NOV 4 – JAN 21
Ten new works by emerging NYC artists

Tickets

Admission is free to all Open Call events. Tickets will be available beginning Tuesday, October 17.

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About this exhibition

The Open Call 2023 Group Exhibition features new artworks by emerging NYC artists who intersect their personal stories with global history, proposing care- and community-based responses to the urgent issues of our time. The exhibition presents the work of artists selected as part of Open Call, a large-scale commissioning program for early-career, NYC-based artists, and will be followed by a performance series in summer 2024.

The exhibition is organized by Eduardo Andres Alfonso, Associate Curator at Large, and Deja Belardo, Assistant Curator, Visual Arts and Civic Programs, with exhibition management by MK Meador, Exhibition Producer, and Freddy Villalobos, Project Manager.

Artists

A headshot of Minne Atairu. She wears a blue turtle neck shirt and sits against a paler blue background. She wears locs pulled up on the top of her head with one loc falling down over her face. She wears glasses, looks directly at us, and smiles without opening her mouth.
Courtesy Minne Atairu.
Minne Atairu
A portrait of Jake Brush, a white person posing with arms loosely crossed across his knee. He has short bleached blond hair and smiles with his eyes without opening his mouth. He wears a dark green tshirt and has tattoos down his left arm. Photo by Dana Golan
Photo: Dana Golan.
Jake Brush
A headshot of Cathy Linh Che, a Vietnamese American woman who poses outside in sunlight with trees and bushes in the background. She has short brown hair swept across her forehead, wears red lipstick, and smiles at us. Photo by Jess X. Snow
Photo: Jess X. Snow.
Cathy Linh Che
A portrait of Christopher Radcliff. He is seen in profile close up wearing a baseball cap and glasses. He is backlist by the setting sun behind which is setting behind the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.
Courtesy Christopher Radcliff.
Christopher Radcliff
A portrait of artist Armando Guadalupe Cortés, a Mexican man who poses with arms crossed in his lap, facing us. Armando wears his dark hair in two long braids that hang down over either shoulder and wears a light blue button down shirt buttoned to the collar. Photo by Dana Golan
Photo: Dana Golan.
Armando Guadalupe Cortés
A portrait of Lizania Cruz, a Dominican artist who has curly hair that she wears over her forehead, slightly covering her eyes. She poses with her hands brought together in front of her waist and wears a green short sleeve shirt, long necklaces, glasses. She looks at us. Photo by Guarinex Rodriguez.
Photo: Guarinex Rodriguez.
Lizania Cruz
A headshot of Bryan Fernandez, a Dominican artist. He wears a dark cap and a tan jacket over a black shirt. He has a mustache and trimmed beard and poses in front of a painting. Photo by Kiara Terrero
Photo: Kiara Terrero.
Bryan Fernandez
A portrait of Luis A. Gutierrez, a Colombian man who poses against a plain beige background. He sits with arms at either side, wearing a green herringbone shirt buttoned over a white turtle neck. He has a dark beard and mustache and wears glasses. Photo by Dana Golan
Photo: Dana Golan.
Luis A. Gutierrez
A Black artist sits casually on the floor of a white-walled gallery space, with one arm draped over her leg. She looks directly at us, dressed in all black wearing cap, glasses, t-shirt, pants, and boots. Around her and sculptures sitting on the ground and on a pedestal. One sculpture behind her shoulder includes spiky protrusions from a square surface.
Photo: Euhnee Cho.
Calli Roche
This is a portrait of Sandy Williams IV. They pose with the trees lining a street behind them. They are wearing a dark blazer over a dark hoodie and have their hair in short locs that fall to their jawline.
Photo: Johnny Fogg.
Sandy Williams IV
Minne Atairu
Minne Atairu is an interdisciplinary artist whose research-based practice seeks to reclaim the obscured histories of the Benin Bronzes. Utilizing generative AI and additive fabrication, Atairu reassembles visual, sonic, and textual fragments into conceptua​l​ works that ​engage with repatriation-related questions. Atairu has exhibited and performed at the Harvard Art Museums (2022), Markk Museum (Hamburg, 2021 – ), SOAS Brunei Gallery University of London (2022), Microscope Gallery (New York, 2022), and Fleming Museum of Art (Vermont, 2021). She is the recipient of the 2021 Lumen Prize for Art and Technology (Global Majority Award).
Jake Brush
Jake Brush is an artist working in video, performance, sculpture, and installation. After graduating from SUNY Purchase with a bachelor’s degree in new media and fine art in the spring 2016, Brush went on to participate in residency programs at Signal Culture (Owego, New York) and Shandaken: Storm King (New Windsor, New York). In 2020, Brush participated in the Visual AIDS 2020 VAVA program NOT OVER with his video “NOW MORE THAN EVER.“ In 2020, Wave Hill awarded Brush with the 2021 Van Lier Fellowship. Brush’s first solo show The Multiple Murders Of Lady Gilgo opened with DUPLEX in the spring of 2021.
Cathy Linh Che
Cathy Linh Che is a Vietnamese American writer and multimedia artist from Los Angeles. She is the author of the poetry book Split (Alice James Books, 2014), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Best Poetry Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies. She is also the co-author, with Kyle Lucia Wu, of the children’s book An Asian American A to Z: A Children’s Guide to Asian American History (Haymarket Books, 2023). Her work has been published in the New Republic, The Nation, and Best American Poetry, and she has received awards from MacDowell, Bread Loaf, and Tin House. She works as the executive director at Kundiman, a national nonprofit organization nurturing writers and readers of Asian American literature.
Christopher Radcliff
Christopher Radcliff is a New York–based Chinese American filmmaker whose first feature film The Strange Ones was released theatrically in 2018. It was named by John Waters as one of the top ten films of the year in Artforum magazine. His short films, including The Strange Ones, Jonathan’s Chest, and Lost Episode, have screened worldwide including at the Sundance, SXSW, Rotterdam, and Clermont-Ferrand film festivals, and online via the Criterion Collection, Short of the Week, Vimeo Staff Picks, and Le Cinéma Club. He received his MFA from Columbia University’s Graduate Film Program and currently teaches in the undergraduate Film/Video Department at Pratt Institute.
Armando Guadalupe Cortés
Armando Guadalupe Cortés was born in Urequío, Michoacán, México, and was raised in Wilmington, California. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn. He attended UCLA (BA 2012) and Yale School of Art (MFA 2021). He has exhibited at the Craft Contemporary (Los Angeles), Space One (Seoul), and White Cube (London, digital exhibition) amongst other venues. Recent projects include Castillos (2021, Mass MOCA) and ¿Y la Gente? (2020, Arizona State University Art Museum). He was a Franklin Furnace Fellow (2021 – 22) and the Saint Elmo Fellow and Artist in Residence at the University of Texas at Austin (2021 – 22).
Lizania Cruz
Lizania Cruz (she/her) is a Dominican participatory artist and designer interested in how migration affects ways of being and belonging. Through research, oral history, and audience engagement, she creates projects that expand and highlight pluralistic narratives on migration. Cruz received the 2023 New York City Artadia Award. Recently, she was part of 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at the Aldrich Museum and ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21, the first national survey of Latinx artists at el Museo del Barrio. Her work has been exhibited at Sharjah’s First Design Biennale, Untitled, Art Miami Beach, The High Line, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and more. She has presented solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery, CUE Art Foundation, International Studio & Curatorial Program, ISCP, Alma Lewis, and Proxyco gallery and has been featured in Hyperallergic, Fuse News, KQED Arts, Dazed Magazine, Garage Magazine, and the New York Times.
Bryan Fernandez
Bryan Fernandez is a Dominican American artist from Washington Heights in Manhattan. He began creating art in high school as a form of self-expression leading him to attend the School of Visual Arts where he received his BFA in 2022. His community in Washington Heights, with its ties to his identity and family history, has been the biggest influence on his life and current art practice. He is a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant, has shown work at the Independent Art Fair and Untitled Art Fair, has had solo shows with Los Angeles gallery NewImage Art and London Based Gallery TaymourGrahneProjects, and participated in multiple shows and auctions with Phillips, ARTNOIR, regular normal, superposition gallery, and Ross+Kramer.
Luis A. Gutierrez
Luis A. Gutierrez is a mixed-media artist connecting our past and present through the exploration of historical events. He creates multilayered paintings and installations by dissecting painted canvases and abstracting historical images. Gutierrez presented the solo exhibition Entre Sombras | Between Seams at the Cherry Arts Gallery (Ithaca, New York) in 2023 and was a 2022 resident at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts (New York). In 2021, he received the City Artist Corps Grant (NYC); in 2020, he was an AIM Fellow Artist at The Bronx Museum of the Arts (NYC). In 2019, Gutierrez presented the solo exhibition Entre Sombras, From Figuration to Abstraction at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts (Pennsylvania). In 2016, Gutierrez was a semi-finalist in the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series (Florida) and received the Launchpad Artist Award and a site-specific installation from Spectrum Miami Art Fair. He has also shown work in the Coral Springs Museum of Art (Florida), Contemporaneo Asheville (North Carolina), SoMAD (NYC), and Christie’s (NYC).
Calli Roche
Calli Roche, whose personal lineage and creative ancestry lie in tailoring and dressmaking, trained as a patternmaker and craftsperson. Their great grandfather was a tailor in St. Kitts; their great-great-aunt a dressmaker in the Bronx; and their great-uncle a costume maker in Birmingham, UK. They take great pride in the makers in their family tree, while fully acknowledging that they, like many other Black, poor people and non-degree-holding Black craftspeople have had to “tailor” their artistry to an income-generating praxis. Roche has shown at the Colored Girls Museum (Philadelphia), Housing Gallery (New York) Aggregate Space Gallery (Oakland), and Gallérie Perrotin (New York). They were the 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Interdisciplinary Work and the Artist in Residence at Field Projects Gallery and the Artist Alliance LES Studio Program.
Jeffrey Meris
Jeffrey Meris (b. 1991, Haiti) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice engages with the relationship between materiality and larger cultural and social phenomenon. Working across sculpture, installation, performance, and drawing, Meris’s work considers ecology, embodiment, and various lived experiences, while healing deeply personal and historical wounds. Meris earned an AA in arts and crafts from the University of the Bahamas in 2012, a BFA in sculpture from the Tyler School of Art in 2015, and an MFA in visual arts from Columbia University in 2019. Meris has exhibited at the Amon Carter Museum, Texas (2023); the Aldrich Museum, Connecticut (2023); Lehmann Maupin, New York (2022); James Cohan Gallery, New York (2021); White Columns, New York (2021); the Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco (2020); Halle 14, Leipzig, Germany (2017); and the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, the D'Aguilar Art Foundation, and Mestre Projects, all in Nassau, Bahamas (2012, 2017, 2021). Meris is a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alum (2019); a NXTHVN Studio Fellow, New Haven (2020); and a Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program artist in residence, Brooklyn (2021). Always Jeffrey never “Jeff.”
Sandy Williams IV
Sandy Williams IV is an assistant professor of art at the University of Richmond, a recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Artist Fellowship, and the New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship. Williams has had solo shows at 1708 Gallery (VA), the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (Ontario), Reynolds Gallery (VA), and Second Street Gallery (VA). Selected group exhibitions and performances include Socrates Sculpture Park (NYC), The Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach, The Arlington Museum of Contemporary Art, The Harnett Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU, Martos Gallery (NYC), M+B Gallery (LA), de boer Gallery (LA), Springsteen (Baltimore), NADA House (NYC). Williams has been an artist in residence at Mass MOCA, the Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL), SOMA (CDMX), ACRE (IL), and the University of Cumbria (United Kingdom). Permanent collections: the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Pamela and William A. Royall’s private collection, The Harnett Museum, the Westhampton College at the University of Richmond, The Roanoke College Olin Hall Collection.

Learn more about the artworks and artists

Minne Atairu

Benin’s art history recontextualized through oral traditions and quotidian rituals

Jake Brush

A video and sculptural installation reimagining a Long Island TV show

Cathy Linh Che & Christopher Radcliff

A multichannel video installation about two Vietnamese refugees hired to reenact the war as extras in a major American film

Armando Guadalupe Cortés

A sculptural cockfighting ring exploring spectacle and its denial

Lizania Cruz

A participatory multimedia installation illuminating how inquiry is performed and translated

Bryan Fernandez

A collection of mixed-media assemblages addressing the Dominican diaspora

Luis A. Gutierrez

An installation inspired by nine demands made by United Fruit Company workers in 1928

Jeffrey Meris

A sculptural installation drawing on the artist’s personal ritual of psychological sanctuary

Calli Roche

A metaphorical shucking of the body in search of the self

Sandy Williams IV

A multilayered public performance on the ground and in the sky above Crown Heights, Brooklyn
In The Works

Location and dates

This event takes place in Level 2 Gallery.

November 4, 2023 – January 21, 2024

The Shed is located at 545 West 30th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. View The Shed on a map.

For information about accessibility and arriving at The Shed, visit our Accessibility page.

About Open Call

Launched as part of The Shed’s inaugural year program, Open Call is now in its third edition. Eighteen proposals out of more than 1,200 total submissions by artists and collectives were chosen by interdisciplinary leaders and professionals in their fields, including other artists and members of The Shed’s staff, to present work in this exhibition and a performance series in summer 2024. Selected artists receive a commissioning fee of up to $15,000 depending on the scope of their projects, robust production support, and resources to further nurture their practices and expand their audiences. The 2023 and 2024 Open Call artists create work in disciplines from drag performance and sculpture to filmmaking and poetry, each proposing care- and community-based responses to the urgent issues of our time.
Open Call Read more about “Open Call ” All details for “Open Call ”
FALL 2023 & SUMMER 2024
FALL 2023 & SUMMER 2024
New work by emerging NYC artists
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The third edition of Open Call is organized by Tamara McCaw, Chief Civic Program Officer, and Darren Biggart, Director of Civic Programs, with Eduardo Andres Alfonso, Associate Curator at Large, and Deja Belardo, Assistant Curator, Visual Arts and Civic Programs. The exhibition is produced by MK Meador, Exhibition Producer, and Freddy Villalobos, Project Manager.

The program was conceived by The Shed’s Artistic Director Alex Poots; Tamara McCaw; Emma Enderby, former Chief Curator; and Senior Program Advisor Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Special thanks to former program team colleagues who facilitated the third edition’s call for proposals and selection process: Solana Chehtman, Sarah Khalid Dhobhany, Alessandra Gómez, and Andria Hickey.

Thank you to our partners

The Sponsor of Open Call is
Support for Open Call is generously provided by

Additional support for Open Call is provided by Warner Bros. Discovery 150, The Wescustogo Foundation, and Jody and John Arnhold | Arnhold Foundation.

The creation of new work at The Shed is generously supported by the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Commissioning Fund and the Shed Commissioners.