Sinking Cities

​An exhibition and event series connecting NYC and Yonkers-based artists and community leaders whose projects wrestle with our reliance on vulnerable waterways. Co-curated with Steven Lam at Purchase College Center for Community and Culture (Yonkers, NY), April 15-29, 2017.

Artists

Mary Mattingly, Eve Mosher, Sarah Cameron Sunde, Hakan Topal, Center for the Urban River, and Photography Expanded with Brooke Singer.

About Sinking Cities

The artists of Sinking Cities reinterpret the waterfront as a site of access and contention, threat and promise. They reconsider the role of waterfront development in a new climate era of higher storm surges and frequent flooding; they propose new modes of access to reclaim the water as a public good; they resurrect invisible histories buried beneath new glass-and-steel high rises; they dream up new solutions to realistic scenarios; and they locate us in the complex web of water and capital flows that sustain contemporary life.

This show will be organized around a series of drifts and anchors. During the show, two drifts - themed meanderings through the city of Yonkers - will include scheduled encounters with experts and artists, thus partnering various cultural organizations with multiple artists and practitioners. Each drift will be anchored to the Yonkers space through artworks that comprise the installation. This method of tying exhibition with engagement is grounded in the notion that storytelling and the display of objects are agents of recovery and resistance. The exhibition and events revolve around five themes:

Forgetting|Remembering
Poisoning|Healing
Displacing|Claiming
Commoning|Organizing
Cultivating|Anchoring

Sinking Cities connects artists, educators, and community leaders with opportunities for interdisciplinary exchange on urgent issues confronting Yonkers residents.