Make the time to visit the Long Gallery Harlem (2073 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr Blvd.) before the current (fantastic) show closes on August 14th
(Make sure to check hours and call ahead):
INTERIOR DIALOGUE is an exhibition about social perspectives through the lens of the artist’s personal life experience. The works are engaged in the active centering of the artists’ intersectional identities through the critical lens of decoration and ornament. This work explores how aesthetics often buttress systems of appropriation, oppression, and erasure. Norsworthy asserts that aesthetics are often used as a vehicle to justify the commodification of cultures and, by proxy, communities.
The exhibition is couched within a created environment that interrogates ‘Whiteness.’ The white-box space is defined by Norsworthy’s latest wallpaper work, Blackity (2021), and a series of objects that traverse function, decoration, and art object. The exhibition is held together with six tondos, each depicting an antique European vessel. Images of these ceramic artifacts were sourced from online and estate auctions. The vases are centered in the round space, and each sit atop a surface situated against a highly decorative backdrop. Although the vases appear to be depictions of beauty and decoration, they function on another level as symbolic representations of the artist.
The three planes in each tondo (the vase, the surface, and the background) conceptually evoke ways of understanding foregrounding identity within larger conversations of intersectionality. The hierarchy of these planes, vis-a-vis weight and importance, shift between the six tondos; with each acting as a different visual strategy that describes the interplay of object and background. The objecthood of the central object holds power, but is also at the whim of the space within which it is placed.
For Norsworthy, the process of creating these circular works was an exercise in identity-centered space-making, an idea that pivots the idea of ‘ownership’ from other to self. The titles of the works speak to this contemplation: The parenthetical titles, Lot #1, Lot #2, etc. play with the idea of commodification, creating a double entendre of the contemporary auction market while also evoking the violent history of the ‘auction block’ and the repercussions from Antebellum America that still reverberate today.
Governor Cuomo Gives $11,000,000 to Build Supportive Housing for Formerly Incarcerated or Mentally Challenged Homeless Men and Women
Bishop’s House on West 128th Street (east of Lenox) will be demolished and a 9 story building for supportive housing will be built.
Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Monday that the state would provide nearly $11 million in funding toward two new supportive housing developments in Upper Manhattan.
Through the state’s Homeless Housing and Assistance Program, the funding will help provide 71 supportive housing units at Bishop House Apartments in Central Harlem, operated by the nonprofit The Bridge, as well as 56 additional units at the Jericho House in Harlem.
Unlike standard homeless shelter units, supportive housing units primarily serve homeless residents with other issues, from recent incarceration to mental health conditions — offering an array of services designed to provide residents with the necessities to lead stable lives off the streets.
See: https://www.amny.com/news/cuomo-providing-11-million-toward-nyc-supportive-housing-homeless/
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