Opening Celebration: The Socrates Annual 2023

Opening Celebration
The Socrates Annual 2023

Saturday, September 30, 2023
1:30 – 6:00 pm

The Artist Fellows
Ashley Harris, Ndivhuho Rasengani, Bat-Ami Rivlin, Kate Rusek*, Maryam Turkey, Stefania Urist

Celebrate the new works with the 2023 Fellows! Enjoy a tour with the Artist Fellows, alongside SkowheganPERFORMS.

The Socrates Annual exhibition marks the culmination of the 2023 Socrates Annual Fellowship, which awarded six artists – selected through a competitive open-call application process – with funding, access to the Park’s outdoor studio, and the production support needed to realize ambitious public artworks. The central theme of this year’s exhibition revolves around transformation, echoing the Park’s evolution – from an abandoned landfill to a flourishing gathering space. These five projects reflect on diverse stages of growth, change, and renewal while also invoking a keen understanding of how visitors use this space, informed by the artists’ firsthand experience fabricating these works on-site over the summer. Many of these works are constructed with found and recycled materials that have been ingeniously repurposed, breathing new life into objects that were once discarded or considered undesirable. Collectively, these artists compel us to value the histories embedded in materials and the surrounding landscape.

About The Fellowship

The competitive program reflects the Park’s commitment to artistic experimentation and nurturing artists’ careers. This important training ground for early career artists allows the selected Fellows to gain experience creating large-scale public art, utilizing Socrates’ outdoor studio in Long Island City, Queens. Recipients were selected through an open-call application process. The thematic prompt for this year was “Transformation.”

About SkowheganPERFORMS

“SkowheganPERFORMS” is an exhibition of new, site-specific performance art by Skowhegan alumni at Socrates Sculpture Park. The event will coincide with the opening of The Socrates Annual 2023, and share the same thematic prompt, “transformation.”

Performances may be one moment, ongoing, or repeated over the course of the afternoon at different locations in the Park. Various degrees of audience participation may be encouraged. All will share a responsiveness to the landscape and/or history of Socrates, as well as the works on view.