ARTISTS: LEILAH BABIRYE, SHERWIN BANFIELD, AMY BRENER, LIONEL CRUET, NATHANIEL CUMMINGS-LAMBERT,RONEN GAMIL, JESSE HARROD, CARLOS JIMÉNEZ CAHUA, ANTONE KONST, VIRGINIA LEE MONTGOMERY,LEANDER MIENARUS KNUST, JOIRI MINAYA, NICHOLAS MISSEL, NANCY NOWACEK, AUDREY SNYDER & JOE RILEY

Each year Socrates presents an exhibition of new commissions made by artists awarded the Park’s Emerging Artist Fellowship. Conceived for the landscape and produced on-site in our outdoor studio over the course of the summer, these pieces respond to the Park’s unique history, landscape, and community. The Socrates Annual, 2018 exhibition does not adhere to a specific theme but rather presents the diversity of processes, material approaches, and subjects that comprise the most compelling public art practice today.

For the 2018 exhibition, projects range from a decolonial greenhouse to audio-sculptural portraits of Queens hip-hop legends. Approaches vary among community-centered pedagogy and production, material experimentation, and redeployment of historical forms of construction, among others. This year contemporary and historical land-use is examined by several artists in projects including a labyrinth of fences and gates, and a steel and textile installation that traces the East River ecology of waste flows through land, water, and biological life. Additionally, several artists employ representations of the human figure, perhaps suggesting a time for reflection upon the Humanist philosophies that seem precarious with looming climate change and ongoing political conflict.

The 2018 Artist Fellows join the ranks of over 300 artists who have received grants for producing work at Socrates since the Park’s first grant in 1995 and the formalization of the Emerging Artist Fellowship in 2000.

We are grateful for the participation and insight of our Curatorial Advisors, Connie Choi, Associate Curator, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Alex Fialho, Program Manager, Visual AIDS, and thank them for thoughtfully reviewing this year’s proposals.