Hello New York! · Edition 1

2019: Hello New York!

DatesJuly 8–19, 2019

WhereBrooklyn, New York

Cohort9 artists

2019: Hello New York! — group photograph — 2019: Hello New York! — Brooklyn, New York.

The edition

What this one was about.

Eleven local and international artists took part over two weeks, split between two concurrent workshop tracks: "Empowering the LatinX Arts Community of Brooklyn" and "The TransAtlantic Meeting on Nationalism(s)" — the latter pairing local artists with visiting Nordic participants over three days to compare how nationalism plays out on either side of the Atlantic.

The program combined practical skills for navigating the art world with substantive discussion of cultural identity and belonging, supported by Artists Alliance, Brooklyn Arts Council, Fridman Gallery, the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), the Nordic Culture Fund, Residency Unlimited, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Queens Museum, and the Swedish Arts Council.

The cohort

9 artists.

Adele Todd

Artist, Trinidad and Tobago

Adele Todd is a Trinidad and Tobago-based artist, graphic designer, and lecturer at the University of the West Indies, working in embroidery and performance. Todd participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2019. She uses 'soft' materials to discuss 'hard' themes such as domestic violence and police corruption, and also works in performance, particularly taking traditional J'ouvert carnival characters and bringing them into the 21st century to explore present-day challenges — including a reimagining of the 'old mas' character Dame Lorraine from a female perspective. She holds a BFA with honors from the Pratt Institute. Todd has exhibited internationally, including at the Second Beijing International Art Biennale (2005) and the Florence Biennale and Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, and has exhibited extensively across Trinidad and Tobago and Italy.

Alfredo Esparza Cárdenas

Artist, Mexico

Alfredo Esparza Cárdenas (b. 1980, Mexico) is a photographer whose research generates narratives from the material traces of human cultural life in rural environments. Esparza Cárdenas participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2019. His work explores how territories are shaped by emotions, geopolitics, culture, and social and environmental justice, using photography, video, drifts, performative actions, and ephemeral sculptures to highlight everyday rural phenomenologies, including the impact of Mexico's drug wars on the landscape. He holds an MA in Humanistic Studies with a specialization in History from ITESM (2008) and is a graduate of the Contemporary Photography Seminar at Centro de la Imagen (2012). He is the winner of the 7th edition of AI-AP Latin America Fotografía (New York, 2018), was selected for the 18th Photography Biennial of Centro de la Imagen, and received an honorable mention in the Visible Memory competition in Medellín, Colombia. He completed artist residencies at Listhús and Fish Factory Creative Centre in Iceland, and from 2012 to 2015 served as head of the exhibitions department at Mexico's National Museum of Popular Cultures.

Bang Geul Han

Artist, Korea/US

Bang Geul Han (b. 1978, Seoul, South Korea) is an interdisciplinary artist based in the US since 2003, working across video, performance, text, and code. Han participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2019. Her work probes the sociopolitical and cultural dimensions of body and language in relation to social structures, representational systems, and understandings of self, often using handwoven tapestries, generative moving image, and interactive installation to interrogate immigration policy and reproductive rights. Her work has been shown at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Queens Museum, The 8th Floor at the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, and Centro Internazionale per l'Arte Contemporanea in Rome, and reviewed in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Brooklyn Rail. She is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award and fellowships from A.I.R. Gallery, MacDowell, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Han holds an MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University and a BFA in Painting from Seoul National University, and teaches at the College of Staten Island, CUNY.

Liliya Lifanova

Artist, Kyrgyzstan/US

Liliya Lifanova (b. 1983, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan) is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Lifanova participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2019. Her paintings, sculptural installations, and wearables for collaborative participatory video and performance are positioned at the intersection of fine arts, experimental theater, and film, broaching notions of identity within tradition and the cultural memory of a political system destroying itself from within. Solo exhibitions include Rumour from Ground Control at Rooster Gallery, New York, and PHASE I, II at Gridchinhall, Moscow; her work has also appeared in group exhibitions at the Parrish Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Saint Louis. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2010) and a Fulbright Fellowship in Installation Art (Moscow, 2011), and has held residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Triangle Arts Association, and Residency Unlimited. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the US Embassy in Bishkek through Art in Embassies, US Department of State.

Lulu Meng

Artist, Taiwan/US

LuLu Meng (b. 1982, Taipei, Taiwan) is a New York-based conceptual artist working in installation, digital media, sculpture, and photography. Meng participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2019. Having emigrated to the US with a background in chemical engineering, costume design, and event management, Meng questions what differences really exist between people and what shared values and aspirations unite them. Their work has been shown at the Bronx Museum, 47 Canal, Flux Factory, Queens Museum's Hall of Science, Gallery MoMo (Tokyo), and Cloud Gallery (Taipei). Meng holds a BA in Drama and Theater from National Taiwan University and an MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and has held residencies and fellowships at the Bronx Museum's Artist in the Marketplace program, Vermont Studio Center, Kala Art Institute, and DordtYart in the Netherlands.

Manuel Molina Martagon

Artist, Mexico

Manuel Molina Martagon is a multidisciplinary artist working in performance, video, and socially engaged projects. Molina Martagon participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2019. His work explores issues of immigration, labor, tradition, and access, often using food as a vehicle to engage in multisensorial dialogue on current social topics. He has developed socially engaged projects in New York related to the food and service industry, including Acquired Taste with Artists Alliance and Cuchifritos, and organized EL RECREO at Recess as a recipient of More Art's Engaging Artist fellowship. His work has been exhibited in Mexico, the United States, Spain, China, and Cuba, and shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC. Molina Martagon holds an MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish from New York University, and is a Fulbright-García Robles recipient.

Matías Alvial

Artist, Chile/US

Matías Alvial (b. 1997, Santiago, Chile) is a New York and Santiago-based multimedia artist and community organizer. Alvial participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2019. At the core of his work, he explores interpersonal connections and the art of caring, nurturing, and growing community, often through a queer lens and diaristic, lens-based practice — including his ongoing 35mm Diary project, which documents the 2020s through film photography inspired by Nan Goldin, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Ryan McGinley. He holds a BA in the Aesthetics of Commerce from New York University's Gallatin School. His gallery debut was at Albert Merola Gallery in Provincetown, alongside artists including John Waters and Jack Pierson, and his photography has appeared in i-D, New York Magazine, Paper Magazine, PIN-UP, Vogue, and Document Journal.

Sarah Pettit

Artist, UK/US

Sarah Pettitt (b. 1978, UK) is an artist based between London and New York. Pettitt participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2019. Evolving from a place between painting and sculpture, installation and performance, her work interrogates painting's history, materiality, and presentation, embracing process-oriented methods to construct surfaces that seek to evoke empathy, examining pre-modern artistic modalities and the notion of the absent body to explore non-visual representations of pain. She has exhibited across the UK, Europe, and the US, and in 2016 was invited to be Honorary Materials Research Associate at the Slade in conjunction with University College London on the research project The Tyranny of Surface. In 2018 she co-curated a special project with Norte Maar at the artist-led fair SPRING/BREAK, New York. She holds an MA in Fine Art Painting from the Slade School of Art (2013) and a BA in Fine Art Painting from Norwich School of Art (2000).

Xavier Robles Armas

Artist & curator, US

Xavier Robles Armas (b. 1991, Zacatecas, Mexico) is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Brooklyn by way of Santa Ana, California. Robles Armas participated in the Curatorial Program for Research in 2019. Informed by brown practices of leisure, play, and placemaking, he investigates the alchemy and unstable moments of belonging, with a keen interest in leisurely practices in public space, photography, Mexican-American literature, and the ways Mexican migration has shaped space and architecture throughout the United States. He is currently Events and Arts Manager for the Latinx Project at New York University, where he curated Tinkuy: Converging Ecologies (2023). He has held fellowships at the Queens Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago, and worked as a curator, educator, and programmer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, ProArts Gallery (Oakland), Southern Exposure Gallery (San Francisco), and the Eric Carle Museum. He holds an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Architecture Studies from Hampshire College.

All Hello New York! editions