when the concrete meets the sea

Curated by Caroline Taylor Shehan

Artists: Sarah Cameron Sunde, Kin to the Cove Collective, Simone Marigold Johnson

April 13 – 27, 2023

The artists in this exhibition work in, around, and with the waterways that surround New York City. This exhibition seeks to understand how art practices, particularly collective art practices, express an alternative mode of climate activism by forming bonds of kinship with the water.

Sarah Cameron Sunde’s 36.5 / New York Estuary is a live performance where the artist spends an entire tidal cycle—12 hours and 39 minutes—standing in the East River. Over 175 people chose to stand with her for various amounts of time. The work utilizes strategies of durational performance and social practice as methods to build kinship with the water, fellow humans, and the more-than-human community. Video works derived from the performance and archival items are on view. Kin to the Cove, based at the Cove in Astoria where Sunde’s performance took place, is a group initiated by Sunde and the 36.5 collaborators in an effort to maintain a lasting and meaningful connection with the site. The collective, informed by principles of kinship and joyful stewardship, was instrumental in the execution of 36.5 / New York Estuary and continues to organize communal gatherings and art-making events in reciprocity with the Cove. An extensive display of the collective’s archive—photographs, video recordings, ephemera, and other documentations of the performance—is on view. In proximity to the work of Sunde and the Kin to the Cove, Simone Marigold Johnson, an artist, librarian, and educator, presents Water Library, an installation that features new additions particular to New York City’s aquaculture.