Our Approach
NASTY WOMEN NYC ART EXHIBITION
When: Exhibition Runs January 12 -15, 2017
Where: The Knockdown Center, Maspeth, Queens, NYC
Transportation info here. Google map directions here. We'll also be running a shuttle from 3pm onward on Thursday from the Jefferson L, outside of Cobra Club to get people to the space.
Opening: Thursday, January 12 7-10PM
Exhibition Hours: Thu 7-10pm, Fri 5-9pm, Sat, 2-8pm, Sun 2-6pm
100% of the proceeds will benefit Planned Parenthood. Can't make the exhibition? Make a donation online here!
Our Story
Meet the Organizers
JESSAMYN FIORE
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER & CO-DIRECTOR
Jessamyn Fiore is a New York based curator and writer as well the co-director of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark. She is the curator of the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation in Dubai, UAE, which opened in March 2016 with its inaugural exhibition Jean-Paul Najar: Vision & Legacy. She was the Director of Thisisnotashop, a not for profit gallery space in Dublin, from 2007-2010. She received a Masters in contemporary art theory, practice, and philosophy from The National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 2009.
Exhibitions curated include 112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970–1974) at David Zwirner in New York (2011), which led to her editing the critically acclaimed, eponymous catalogue, published by David Zwirner and Radius Books (2012); and a second exhibition for David Zwirner New York titled Gordon Matta-Clark: Above and Below (2013). Her original one-act play Blast from The Past, based on the writings of Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark, was published in 2014 by the Bureau for Open Culture. Recently, she curated II Machines: Clive Murphy & Trevor Tweeton at the Knockdown Center in Mespeth, Queens (May 2015) and was a partner at Rawson Projects gallery on the Lower East Side (Sep 2014- May 2015), organizing exhibitions by Nathaniel Mary Quinn and Lilja Birgisdottir among others.
Recent and upcoming exhibitions include Liz Nielsen & Max Warsh at Sirius Arts Centre in Cork, Ireland (June 2016) and at Pallas Projects, Dublin, Ireland (August 2016); New York In the 1970’s at the Jean-Paul Najar Foundation, Dubai, UAE (March 2017); Co-curator (with Serio Bessa) Gordon Matta-Clark: The Anarcitect at the Bronx Museum, New York (September 2017) to be followed by a European tour in 2018 (KUMU, Tallinn, Estonia and Jeu De Paume, Paris, France).
CAROLINA WHEAT
INVENTORY SPECIALIST, COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING
With a BFA in textile surface design from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Wheat keeps herself involved in the Art World. After undergrad, she worked for the NYC fashion industry and performed regularly at the Nuyorican Poetry Café. Switching gears, she moved back to Detroit to continue rhyming, promoting music and fabricating installations for the Underground Detroit electronic/techno rave scene in the mid-90's while working on PR, Education & Development with Tyree Guyton at the Heidelberg Project.
She returned to NYC to engage and lead the Admissions office at Parsons then was promoted to Senior Director for Graduate and Global enrollment at The New School. Currently, she emerges from a 20 year career in college recruitment and admission to have co-founded Elijah Wheat Showroom in 2015.
As a nomadic curatorial experience and gallery based in Brooklyn, its mission is to exhibit underrepresented conceptual voices in an emerging politically inspired community with her partner, Liz Nielsen. Wheat continues to assist in Nielsen's studio and works with high school and undergraduate students independently. As an artists' liaison, dealer, curator, educator, college coach and global art recruitment ambassador, she operates the Brooklyn gallery while pursuing textiles, sound and writing. Nielsen and Wheat also take great pride in raising their currently 9 year old "Nasty" daughter, Acacia Barker.
VICTORIA KEDDIE
VIDEO PRODUCTION & MAPPING
Victoria Keddie is an artist working in sound, video, and transmission. Her focus involves analog signal generation and manipulation, the performing body, and relationships of space. For five years, she has been Co-Director of E.S.P. TV, a nomadic TV studio that hybridizes technologies to realize synthetic environments and deconstruct the televisual for live performance. In early 2016, Keddie launched UNIT 11, a mobile transmission based residency operated within and involving an ENG news van. Site specific field work involves concentrated energy fields, fluctuating electronic activity, geographical discontinuity, and time sensitivity.
She has performed and exhibited internationally at venues and festivals such as, The Swiss Institute, The Kitchen, Museum of Moving Image, Queens Museum of Art, and Anthology Film Archives (NYC), Human Resources (Los Angeles), Lightcone, (Paris), Studio XX (Montreal), LOOP Festival (Barcelona), Pallas Projects (Dublin), Reykjavik Arts Festival (Reykjavik), General Public (Berlin), Axis Art Centre (Crew), The Independent Film Festival (Naples), Liste Art Fair (Basel), Seeing Sound Festival (Bath), and Daimon (Gatineau). With her project, E.S.P. TV, she has been artist-in-residence at Pioneer Works, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Museum of Arts and Design.
Video works are distributed through Lightcone, (Paris). Sound works to be released with Spectral Evidence, (Cambridge, MA), In Context Music (Vancouver/ NYC), and Robert & Leopold (NYC)
ROXANNE JACKSON
CO-DIRECTOR
Roxanne Jackson is a ceramic artist and mixed media sculptor living in Brooklyn, New York. Her macabre works are blackly-humored, investigating the link between transformation, myth and kitsch. Press for her work includes the Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, the New York Times, Gothamist, Sculpture Center’s Notebook, Beautiful Decay, ARTslant, Brooklyn Magazine, the L Magazine, Eyes Towards the Dove, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics Ireland and New Ceramics, among others. She has been an Artist in Residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Wassaic Project, the Ceramic Center of Berlin, Hunter College, Chashama’s: ChaNorth, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, the Oregon College of Art and Craft, and the Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China — funded by an NCECA International Residency Fellowship.
Her work has been exhibitied at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Honey Ramka, Lu Magnus, Denny Gallery, Orgy Park, Regina Rex, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, OUTLET, 99 Cent Plus Gallery, the Parlour Bushwick, BAM, English Kills, BRIC, and Airplane Gallery in NY — as well as at Satelliate Art Show in Miami, FL, the Mutter Museum, Phila, PA, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN, the International Cryptozoology Museum, Portland, ME, the Hunterdon Art Museum, NJ, and more. She has shown in China, Portugal, Romania, Canada and cities including London, Berlin and Leipzig. Most recently her work has been included in Salon Zürcher in Paris, France and Mathilde Hatzenberger Gallery in Brussels, Belgium.
CLIVE MURPHY
CONSTRUCTION & EXHIBITION DESIGNER
LIZ NIELSEN
INVENTORY SPECIALIST
Liz Nielsen is a Brooklyn based photographic artist whose works have been exhibited in New York, Chicago, Paris, London, and Berlin.
Her photographs are printed in the analog color darkroom with handmade negatives and found light sources. Each photograph is Unique, ranging in side from 70" x 50" to 8" x 8". Liz earned her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2004 and her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002. For 5 years, Nielsen held the position as the Inventory Manager and Art Handling Coordinator at David Zwirner. Nielsen's photographic works have been reviewed in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and ArtSlant.
Liz currently works with Danziger Gallery in New York, SOCO Gallery in North Carolina, and NextLevel Galerie in Paris, France.
AIMEE ODUM
OPERATIONS ASSISTANT
Aimee Odum is a visual artist residing in Brooklyn, New York and currently oversees the Jane Hartsook Gallery at Greenwich House Pottery. Odum received her MFA in Studio Art from University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Here she also fulfilled curatorial endeavors and organized events as Director of sUgAR, University of Arkansas' student-run gallery, and as Director of sUgAR Vision, an Internet and Televised art platform. Recipient of the Sturgis International Fellowship, she was a Visiting Artist at Iceland Academy of the Arts in Autumn 2015 exhibiting her work at Mengi and The Living Art Museum. Recently, she premiered a collaborative, performance-based project in Belgium and was part of the traveling exhibition Running Towards Dreams exhibited in Fayetteville, AR, Tehran, Iran and scheduled for Berlin, Germany. Odum’s studio practice utilizes video, objects and installation, addressing how human instincts and cultural patterns formulate conflicting desires for the natural world.
STEPHANIE STOCKBRIDGE
ANGEL BELLARAN
CURATORIAL ADVISOR + PROJECT MANAGER
Angel Bellaran is an independent curator currently based Brooklyn, previously based in San Francisco & Dublin, Ireland. Bellaran has spent over the last decade divided between the United States & Western Europe pursuing the study of international curatorial and artistic practices. Most recent projects and collaborations include Artist-Run Spaces: Conversations Across The Atlantic, a day of panel talks on artist-run culture at Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin, Ireland (August 2016); Up Against the Wall at Spring Break Art Show (March 2016); GREY Book II, photographed by Nan Goldin and styled by Valentina Ilardi Martin for the fashion editorial "Girls" (May 2016). Bellaran is an alumni of the Institute of Art, Design & Technology's MAVis programme in Ireland and Mason Gross, the arts conservatory of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
BARBARA SMITH
GRAPHIC/WEB DESIGNER + ADMINISTRATOR
Barbara is a graphic designer, photographer, and artist living in San Diego, CA where she is raising two beautiful Nasty Daughters. She is very happy to be channeling her political angst into helping on the digital end of this amazing project. She is also organizing a Nasty Women Exhibition with some fellow Nasty Women in San Diego, California. Check out that site here.
YOUNG SUN HAN
PRODUCTION ADVISOR
Young Sun Han is a visual and performance artist based in Brooklyn. Han has previously worked as a curator in New Zealand, directing 3 years of programming at the former City Art Rooms Project Trust in Auckland. He currently manages Special Projects at David Zwirner, New York, specialising in benefit exhibitions and artist-led programs. Han's art practice intersects with collaboration, activism, and the use of personal objects and stories to communicate wider cultural anxieties, fears, and desires.
HALEY M. SHAW
Haley Shaw lives and works in New York City and is currently Director at Anton Kern Gallery where she manages artists and places their work in discerning public and private collections.
Prior to joining Anton Kern she had more than six years of commercial gallery experience at Lehmann Maupin and David Zwirner, both in sales and as an artist liaison. For the many established artists she has worked with, she has handled all aspects of their professional lives, as well as their exhibitions and projects presented throughout the world.
Prior to working in the commercial art world, she had over nine years of experience in a broad spectrum of art institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Boston Arts Commission, Magnum Photos, and Creative Time. She has extensive knowledge in fine art sales, artist management, exhibition planning, art market trends, public art initiatives, the photographic arts, nonprofit management, donor relations, intellectual property rights, digital collections management, and public policy trends as they pertain to the arts.
She is a graduate of New York University’s Visual Arts Administration Master’s Program where her thesis topic was: An Analysis of Public Art and Its Role As Catalyst for Broader Arts Advocacy. She also holds a BFA in Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology.
About The Project
This is a group exhibition that serves to demonstrate solidarity among artists who identify with being a Nasty Woman in the face of threats to roll back women’s rights, individual rights, and abortion rights. It also serves as a fundraiser to support organizations defending these rights and to be a platform for organization before the Trump Presidential Inauguration in January.
Started by Roxanne Jackson and Jessamyn Fiore with a facebook post that read:
Hello female artists/curators! Lets organize a NASTY WOMEN group show!!! Who's interested???
The massive response has taken this call to arms into building an ever-expanding network of Nasty Women Artists & Art Organizers that will culminate in multiple exhibitions. Please visit Other Nasty Venues for more details on organizing an exhibition in your city.
THIS EXHIBITION IS A FUNDRAISER
The works in this exhibition will be available for sale – 100% of the sale will go to Planned Parenthood (other venues can choose to support other organizations).
INSTALLATION PLAN:
In the h
uge Knockdown Center main space we will construct ten 3D letters approximately twelve feet high each to spell out NASTY WOMEN. They will be framed out with wood and covered with a strong plastic mesh from which the artworks will be hung- basically these letters serve as our walls for the exhibition, every work will be hung off or installed in/on these forms. The letters will dramatically run the length of the space creating a NASTY WOMEN monument.
In this way each work will represent its own unique voice while being unified by the overall installation. It is the hope that this installation will create a strong visual statement of solidarity. We will soon have a rendered image of what these letters in the space will look like so you can completely envision the show.