Exhibition of immigrant artists in NYC
New York Live Arts, in partnership with New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), presents exhibition In/Between 2025: More-than-human on view from April 3-June 1, 2025 at the New York Live Arts Ford Foundation Live Gallery, 219 West 19th Street, New York City. The exhibition will feature immigrant artists from NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. The Opening Reception on Thursday, April 3rd at 5:30pm is private and RSVP is Required.
The Ford Foundation Live Gallery is located in the Live Arts lobby and has daily viewing hours from 10:00am-9:00pm.
Initiated in 2019 by artist Yanira Castro as part of her Live Feed residency at New York Live Arts, In/Between is an annual immigrant artist group exhibition originally created by artists Yanira Castro, Martita Abril, and Poppy DeltaDawn. This year’s exhibition is curated by Castro, Abril, and Zahra Banyamerian. It is developed with a commitment to increasing the visibility of, and conversation around, the work of immigrant artists. The name In/Between reflects on the multiplicity of immigrant artists’ experiences, identities, practices, and politics, while also speaking to the liminal experience of home/residence/community.
“In selecting and bringing this work together from New York Foundation for the Arts’ 2025 immigrant artist cohort—we were drawn to work of stark and quiet defiance,” Curators Abril, Banyamerian, and Castro said. “The works in ‘More-than-human’ evoke power and myth. Hanging on the ropes of the boxing ring, walking slowly across a city street, washing tenderly in a bathroom, suspending a single chokeberry–they summon the gravity and lightness of impermanence. These 21 artists, working in a variety of mediums, share the untold/told lore of birth, family, tradition, land, and challenge the structures that police existence.”
This year’s exhibit features work by Danielle Alhassid, Jae Hi Ahn, Dai Asano, Anahita Bagheri, Kriston Banfield, Karena Bravo, Won Young Chang, Siyu Chen, Talita do Nascimento Cabral, Liza Domingues, Eli Farinango, Shishir Giri, Pavlos Liaretidis, Qiqing Lin, Elisa Lutteral, Agustina Marquez, Rujuta Rao, Mei Seva, Assane Sy, Shu Wang, and Michelle Wu. The full list of artist bios can be found here.
About the Curators
Yanira Castro’s work is rooted in communal construction as a rehearsal for radical democracy. She is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico) and living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn). Castro forms iterative, multimodal projects that center the complexity of land, citizenship, and governance in works activated and performed by the public.
Co-creating with a team of collaborators under the name a canary torsi, she investigates choreography as a practice of collective embodiment, grappling with agency and communal action as a body politic.
Her most recent work, a public art project during the 2024 election, Exorcism = Liberation, utilized campaign materials (stickers, pins, lawn signs, banners) to proliferate–across NYC, Chicago, and Western Massachusetts–slogans and QR codes that led to immersive sonic experiences. The work partnered with over twenty-five community organizations across NYC, Chicago, and Western Massachusetts, calling for mutual liberation and partnering with over twenty-five community/arts organizations. acanarytorsi.org
Martita Abril (Pichu) is an artist, curator, and producer from the border city of Tijuana, México. She collaborates with dance artists and companies. Martita was a performer in Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions, the Handles exhibition by Haegue Yang and most recently the Mirrors I & II piece by Joan Jonas at the Museum of Modern Art.
She also continues to guide workshops in Bushwick gardens to Spanish speaking familias who recently arrived to NYC, through the iLAND (Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance) program by Jennifer Monson.
She is currently the Director of MR at the Judson Church Program, the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s Tour Company Manager, and continues to mentor Immigrant artists as part of the NYFA Coaching program. Martita-abril.org
Zahra Banyamerian is a program officer at the Vilcek Foundation. In her role, she is responsible for the strategic planning and implementation of the Vilcek Foundation Prizes. She leads the development of the annual prizes program, which includes collaborating with consultants to create and facilitate the call for applications for the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise and overseeing the juried review of candidates for all Vilcek Foundation Prizes programs.
As a curator, Banyamerian has developed several exhibitions and installations for the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Banyamerian completed her Master’s in Art History at the City College of New York, where her thesis examined the intersecting roles of nostalgia, politics, and gender in artistic production in Iran. She holds a BFA in painting and an MA in art studies from the University of Tehran, along with a post-baccalaureate degree in studio art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS
New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is a nonprofit service organization that empowers working artists and emerging arts organizations across all disciplines at critical stages in their creative lives and professional/organizational development. Through the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program (IAP), NYFA is building and serving a community of artists with diverse backgrounds who share the experience of immigration. The program connects artists with services and resources to foster their creative careers, helping them gain support and exposure for their work and integrate into the cultural world of New York and beyond while upholding their distinct identities.
NEW YORK LIVE ARTS
New York Live Arts, guided by the leadership of artist Bill T. Jones, collaborates with boundary pushing artists, advocates for their vision, and fortifies a creative future. It also serves as home base for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, which has been creating groundbreaking work for over forty years. New York Live Arts acknowledges and offers deep gratitude to Lenapehoking, where the theater sits-the land, and waters of the Lenape homeland.
