In Conversation: Patrick Costello, Jenny Polak, & Aya Rodriguez-Izumi

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About

2020 Socrates Artist Fellows Patrick Costello, Jenny Polak, and Aya Rodriguez-Izumi spoke about their respective projects for ‘Call and Response,’ Part II of the ‘MONUMENTS NOW‘ exhibition at the Park. Curatorial Assistant danilo machado moderated the discussion.

Speaker Bios

Jenny Polak

Jenny Polak’s work reimagines domestic space as a political arena and gathers people to create together in public space. She makes site and community responsive art that reframes immigrant-citizen relations and amplifies demands for social justice. Coming to the US from England, her background in architecture and her family history of migration drive her projects about outwitting hostile authorities, racist profiling and abusive prison and detention policies, and citizen-noncitizen collaborations. Polak’s project for ‘MONUMENTS NOW‘ – Part II: ‘Call and Response‘ is ‘Offshore.’

jennypolak.com
@jennypolakstudio

Patrick Costello

Patrick Costello makes spaces for collective transformation, wild imagining, and utopian possibility. These attempts at temporary world-building provide opportunities to collaborate and moments to practice what our humanity asks of us. His recent work delights in the research and cultivation of pre-colonial plant communities.

His project for ‘MONUMENTS NOW‘ – Part II: ‘Call and Response‘ is ‘Ceding Ground.’

patrickjcostello.net

*Costello was named the 2020 Devra Freelander Artist Fellow in memory of Devra Freelander, who participated in The 2017 Socrates Annual. Donate to the Devra Freelander Fund>

Aya Rodriguez-Izumi

Aya Rodriguez-Izumi is an interdisciplinary artist whose work blends installation, performance, video and beyond to explore aspects of ritual retention and cultural identity informed through histories that risk erasure. She was born in Okinawa, Japan, and grew up between that island and East Harlem, NY, where she currently lives and holds a studio. In 2019 she joined the MFA Fine Art faculty at her graduate alma mater of SVA and the culmination of her project “Echoes of the Battle of Okinawa”, a sounds piece based on the book “Okinawa’s Tragedy” that documents first hand Okinawan experiences during WWII, is set to debut in 2021 (a preview is included in “Wishful Images” currently on view at the National University of Singapore).

Her project for ‘MONUMENTS NOW‘ – Part II: ‘Call and Response‘ is ‘Gate II.’

iamaya.com
@__iamaya__

danilo machado

danilo machado is a poet, curator, and public programmer living on occupied land. Interested in language’s potential for revealing tenderness, erasure, and relationships to power, danilo is the curator of the exhibitions ‘Otherwise Obscured: Erasure in Body and Text’ (Franklin Street Works, 2019-20) and ‘support structures’ (The 8th Floor Gallery/Virtual, 2020-21). A 2020-21 Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow, their writing has been featured in Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Rail, ArtCritical, TAYO Literary Magazine, among others. danilo is the co-founder and co-curator of the reading series Maracuyá Peach and the chapbook/broadside fundraiser already felt: poems in revolt & bounty. They are working to show up with care for their communities.