The Shed welcomes a new cohort of artists with bold ideas about “Open Call: Portals” this summer. Its fourth open-call exhibition opens this month. Established in 2019, the arts and performance venue has become a cultural hotspot. The Shed sits at a portal itself, not far from the Lincoln Tunnel, with access to several subway lines. It’s a location presenting captive audiences who might not trek towards complex art otherwise.
“Portals” was curated by Dejá Belardo, Assistant Curator, Civic Programs and Visual Arts. Belardo identifies as a “human-first” curator. “We’re putting money in artists’ hands,” she said with a smile. “We’re looking at the way that artists are able to create this third space, to work through different narratives of migration, colonialism, [and] spirituality.”
Some portals are restricted. Others float across inconvenient narratives. Many amplify previously shushed voices. The show will allow passersby to cross into other worlds and alternate histories. Visitors can also connect to artists’ spiritual practices, political beliefs, and family legacies.
The exhibition includes work from artists such as Mel Corchado, Chelsea Odufu, Marwa Eltahir, Jarrett Key, Laurena Finéus, Yelaine Rodriguez, and Luis Vasquez La Roche, which will be shown to the nearly 250,000 visitors expected to take in The Shed’s programming this year. The exhibition will take place on Level 2 of the establishment’s gallery and in the outdoor Plaza.
There were over 1000 submissions for “Portals,” and artists were chosen by a jury.
Those selected don’t fear the show’s ambitions. “We can easily flatten it in order to make it digestible,” Finéus noted. “But I feel like portals educate.”
Open calls democratize the opportunities in the art world. They help maximize visions. “I never grew up around artists or designers, not because they didn’t exist, but because it just wasn’t an option,” said Corchado. “It’s incredibly humbling and it makes me much more present and grateful for the sort of access that I have,” she said of her participation.
Some of the artists in the show are continuing to explore concepts they previously tapped into. Key first performed his hair paintings in Slovenia, and Finéus held workshops in Brooklyn that used her work to address trauma. Chelsea Odufu’s Gold with a Mind of Its Own carries on her work considering how different cultures are connected to the precious mineral. The series has taken the multi-media artist to Côte d’Ivoire, Peru, and other locations. It has also prompted her to think about what capitalism, hip-hop, and the history of the Incas have in common.
“A lot of my work is thinking about the majesty and the reality of African empires and really destigmatizing the images that we see around people of color,” said Odufu. She hopes to bring these ideas to the forefront “so that people can feel empowered and kind of feel like there’s this sort of sense of healing by having this ancestral tie that they might not have otherwise.”
Corchado created $TICKY $IN$, a visual experience that speaks to the complicated past of sugar the way texts from Keith A. Sandiford and Elizabeth Abbott have. It uses sugar based sculpture as a “bridge to explore all of these different ideas of labor, identity, and expression.”
Marwa Eltahir appreciated the support provided to the artists. This was not a case where they were rushed through the process. “I did feel very fortunate to have a lot of time and space to be able to sit still and be by myself and really just allow for those things to move through me,” she told ESSENCE.
“A lot of the times when you bring these types of projects to a museum, there’s a lot of pushback,” said Rodriguez. She valued that logistics were not placed over the merit of her mixed-media collaboration with Vasquez La Roche, Residence Time | The Sea Is History. La Roche explains that they spent “months” perfecting the method they would use to craft the sugar and coffee they used to open the portal of Afrospirtuality of their respective maternal sides. “We became chemists,” he joked. The show allows the two artists to partner at their largest scale yet.
Eltahir expanded her process while developing her work for “Portals.” 99 Names: My Liberation Is Tied to Yours. “This particular body of work has a lot of collaborators that I’ve invited into the process,” she stated. This included an audio engineer, musician, director and “DP.” She loved seeing how the elements of her work were able to “speak to each other.”
“The end product is that much more beautiful because I allowed for those changes,” she added.
“Scaling things up as an artist requires so many resources, and it can be difficult to do alone,” said Key, who is including his Hair Painting No. 40 in the exhibition. He integrates sounds into his work as well. “It’s music, it’s my voyage, it’s the voices of my family members. It’s sounds of ocean material, found objects, all kind of collaged together in the score,” he continued. “As I have scaled up the project, the scores have become more operatic.”
The artists participated in a “day of learning” where they were encouraged to consider how their work would be experienced at different levels of accessibility. Inclusiveness was not an afterthought for “Portals.” These considerations were built into the show’s development. Programming is free. “The work was connecting with people, and to just continue each time to ask myself, “What can I shift? How can I connect deeper with the people that are watching,” said Key.
“There’s not only one way to experience a work,” added La Roche.
Finéus scaled her work Together, we could have made mountains with all audiences in mind. “I really wanted to focus mainly on the accessibility,” she said.
Belardo supported the vast context Odufu and others inserted into the work through smells, touch, and sight. “She really wanted to dream big,” explained Odufu.
“Open Call: Portals” will be displayed at The Shed from June 27 to August 24.