Installation view of Greater New York 2021 on view at MoMA PS1 from October 7, 2021 to April 18, 2022. Image courtesy MoMA PS1. Photo: Noel Woodford

Greater New York, MoMA PS1’s signature survey of artists living and working in the New York City area, returns for its fifth edition from October 7, 2021 to April 18, 2022 featuring the work of 47 artists and collectives. Delayed one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this iteration offers an intimate portrayal of New York by creating proximity between key—yet often under-examined—histories of art-making and emerging practices. Drawing connections across the interdisciplinary practices of international and intergenerational artists, Greater New York examines the many ways that affinities are formed in relation to place and through time. The exhibition highlights and connects the seemingly oppositional modes of the documentary and surrealism, exploring the ways artists work to record social and personal experiences around belonging and estrangement. Traversing state lines and national borders, Greater New York speaks to the richness found in diverse narratives and experiences of place.

“After what could be described as an uncompromisingly transformative year socially, politically, and personally, we continue to be in a powerfully transitional moment in New York,” said PS1 Director Kate Fowle. “This edition of Greater New York is a hard-hitting, intense show that foregrounds the resilience of the city, while channeling our collective need to reconnect and reflect. It honors the endurance and tenacity of artists to speak to the urgencies of their time.”

“Greater New York offers an opportunity to process, mourn, and celebrate alongside New York City’s artists and communities,” said Ruba Katrib, Curator, PS1. “The exhibition highlights artists who have worked persistently in New York City—in some cases over many decades and often without recognition contributing to a more diverse and complex understanding of the incredible range of artists who give creative life to the city.”

Greater New York is organized by a curatorial team led by Ruba Katrib, Curator, PS1 with writer and curator Serubiri Moses, in collaboration with Kate Fowle, Director, PS1 and Inés Katzenstein, Curator of Latin American Art and Director of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America, The Museum of Modern Art.

In recognition of the importance of artists to civic life in New York, PS1 continues to offer free admission to all New Yorkers, made possible by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation. The exhibition is also accompanied by a robust series of programs and performances.

Yuji Agematsu (b. 1956)
Nadia Ayari (b. 1981)
BlackMass Publishing (est. 2018)
Diane Burns (b. 1957, d. 2006)
Kristi Cavataro (b. 1992)
Curtis Cuffie (b. 1955, d. 2002)
Hadi Fallahpisheh (b. 1987)
Rotimi Fani-Kayode (b. 1955, d. 1989)
Raque Ford (b. 1986)
Luis Frangella (b. 1944, d. 1990)
Dolores Furtado (b. 1977)
Julio Galán (b. 1958, d. 2006)
Doreen Garner (b. 1986)
Emilie Louise Gossiaux (b. 1989)
Robin Graubard (b. 1951)
Milford Graves (b. 1941, d. 2021)
Bettina Grossman (b. 1927)
Avijit Halder (b. 1988)
Bill Hayden (b. 1984)
Steffani Jemison (b. 1981)
G. Peter Jemison (b. 1945)
E’wao Kagoshima (b. 1945)
Marie Karlberg (b. 1985)
Matthew Langan-Peck (b. 1988)
Las Nietas de Nonó (est. 2011)
Athena LaTocha (b. 1969)
Carolyn Lazard (b. 1987)
Sean-Kierre Lyons (b. 1991)
Hiram Maristany (b. 1945)
Servane Mary (b. 1972)
Rosemary Mayer (b. 1943, d. 2014)
Alan Michelson (b. 1953)
Ahmed Morsi (b. 1930)
Nicolas Moufarrege (b. 1947, d. 1985)
Marilyn Nance (b. 1953)
Tammy Nguyen (b. 1984)
Shelley Niro (b. 1954)
Kayode Ojo (b. 1990)
Paulina Peavy (b. 1901, d. 1999)
Freya Powell (b. 1983)
Raha Raissnia (b. 1968)
Andy Robert (b.1984)
Diane Severin Nguyen (b. 1990)
Shanzhai Lyric (est. 2015)
Regina Vater (b. 1943)
Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa (b. 1980)
Lachell Workman (b. 1989)

PROGRAMS

Freya Powell, Only Remains Remain
October 22 and 23, 2021

Only Remains Remain, uses the structure of a Sophoclean chorus to create an elegy for the hundreds of unidentified migrants buried in mass graves in Sacred Heart Cemetery in Brooks County, Texas. Working with an ensemble of 15 performers, Powell explores the mournful potential of the voice. Through a collaborative process, the work utilizes pitch, intonation, breath, movement, and silence to embody a contemporary tragedy drawn from the story of Antigone. The chorus of women seeks to recognize the lives of those laid to rest as unknowns by addressing the silence of their burial and our complicity and grief in the process.

Between the two Saturday performances Powell will lead a discussion with theorists and scholars around the topic of ambiguous loss, making connections between the ongoing tragedy in Brooks County and the COVID-19 pandemic. Presented as part of the VW Performance program.

VW Performance at MoMA PS1 is made possible by Volkswagen of America, celebrating ten years of support for performance at PS1 in 2021.

Dance programming as part of VW Performance is supported in part by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation.

Only Remains Remain is also made possible by Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Marie Karlberg, The Good Terrorist
October 28, 2021

Marie Karlberg will screen her new feature-length film, The Good Terrorist, which is also on view as part of Greater New York. The Good Terrorist is based on a 1985 novel of the same name by Doris Lessing. Set in 1980s Thatcher-era London, the book follows a young woman as she joins a group of radical leftists living in a squatted apartment and negotiating how to practice collective politics. Karlberg filmed The Good Terrorist in a vacant luxury apartment on New York’s Upper East Side while the city was under lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic, casting fellow artists as her actors. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Karlberg and members of the cast.

New York Oyster Conference
November 13, 2021

This program examines the role of oysters in New York’s ecological history and its relation to the cultural and urban development of the city. Organized in tandem with the Greater New York exhibition, speakers include Alan Michelson, Shanzhai Lyric, Pete Malinowski of the Billion Oyster Project, and others. They will discuss the myriad of cultural and environmental roles that oysters have played in New York’s past and contemplate future possibilities for oysters in the city’s cultural and environmental preservation. The presentations are followed by a conversation moderated by Ayasha Guerin.

Las Nietas de Nonó
November 29—December 19, 2021

Premier and limited screening of FOODTOPIA: Después de todo territorio (2021), a new film by Las Nietas de Nonó.

BlackMass Publishing
January 22, February 19, March 5, and April 16, 2022

Beginning in January 2022, the New York-based collective BlackMass Publishing organizes a series of monthly public events in conjunction with Greater New York. The programs are developed out of their research and collaborative publishing practice, which combines new and archival content by Black artists and cultural producers in an improvisational manner. The events will include a series of conversations and performances that extend from and feed back into the multimedia study hall they have created in Greater New York.

On Diane Burns
March 19, 2022

A multimedia program dedicated and in response to the work and legacy of poet Diane Burns, organized by poet Nicole Wallace. Burns’s reading of her poem “Alphabet City Serenade” is featured in Greater New York.

Diane Burns was born in Lawrence, Kansas, to a Chemehuevi father and an Anishinabe mother, She moved to New York in the 1970s to attend Barnard College, and after dropping out her senior year, she became active in the poetry scene of the Lower East Side, where she lived. She was a founding poet of the Nuyorican Poets Café, a frequent performer at the Bowery Poetry Club and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, and published a book of poems entitled Riding the One-Eyed Ford (1981), illustrated with her pen and ink drawings.

Nicole Wallace is the author of the chapbook, WAASAMOWIN (IMP, 2019). Nicole was the June/July 2020 poetry micro-resident at Running Dog and was a 2019 Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow. They are a member of the Indigenous Kinship Collective and Managing Director of The Poetry Project. Recent work can be read in print in Survivance: Indigenous Poesis Vol. IV Zine and online at Running Dog, A Perfect Vacuum, and LitHub. Originally from Gakaabikaang, located in Minnesota, Nicole is of mixed settler/European ancestry and is a descendent of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. They currently live and make work on unceded, occupied Canarsee and Lenape territory (Brooklyn, NY).

CURATORIAL TEAM
Ruba Katrib is Curator at MoMA PS1. At PS1 she has curated exhibitions such as Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life (2021), Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991 – 2011 (2019) (co-curated with Peter Eleey), the retrospective of Simone Fattal in 2019, and the solo shows of Edgar Heap of Birds (2019), Karrabing Collective (2019), Fernando Palma Rodríguez, and Julia Phillips (2018). From 2012 to 2018 she was Curator at SculptureCenter in New York where she curated over twenty solo and group exhibitions, including solo shows of the work of Carissa Rodriguez (2018), Kelly Akashi, Sam Anderson, Teresa Burga, Nicola L., Charlotte Prodger (all 2017), Rochelle Goldberg, Aki Sasamoto, Cosima von Bonin (all 2016), Anthea Hamilton, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Gabriel Sierra, Erika Verzutti (all 2015), David Douard, and Jumana Manna (both 2014). Previously, Katrib was the Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami from 2007 to 2012. Katrib was also co-founder of the residency and exhibition space Threewalls in Chicago, and has also held positions at the Renaissance Society and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, where she currently serves on the Graduate Committee. She was a research advisor for the 2018 Carnegie International and a member of the Advisory Board for Recess, a non-profit artist residency and exhibition space in New York. Katrib co curated SITE Santa Fe’s 2018 biennial, Casa Tomada, along with José Luis Blondet and Candice Hopkins.

Serubiri Moses is an independent writer and curator presently living in New York. In 2020 and 2021, he served as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Hunter College, where he teaches contemporary African and Black art history. Previously, Moses was part of the curatorial team for the tenth Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art, We Don’t Need Another Hero (2017-2018). From 2013 to 2017 Moses travelled extensively to participate in curatorial residencies, conferences, and juries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. In 2015, Moses held the position of Stadtschreiber, an academic fellowship, at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies and in 2014 he co-curated the second public art biennial in Kampala, KLA ART, entitled Unmapped, and organized a four-volume public program at the Goethe Zentrum Kampala. In 2013, Moses was associate editor at the Ugandan art journal, START Journal for Arts and Culture in East Africa. From 2011-2012 he was a critic at the Ugandan daily newspaper New Vision Daily. Moses has published and lectured widely, and recent publications and conference talks include: “Violent Dreaming,” e-flux journal 107 (March 2020); “Death as a Premonitory Sign,” Singapore Art Biennial Symposium (February 2020); and Forces of Art: Perspectives from a Changing World (co-editor, 2020).

Kate Fowle is the Director of MoMA PS1. From 2013 to 2019 she was the inaugural chief curator at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and director-at-large of Independent Curators International (ICI) in New York, where she was the executive director from 2009 to 2013. Prior to this she was the inaugural international curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2007–08). In 2002 she co-founded the Master’s Program in Curatorial Practice for California College of the Arts in San Francisco, for which she was the Chair until 2007. Before moving to the United States, Fowle was co director of Smith + Fowle in London from 1996 to 2002. From 1994 to 1996 she was curator at the Towner Art Gallery and Museum in Eastbourne, East Sussex. Fowle’s recent projects include solo exhibitions with David Adjaye, Rasheed Araeen, John Baldessari, Sammy Baloji, Louise Bourgeois, Marcel Broodthaers, Urs Fischer, Rashid Johnson, Irina Korina, Robert Longo, Anri Sala, Taryn Simon, Juergen Teller, and Rirkrit Tirivanija, as well as extended essays on Ilya Kabakov, Sterling Ruby, and Qiu Zhijie, and numerous articles on curating and exhibition histories. Fowle has written three books: Exhibit Russia: The New International Decade 1986-1996 (2016); Rashid Johnson: Within Our Gates (2016); and Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo (2017).

Inés Katzenstein is Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Institute for the Study of the Art of Latin America at The Museum of Modern Art. She received a masters degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York (2001). She has written extensively about contemporary art and curated exhibitions like Sur Moderno: Journeys of Abstraction (MoMA, 2019), Liliana Porter: Fotografía y ficción (Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, 2003), David Lamelas, Extranjero, Foreigner, Ètranger, Aüslander (Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico, 2005) Marcelo Pombo, un artista del pueblo (Collection Fortabat, Buenos Aires, 2015) and co-curated Televisión, El Di Tella y un episodio en la vida de la TV (Espacio Telefónica, Buenos Aires, 2010) and Aquella mañana… (Parque de la memoria, Buenos Aires, 2014). She was curator of the Argentine pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale, where she presented the project Guillermo Kuitca, si yo fuera el invierno mismo and was co-curator of Zona Franca, Mercosur Biennial, 2007. Among other books, she edited Listen, Here, Now! Argentine Art of the Sixties: Writings of the Avant-Garde, (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2004.) From 2004 to 2008 she served as curator at Malba-Fundación Costantini in Buenos Aires, where among other programming projects she initiated the collection of contemporary Argentine art. Also in Buenos Aires, in 2008 she founded the Department of Art at the University Torcuato Di Tella, where she served as director of educational programs and exhibitions for 10 years.

SPONSORSHIP
Greater New York 2021 is made possible with lead support from the Charles E. Culpeper Arts and Culture Program of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Significant support is provided by members of the Greater New Yorkers donor group at MoMA PS1.

Major support is provided by On, the Contemporary Arts Council of the Museum of Modern Art, the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Director’s Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art, and the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation.

Generous funding is provided by Lise Stolt-Nielsen and the Junior Associates of the Museum of Modern Art.

Additional support is provided by the Black Arts Council of the Museum of Modern Art.

Funding is also provided by the Ava Olivia Knoll Fund and the Tom Slaughter Emerging Artists Endowment Fund.

Special thanks to Bark Frameworks and the Billion Oyster Project.

ABOUT MoMA PS1
MoMA PS1 champions art and artists at the intersection of the social, cultural, and political issues of our time. Providing audiences with the agency to ask questions, access to knowledge, and a forum for public debate, PS1 has offered insight into artists’ diverse worldviews for more than 40 years. Founded in 1976 by Alanna Heiss, the institution was a defining force in the alternative space movement in New York City, transforming a nineteenth century public schoolhouse in Long Island City into a site for artistic experimentation and creativity. PS1 has been a member of New York City’s Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) since 1982 and affiliated with The Museum of Modern Art since 2000.

Hours: MoMA PS1 is open from 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and until 6:00 p.m. on Sundays and Mondays. Closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.

Admission: $10 suggested admission; $5 for students and senior citizens; free for New York City residents and MoMA members. Free admission for NYC residents is made possible by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation. Tickets may be reserved online at mo.ma/ps1tickets.

Visitor Guide: Discover even more from PS1 with the Bloomberg Connects app. Read wall text, hear directly from artists, and uncover the building’s history with this multimedia visitor guide. This digital experience is made possible through the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Directions: MoMA PS1 is located at 22-25 Jackson Avenue at 46th Ave in Long Island City, Queens, across the Queensboro Bridge from midtown Manhattan. Traveling by subway, take the E, M, or 7 to Court Sq; or the G to Court Sq or 21 St Van Alst. By bus, take the Q67 to Jackson and 46th Ave or the B62 to 46th Ave.

Information: For general inquiries, call (718) 784-2084 or visit moma.org/ps1.