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Socrates Sculpture Park Announces 2025 Socrates Annual: “Up/rooted”
Long Island City, NY – Socrates Sculpture Park today announced the opening of The Socrates Annual 2025 on September 12, 2025. Featuring new commissions from the 2025 Socrates Artist Fellows—Natalia Nakazawa, Pioneers Go East Collective, Rowan Renee, Catherine Telford-Keogh, and Zipporah Camille Thompson—this year’s annual exhibition reflects the Park’s longstanding mission to support artists at every stage of their careers, invite public engagement with urgent social and environmental questions, and transform public space into a platform for imagination, dialogue, and renewal.
Responding to the theme “Up/rooted”, the 2025 Socrates Artist Fellows’ works explore the tension between dislocation and resilience—how to unearth and re-root, how to adapt and regenerate. “Up” suggests movement, aspiration, and detachment; “root” calls to the unseen networks that nourish, anchor, and connect us. Together, these projects stretch across materials and mediums—sculpture, textiles, installation, performance, and public programs—tracing how bodies and landscapes hold memory, migrate, and transform.
As with previous years, the Socrates Annual is more than an exhibition—it’s an evolving, living experience. Throughout the Fall and into Spring 2026, the works will be activated through participatory workshops, performances, storytelling sessions, and artist-led programs, many created in collaboration with local communities and cultural partners.
“As New York City experiences the increasingly visible impacts of climate change, this year’s Socrates Annual is a timely reminder of the role public art can play in shaping not just our landscapes, but our collective resilience,” said Shaun Leonardo, Socrates Co-Director. “These projects offer more than beauty and spectale—they offer blueprints for connection, care, and civic possibility. At Socrates, we see public space as a living studio, a place where artists don’t just create—they convene, challenge, and reimagine what community can be. This year’s fellows are both responding to our urgent environmental moment, and helping to weave a stronger civic fabric—rooted in creativity, dialogue, and shared stewardship of our public spaces.”
“Each year, the Socrates Annual reflects our belief that artists are essential voices in civic life—especially those who use public space to engage, provoke, and imagine new ways of being together,” Katie Dixon, Socrates Co-Director continued. “This year’s fellows remind us how art can root us in place while opening portals to the future. We’re deeply grateful to our supporters, partners, and community members who make this work possible. Their generosity allows us to amplify these visionary practices and ensure that Socrates remains a site of experimentation, joy, and belonging for all.”
Since 2001, The Socrates Annual has embodied Socrates Sculpture Park’s belief that public space is a site of transformation—not just for artists, but for communities. Each year, the fellowship supports early-career artists with mentorship and financial and technical resources to realize ambitious public art projects, while offering a space for experimentation, engagement, and exchange.
Curated by Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, former Curator and Director of Exhibitions, Richard Morales, Director of Public Programs and Community Engagement, and facilitated by Sara Sciabbarrasi, Artist Fellow Liaison, The Socrates Annual 2025 continues the Park’s commitment to bold, responsive, and site-specific public art that engages the world we inhabit—and reimagines the one we want to build. Socrates Fellows were selected by a jury composed of Socrates staff, Bel Falleiros, Socrates alumna, and Elena Ketelsen González, Assistant Curator at MoMA PS1 .
2025 Socrates Artist Fellows and Projects
Rowan Renee (Brooklyn, NY)
Project Title: A loom for tender(ils)
Transforming the tree grove into a whimsical garden of interactive looms, A loom for tender(ils) invites the public into a gentle, meditative act of collective weaving. Drawing from years of restorative justice work, Renee uses the loom as both literal and metaphorical tool: a catalyst for healing, connection, and self-expression. Open daily for self-directed use, with special programming through the exhibition’s closing.
Pioneers Go East Collective (NYC)
Project Title: A Sea In-MOTION
Part sculpture, part performance platform, this low-carbon bamboo installation radiates from a central core, inspired by eco-feminist theories and LGBTQ+ futurity. During performances in September and October, dancers and singers animate the structure—highlighting the power of community to reimagine systems of care, resistance, and sustainability.
Catherine Telford-Keogh (Toronto/NYC)
Project Title: Cradlers
Suspended along the East River shoreline, Cradlers is a haunting, materially dense installation that merges industrial waste and fossiliferous limestone to reflect on cycles of extraction, containment, and transformation. Through a sculptural choreography of compression and release, the work draws connections between infrastructure, labor, and the fragile ecosystems along the waterfront. Catherine is the 2025 Devra Freelander Artist Fellow.
Ναταλία Νακαζάβα (Queens, NY)
Project Title: Our Stories of Migration: Dome Cartographies
Nakazawa builds on years of community storytelling to create interactive, dome-shaped “living archives” that house embroidered maps, scanned artifacts, oral histories, and collaborative zines. Through a series of family workshops and participatory installations, she centers the wisdom, resilience, and creativity of New York’s immigrant and multi-racial communities.
Zipporah Camille Thompson (Atlanta, GA)
Project Title: Spellbound
A mirrored, labyrinthine sculpture that channels the swirling force of hurricanes, Spellbound contemplates destruction, regeneration, and the sacred power of water and wind. Both grounded and celestial, the installation challenges extractive systems and offers a vision of ecological healing and transformation.
The Socrates Annual 2025 opens September 12, 2025 through April 6, 2026 and is free and open to the public daily, from 9AM to sunset. Visitors are encouraged to attend performances, workshops, and interactive events scheduled throughout the season. Visit socratessculpturepark.org for the latest updates and program calendar.
Exhibition Support
Support for The Socrates Annual exhibition and fellowship is provided by Charina Endowment Fund, the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Devra Freelander Artist Fund, Agnes Gund, and Lambent Foundation, with in-kind support from Spacetime C.C.
This program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
About Socrates Sculpture Park
For over 35 years, Socrates Sculpture Park has been an award winning model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place making. Over 1,200 artists have created and exhibited new works on its five waterfront acres and outdoor studio facilities. Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset. It is located at 32-01 Vernon Boulevard (at Broadway) in Long Island City, New York. Socrates Sculpture Park is a not for profit organization licensed by NYC Parks to manage and program Socrates Sculpture Park, a New York City public park.
Media Inquiries and Images
Press images are available here. Artist headshots, and additional materials are available upon request. Email: Socrates@itseleventhirtysix.com.
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Image: A Sea In-Motion, Alex GRAE #1, Pioneers Go East Collective