscape through layers of images from the archive. The landscape is no longer that of Frederic Church, but a decentralized picture with no vast depth of field, no clarity. It is not a postcard, it is an amalgamating message.

Ivan Forde (b. 1990, Timehri, Guyana; lives and works in Harlem, NY)
After The Storm, 2020
Cyanotype and gouache on archival paper
Courtesy the artist

The horizon is a timeless image that connects all of humanity, from ancient to modern. Right now, it’s like we’re at sea: we speak of “first waves,” “second waves,” and how tumultuous our present time is in the wake of the global pandemic. So I offer a vision of the ocean after a storm. Five sailors (which are all photographs of myself) gaze upon golden constellations, as Venus follows the setting sun over the far deep purple horizon. A diver with hands covering his mouth swims toward a mysterious heliotrope crystal. I hope this image reassures us that we must continue to work together to harness the storm in creating a collective and just future.

Marley Freeman (b. 1981, Boston, MA; lives and works in New York City, NY)
Venuses Balcony, 2020
Oil and acrylic on linen
Courtesy the artist and Karma, New York

Venuses Balcony takes its title from Samuel R. Delany’s 1999 non-fiction classic Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. In a kind of eulogy for the Times Square red light district of the 1970s and ’80s, Delany theorizes the nature of interclass contact. The Venus—whose balcony figures prominently throughout Delany’s first-person account—was one of many iconic theaters lost to gentrification. Painted in oil and acrylic on linen, Venuses Balcony captures the vibrant, bustling character of social relations in New York City.

Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975, Brooklyn, NY; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Urgency, 2020
Digital media
Courtesy the artist, Gallery Wendi Norris, and Hales Gallery

Urgency draws from collective archetypes around regeneration and rebirth, including: Birth of Venus, Mami Wata, Mahishasura Mardini, figures from tarot, Jung’s anima, the phoenix, and other icons of femininity and power. This time has led me to think in depth about collective dreams, collective consciousness, and collectively held archetypes that are both primordial and future-facing. The work is also inspired in part by iconologia, traditions of articulating moral emblems and psychic states in figurative form, compiled in Italy in the 1500s, a compendium of emblematic representation including but not limited to Egyptian and Roman iconography and myth.

Oto Gillen (b. 1984, New York City, NY; lives and works in New York City, NY)
Path, July 22, 2019, 2020
Digital photograph
Courtesy the artist

Reflecting on this photograph months after taking it in the summer of 2019, it seemed to embody my uncertainty of the future ahead coupled with my curiosity to witness it. Today, this image still sits ambiguously between the ominous and inviting; offering my imagination the opportunity to fall into an unfamiliar and strange terrain past its depths. I was motivated to include this photograph not only for the illusionistic effect I hope it has at street level but also for how it plays against the function of the bus shelter as a site of departure for New Yorkers moving across the city.

Baris Gokturk (b. 1982, Ankara, Turkey; lives and works Brooklyn, NY)
#26, 2020
Ink, oil, acrylic, pencil and image transfer on linen
Courtesy the artist

I have been working on a series with the idea of protest fire as a simultaneous act of destruction and hope for change. I have been looking into street fires started during different protests around the globe for the destructive yet regenerative abilities of popular uprisings and how that dual capability can be paralleled in the plastic language of painting, as well as in the mechanics and philosophies of image-making in art.

Chase Hall (b. 1993, St. Paul, MN; lives and works in New York City, NY)
A Great Day in Harlem, 2020
Acrylic and coffee on cotton canvas
Courtesy Chase Hall Studio

A Great Day in Harlem is a rendition of a photograph by Art Kane, made in 1958, of 57 jazz musicians gathered in front of a brownstone on 126th Street in Harlem. When I was 13, this image served as my introduction to the humanity behind jazz, not just the sound of humanity. The strokes of paint and coffee on cotton that I used in this work create representations that are coded in improvisation and empathy. Redefining colonial instruments and reworking their function, creating jazz is a reminder of the malleability of sound, life, and history.

Lucia Hierro (b. 1987, New York City, NY; lives and works in Bronx, NY)
The Daily Bread/El Pan de Cada Día, 2020
Digital image
Courtesy the artist

For this work, I not only wanted to replicate a bodega but also to highlight the moments that mimic colmados in the Dominican Republic; depicting baked goods, root vegetables, and other items Americans may not immediately recognize. They function as everything stores but most importantly are a place where neighbors commune. The survival of these small businesses is so important to me. These spaces offer a little piece of home to those from the island.

Esteban Jefferson (b. 1989, New York City, NY; lives and works in New York City, NY)
Window, 2020
Oil on linen
Courtesy the artist, photo documentation by Adam Reich

I’m interested in small and personal forms of resistance, and that’s what I saw in this window. Black lives matter.

Yifan Jiang (b. 1994, Tianjin, China; lives and works in Manhattan, NY)
Trampoline, 2020
Oil on canvas
Courtesy the artist

The day was ending when I walked upon two kids jumping on the trampoline. They would climb into midair, hang there for a second, and fall back down. Repeated tirelessly, the scene solidified into an unlikely blend of cheer and serenity. During a time of turbulence, I hope this small moment can help one find gratitude in the simplicity of being in the world.

Cheyenne Julien (b. 1994, Bronx, NY; lives and works in Bronx, NY)
Mosholu Parkway, 2020
Pen and ink on paper
Courtesy the artist and Chapter NY

Throughout my practice I have used personal narrative to explore larger issues that have impacted me, such as environmental racism, displacement, and generational trauma. I am interested in the idea that bodies inhabit a physical space to determine one’s perception of it. Using memories, I reconstruct people and places from my life. These figures are typically aware of, or responding to, the environment that confines them. The paintings and drawings are monochrome at times, and vibrant at others, to set the mood of what is being depicted. The cartoonlike figures are used to produce a sense of the uncanny, teetering on the edge of reality.

Adam Khalil (b. 1988, Nyack, NY; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
another day without a future, but what the hell another day . . . , 2020
Digital image
Courtesy of the artist, New Red Order, and Walker Tate

Understanding there are many worlds within this world and they each have an end, familiar creatures appropriated from government seals and crests convoke to imagine Indigenous futures within the postapocalyptic present.

Baseera Khan (b. Denton, TX; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Blue White and Red, 2020
Pleather, leather, chromogenic print, and grommets
Courtesy the artist and Simone Subal Gallery, New York

This new work is a banner, a seal, portal, flag, a garment—I don’t know yet. After a feverish dream in May, I knew how to achieve this new series: a flowing system of layers grommeted together to conceal and reveal different elements at different times. The cutout pleather patterns obscure intimate moments of photographic love. Akin to an older series of mine called the Acoustic Sound Blankets, this new body of work stems from radical-ornamentation histories.

Andrew Kuo (b. 1977, Queens, NY; lives and works in Manhattan and Brooklyn, NY)
Ideal Map of New York City 2020, 2020
Acrylic on linen
Courtesy the artist

Ideal Map of New York City 2020 is a reimagining of New York City as a place that probably isn’t perfect for everyone, but seems to me like a wonderful place to live.

Doron Langberg (b. 1985, Yokneam Moshava, Israel; lives and works in New York City, NY)
Joe and Edgar, 2020
Oil on linen
Courtesy the artist and Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Joe and Edgar captures a couple in tender repose, silhouetted by glowing afternoon light. The bold, atmospheric colors and expressive use of paint bring out the figures’ emotional world, highlighting their intimate connection. As we turn inwards as a society, I wanted to offer this moment that is both queer and relatable, as a source of solace and strength in the face of the unknown, focusing on our greatest asset: our love for one another.

Sophie Larrimore (b. 1980, Annapolis, MD; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Reunion, 2020
Watercolor and colored pencil on paper
Courtesy the artist

Reunion depicts two dogs entwined in a tight embrace. As the warm weather of summer approached I wanted to address the issue of how we might come together following, and indeed during, a time of upheaval, uncertainty and change. The coming together, collision really, of two forms. Two friends coming together after a long separation; becoming one form through their closeness.

Nate Lewis (b. 1985, Beaver Falls, PA; lives and works in Harlem, NY)
Tidal Volume, 2020
Hand sculpted inkjet print and ink
Courtesy the artist and Fridman Gallery

In this global pandemic we contribute to the fragility and resilience of each other, each nation and tribe occupying a different space on the spectrum. The complexity of COVID-19 continues to unfold before us as a multisystem agent sowing and revealing discord while testing our social fabric. Destabilized ground and lungs devoid of air became a catalyst for a global revolution. The landscape shudders luminescent with promise or destruction.

Sharon Madanes (b. 1985, Chicago, IL; lives and works in New York City, NY)
Pulse, 2020
Oil on panel
Courtesy the artist

I work both as a physician and an artist; my paintings explore the rituals, ethics, and aesthetics of medicine. I made Pulse in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and my experiences as a health care provider. When humans are veiled with layers of protective gear, moments of touch, regardless of their nature, are charged with heightened intimacy and poetic meaning.

Joiri Minaya (b. 1990, New York City, NY; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Emergence, 2020
Digital collage
Courtesy the artist

Emergence is a digital collage I made based on Containers, a performance and photo series featuring Caribbean women wearing enclosed bodysuits that symbolize societal projections and stereotypes through the use of tropical prints. At the same time, the bodysuits use camouflage and opacity as opportunities for respite, introspection, and strategizing against a system of hyper-visibility and oppression. Emergence depicts the moment of taking off the Container: a moment of relief, agency, resilience, and self-determination.

Willa Nasatir (b. 1990, Los Angeles, CA; lives and works in New York City, NY)
The Long Ride #2, 2020
Digital photograph
Courtesy the artist and Chapter NY

In my photographs I use found objects to restage filmic tropes that connote sensations of suspense, seduction, and crisis. Before making them, I pick up things I see when walking under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to my studio; loose gravel or car parts. In this work I made a sun out of a rearview mirror that had been run over. I see my pictures as a kind of abstract portraiture—imagery intended to evoke emotion rather than communicate a message. In that sense, the content of the work is abstract, but the pictures are constructed around where I live and what I see.

Jordan Nassar (b. 1985, New York City, NY; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Riverside Park NYC, 2020
Hand-embroidered cotton on cotton
Courtesy the artist and James Cohan Gallery, New York; Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles; The Third Line, Dubai

I hand embroidered this piece, Riverside Park NYC, as I do with almost all of my work, using the medium of tatreez, traditional Palestinian embroidery. As a Palestinian American, I grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, overlooking Riverside Park, and for this piece I based the composition off of a boulder that is placed in the park outside my childhood apartment building. In imagining a future after this tumultuous year, I chose to reimagine this vista of the park, an emblem representing home, envisioning a fantastical, magical and hopefully better future version of our city. Doing my part in dreaming up the world we want to live in.

Madhini Nirmal (b. 1992, Chennai, India; lives and works in Queens, NY)
Gotham City (“Goat’s Town” in Old English), 2020
Gouache, watercolor, acrylic, and collage on paper
Courtesy the artist

Amidst the cornucopia of fresh and affordable produce, in the loud, crowded, and narrow aisles of a neighborhood Italian grocery store, I feel echoes of my homeland thousands of miles away. With its fearless and resilient nature, the goat is a symbol of joyful aspiration in my work. Since Gotham originally meant “Goat’s Town”, you find goats playing free in a vibrant Queens street corner, the one with my favorite store, signaling a brighter future.

Stephen Obisanya (b. 1989, Lagos, Nigeria; lives and works in Staten Island, NY)
AGAPE, 2020
Digital photograph
Courtesy the artist

AGAPE is a meditation on interdependence. As my father often recites “No man is an island, entire of itself.” These past few months have represented a personal moment of deep introspect and revelations on the things that matter most. To accurately capture that in an image is a lifelong quest, but solemn gestures and tender moments like these offer a useful language on what it means to be together but apart right now.

Danielle Orchard (b. 1985, Michigan City, IN; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
New Etiquette, 2020
Oil on linen
Courtesy the artist

In this work, I contrast objects that relay finite information (the telephone and newspaper) with modes of communicating the ineffable, namely physical touch. The painting also has a few symbols that relate to a shared hope for renewal within our new normal: a budding branch to represent regrowth; a broken bowl, poorly mended, but still in use; and a wineglass with two distinct sets of lipstick marks, suggesting physical intimacy and community.

Anna Ostoya (b. 1978, Krakow, Poland; lives and works in New York City, NY)
Thank You for _ Here!, 2020
Acrylic paint, archival inkjet print, gold leaf, plastic shopping bags
Courtesy the artist and Bortolami Gallery

In Thank You for _ Here!, my new composition on canvas, I used images of recent protests in New York City together with gold leaf, sanding paper, plastic bags, and acrylic paint to convey the energy of the present moment—the rage over racism and inequality, the pandemic anxiety, and the preelection unrest. In the center of the composition I set the stars from the American flag into motion toward a more just and greener future.

Anna Park (b. 1996, Daegu, South Korea; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Goose, 2020
Charcoal on paper
Courtesy the artist

I use charcoal as my predominant medium throughout my practice. Allowing the improvisational nature of the marks to dictate the image, my work weaves in and out of representation to abstraction. Goose is a new commission that focuses on the integration of an abstract visual language into my work. The expressive gestures and marks made by charcoal reflect the energy that is the essence of New York City. I have created a drawing that interprets the vitality of the environment through the immediacy of the medium.

GaHee Park (b. 1985, Seoul, South Korea; lives and works in Queens, NY)
Still Life with Living Things, 2020
Colored pencil on paper
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Perrotin

Since the pandemic started, I have been walking around Astoria, where I live, and I have been admiring people’s gardens in much greater detail than I had before. This has expanded what I think of as my “community” to include the plants, animals, and insects in my neighborhood.

Jamaal Peterman (b. 1990, Fort Lauderdale, FL; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Still Protesting, 2020
Oil paint, sand, and vinyl glitter on canvas
Courtesy the artist and Vigo Gallery, London

This landscape focuses on a centered structure that represents abundance. The prosperity given by the structure comes from the conduits that meet at access points of information and resources. 8 min and 46 seconds is time expressed in the cement area that serves as a moment of remembrance that sparked another uprising and unrest in the Black and brown community. The characters and marks give essence to the individual lives fighting in protest for one cause of social justice. Enough is enough, we demand a change!

Kameelah Janan Rasheed (b. 1985, East Palo Alto, CA; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Plot Twist, 2020
Digital collage
Courtesy the artist

A plot twist can be an offering, an opening. Christina Sharpe’s Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (2009) includes an epigraph from Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (2001) referencing a line from Derek Walcott’s poem Six Fictions (1997). Walcott writes: “Pray for a life without plot, a day without narrative.” Like Brand who wishes “to be without th[e] story of captivity . . . ”, I hold on to this Walcott line. While I reference relief from plot loops or narrative tropes, we must also consider, as these authors do, what it means to have liberatory relief from narrative itself: to live or sprawl beyond the relationality that reinforces all too familiar subjugation.

Emily Mae Smith (b. 1979, Austin, TX; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Revenge of the Flowers, 2020
Digital collage of original oil and watercolor paintings
Courtesy of the artist and Simone Subal Gallery, Perrotin Gallery, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, and Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin

During quarantine I was awestruck by the flora and fauna transforming the city landscape. There were major drops in air pollution levels. Reports of rat adventures appeared in the newspapers. Grasses grew wildly to waist high in former dirt patches. Yellow dandelions dotted ball fields, then turned into snowy puffballs casting off their airborne heads to unknown destinations. In our natural world I found a small respite, a parable, a warning, and a blessing. 

Cynthia Talmadge (b. 1989, New York City, NY; lives and works in New York City, NY)
Lemon Tree and Household Mail, 2020
Ink on paper
Courtesy the artist and 56 HENRY, New York

Lemon Tree and Household Mail depicts a decorative metal lemon tree from my living room that I repurposed to air out potentially infectious household mail in the beginning of the pandemic. I noticed that perched among the branches were artifacts from systems in states of dysfunction: a stimulus check, the US census, and a sample ballot for the cancelled (later reinstated) New York Democratic primary. Matches and a scratched tribute at the tree’s base foreshadow combustion.

Adrienne Elise Tarver (b. 1985, NJ; lives and works in Atlanta, GA, and Brooklyn, NY)
Manifesting Paradise: High Priestess, 2020
Ink, oil pastel, and colored pencil
Courtesy the artist

During this difficult year, I’ve reflected on my desire to know there is progress and beauty in the future. This woman is based on the High Priestess tarot card—generally about reflection, intuition, and things yet to be revealed. Beyond asking to just matter, the High Priestess knows of greater potential, ventures into unknown futures to discern the symbols and omens among us and decipher the messages that we need to hear in the present.

Salman Toor (b. 1983, Lahore, Pakistan; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Downtown Boys, 2020
Oil on panel
© Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

The painting shows an interior scene of revelry among friends and lovers. The central figure reaches out in a welcoming, serpentine gesture to two embracing figures, their limbs intertwined. Behind them on the lower left side is a tender kiss shared by a couple on a bean bag. With this painting I wanted to summon a sense of closeness and romance in this time without certainties and much isolated self reflection.

Andre D. Wagner (b. 1986, Omaha, NE; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Old School, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn NY 2020, 2020
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy the artist

As the city starts to slowly open up, and I was thinking about the themes of reconnection and renewal, I wanted to make a work that felt uplifting. One day I was waiting at a bus stop in Brooklyn when I saw a man I know by the name of “Old School” spinning a basketball on his fingers. Basketball at the parks in the summer is a right of passage for Black boys and men, a way for us to escape and bond. So capturing this moment of joy was both nostalgic and about hope for the future.

D’Angelo Lovell Williams (b. 1992, Jackson, MS; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Undetectable, 2020
Digital photograph
Courtesy the artist

This work shows touch, kinship, and intimacy as aspects of life that are still happening, though they may be publicly disregarded at the moment. I depict people kissing, while wearing protective masks and exhaling smoke. The masks are a part of daily life and the smoke is visible in the air, unlike COVID-19. The idea is about taking the risk to live, even when it can and has resulted in death. I’m Black, gay, and HIV positive. Many of the people in my images are. There is still stigma surrounding HIV, Blackness, and queerness in the wake of the pandemic. With the history of Black and queer narratives in mind, and our altered states of living and interacting, it felt necessary to continue to visualize love in more nuanced ways.

Wong Kit Yi (黃潔宜) (b. 1983, Hong Kong; lives and works in New York City, NY, and Hong Kong)
Yes-Jet-Lag / 你好時差, 2020
Digital poster
Courtesy the artist

For people who travel a lot, jet lag is the very fabric of their everyday reality. But with the pandemic keeping everyone at home, there’s no need to adjust to new time zones. For some, this itself takes some adjusting. Enter Yes-Jet-Lag, the new jet-lag-inducing patch, which turns the intangible jet lag into a household object. It returns you to your normal sense of dislocation in your very own home. At a time when many lack access to health care and the right to be treated equally, this new product balances things out by helping the elite jet-setters feel a bit worse.