About this Exhibition
Twelve early-career, NYC-based artists and collectives present new works that harness personal stories and ancestral global history to open portals for passage, transformation, and resistance.
Ranging from painting and film to sculpture and performance, their works explore forces shaping our world: colonialism, migration, and environmental crisis. They search for healing out of historical trauma, investigate the ties between political borders and identity, and embrace the enduring power of generational spirituality in our everyday lives.
Together these artists forge profound connections between the past and present, memory and material, and displacement and belonging to create Open Call: Portals.
Artists featured in the exhibition were selected as part of Open Call, a commissioning program for early-career, NYC-based artists redefining what it means to make art. The exhibition takes place in the Level 2 Gallery and on the outdoor Plaza.
Tickets
Tickets are free to all Open Call events.
The exhibition includes a program of performances and conversations. View the schedule.
About the Artists and their Works
A three-channel audiovisual installation enacting the interlocking rhythms of time in Muslim life after sunset Zain Alam is an artist and composer of Indian Pakistani origin, raised outside of Atlanta and based in New York City. His practice emerges from a lifelong question, investigating in what ways sound can convey the ineffable—in particular the distance between what is expressible in one language but lies just beyond the pale of translation in another, with faith in the power of rhythm, timbre, and tone to transcend meaning alone. Alam’s recording project Humeysha began during his year working as an oral historian of the 1947 Partition. He has since scored works in dance and sculpture, as well as the worlds of podcasting, fashion, and film. Sound remains the central organizing principle in his practice, threading through a body of work across video, performance, and installation. Alam’s writing has been published in the Miami Rail and the New Yorker, and his work has been featured in Vice, Village Voice, and the New York Times. His performances have been staged at venues including Webster Hall, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Rubin Foundation. Alam completed his graduate studies in Islamic art and philosophy at Harvard University.
A video and ceramic installation exploring on-site documentation of the Korean Demilitarized Zone and the United States–Mexico borderland through sociopolitical, cultural, and environmental perspectives AYDO was founded in 2020 by artists A young Yu and Nicholas Oh in New York. Yu received her MFA from Columbia University and BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Oh received his MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and BA from San Francisco State University. The duo combine their respective expertise in performance, video, ceramic sculpture, and site-specific installation to form their collaborative practice. AYDO has exhibited and performed at venues including Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Cantor Art Center, Stanford University; Museum of Art and Design, New York; Christie’s Inc, New York; CreativeTime, New York; Hub-Robeson Gallery, Penn State University; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; ChaShaMa, New York; Artist Alliance, New York; AHL Foundation, New York; Fashion Institute of Technology, New York; The Immigrant Artist Biennial, New York; and Apex Art, New York, among others. AYDO was awarded artist residencies at Recess Art, Sculpture Space, Catwalk Institute, and Dongguk University (South Korea).
An immersive, audiovisual performance examining themes of loss, grief, and connection using imagery from the Afro-Arab diaspora Marwa Eltahir is invested in storytelling as an act of transformation. Born from the communities of Omdurman, Sudan, Eltahir recognizes the power of story-sharing to bequeath valuable ancestral knowledge and technologies. As a writer, producer, and visual artist, she examines embodied narratives of movement, identity, and belonging across diasporic portals. Eltahir is the founder of Our Political Home (OPH), an art incubator for trans and queer African storytellers. Her work has been awarded fellowships through The LGBTQ Community Center of New York, The Laundromat Project, and We Are Family Foundation. Eltahir’s current work examines the inquiry: What do I need to remember? Through centering queer narratives in her writing, visuals, and performance, Eltahir troubles traditional structures of Islamic and Nubian cosmologies. Her work has been published in Blavity, Autostraddle, and USA Today. Eltahir holds a BA in political science and women and gender studies from Boston College.
A collection of sugar garments exploring sugar’s history and its ties to identity, fashion, and the exploitation of land and labor Mel Corchado started designing clothes before she could string together complete sentences, but when she began pursuing a career in fashion, she struggled to justify her professional and artistic motives against a backdrop of industrial exploitation. Corchado is a Brooklyn-based Boricua fashion designer and artist whose practice explores how fashion might confront narratives and shift consciousness in service of decolonization. Her research-based practice focuses on building alternatives to the fashion industrial complex through participatory methods, including upcycling materials, skill-sharing, and relationship-building. Centering processes of collaboration, care, and transformation, Corchado uses fashion as a platform for political education and social connection. She debuted her graduate thesis, Everything for Everybody, during NYFW SS24 at the Brooklyn Museum. Corchado is a Parsons MFA Fashion Design and Society alumna, CFDA scholar, and Teen Vogue Generation Next Designer.
An installation of video, performance, and ceramics that examines how love, exotification, and power imbalances influence relationships between the Global majority and the Global North Patricia Encarnación is an Afro-Dominican interdisciplinary artist and scholar who challenges colonial legacies within Global Majority communities, focusing on the Caribbean, Latin America, and its diaspora. Through material culture, collective memory, and cultural identity, Encarnación redefines Caribbean and tropical aesthetics. She has participated in prestigious residencies such as Smack Mellon’s Van Lier Fellowship, MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Kovent Catalonia, and the Silver Arts Project at the World Trade Center. Her work has earned recognition from the NALAC Fund, the Centro León Jiménez Biennial, and the City of Cádiz’s cultural immersion prize. Additionally, she received a fellowship at the Tropiques Atrium Caribbean art program in Martinique. Encarnación’s artwork has been featured at Documenta 15, the Hudson River Museum, the Museum of Latin American Art, NADA Art Fair, the Washington Project for the Arts, and the Tribeca Festival Artists Award Program. Academically, Encarnación earned a full-tuition scholarship for her BFA at Parsons, The New School of Design, and was awarded the MacCracken Fellowship for graduate studies in museum studies at New York University. She has also contributed to curatorial projects at NYU, Centro de la Imagen CDMX, the Bronx Museum, ChaShama, WOPHA Miami, and various alternative spaces.
A collaborative textile and painting installation showcasing Brooklyn’s Haitian migrant stories and exploring dreams, sacrifices, misconceptions, and collective scars Laurena Finéus is a Haitian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. In her practice, Finéus has been concerned with representations of Black geographies, maroon thought, and migratory histories through imagined landscapes. She is an MFA graduate from Columbia University with a BFA from the University of Ottawa. Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum (2024), Hudson River Museum (2023), the Ottawa Art Gallery (2021), and Art mûr (2019) among others. Her work is part of a range of private and public collections internationally such as the Canada Council Art Bank, the City of Ottawa’s Art Collection, and Google. She is the recipient of the Saunderson Prize (2024), the Helen Frankenthaler Fund (2023), the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2022 – 23), and the Ottawa Arts Council IBPOC Emerging Artist Award (2022). Finéus is based in Brooklyn.
Inspired by traditional Chinese kites, a painting series and installation that reflects the family saga, history, and the community of Asian immigrants
Lily Honglei is a Chinese immigrant artist duo based in Flushing Chinatown, Queens. Their art practice integrates East Asian visual traditions with contemporary art language. Often inspired by their cultural heritage, their work highlights the Asian diaspora, especially working-class Asian immigrant life and history.
Lily Honglei recently collaborated with the NYC Department of Parks on several public art projects, producing multiple installations at public parks in Asian immigrant neighborhoods. They delivered exhibitions and artist talks at the Flushing Town Hall Gallery, The Chinese American Arts Council Gallery, the Westbeth Gallery, the Miller Gallery at Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, and the City College of New York, to name a few.
Lily Honglei received support from the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Queens Art Fund, the Flushing Town Hall Artist in Queens grant, and the People’s Choice Award at the Museum of Art & Design in New York, among others.
A live, operatic video performance and installation featuring soundscapes and lyrics sung in nēhiyawēwin (Plains Cree) Tyson Houseman is a nēhiyaw interdisciplinary video and performance artist, puppeteer, and filmmaker. Houseman’s practice focuses on aspects of nēhiyaw ideologies and teachings—speaking to notions of opacity within ceremony, disruptions of linear time, and the interwoven relations between humans and their ecologies. He has exhibited at various galleries, screenings, and film/media festivals in the United States and Canada. Most recently he participated in artist residencies at Vermont Studio Center, the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University, and Locust Projects in Miami, Florida. Along with producing his own works, Houseman directs documentary film and music videos and is a touring puppeteer on various multimedia live cinema performances created by DJ Kid Koala. He spends his summers working with the Bread & Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont. Houseman has an MFA from School of Visual Arts in NYC and a BFA in theater performance from Concordia University in Montreal.
A live performance in Key’s “Hair Paintings” series, in which the artist uses their hair to create paintings honoring their grandmother, Ruth Mae Giles Jarrett Key lives and works in Brooklyn. Key grew up in rural Alabama and pursued their fine art practice in New York City after graduating from Brown University in 2013. They received their MFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2020. Key’s practice embodies several modes of production in one frame. Through form, image, and material, the objects they make integrate sculpture, painting, and performance practice. Key is one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 for Art and Style 2020. One of their hair performance paintings was the NYC Pride Grandstand Backdrop at the 2023 Pride Parade. Recent exhibitions include Full and Pure: Body, Materiality, Gender, curated by Mara Hassan, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, Texas; Wade, Friends Indeed Gallery, San Francisco, California; Freedom Dreams, Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, New York; New England Triennial, deCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts; out, co-curated by Jarrett Key and Jon Key, 1969 Gallery, New York City; Young, Gifted, and Black, The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and This is America, Kunstraum Potsdam, Berlin. Their work was also included in Untitled Miami Beach in 2021 and 2022. Key’s work is in the collections of the the Green Family Art Foundation, HMTX Industries, New York Historical Society, The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection, the Columbus Museum, Brown University, RISD Special Collection, the Schomburg Center, the Museum of Modern Art Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, among other institutions.
A video installation foregrounding dance and movement to uncover the haunting legacy of the gold trade in Côte d’Ivoire Chelsea Odufu is a multidisciplinary artist celebrated for her expansive portfolio, which spans video installations, sculpture, photography, and film. A participant in the Black Rock Senegal Artist Residency program, Odufu has exhibited her work at prestigious venues including Paris Photo, Dakar Biennale, Photo London, Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Art, Alabama Contemporary Museum, Miami Art Week, and Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum. Her pieces are part of esteemed collections, such as the JP Morgan Chase Private Art Collection. Featured in outlets like Forbes, the New York Times, and Huffington Post, Odufu seamlessly blends storytelling and visual artistry, captivating audiences across a wide array of mediums.
An immersive sculptural installation of a large Mayan pyramid, composed of ice coolers, textiles, and spiritual objects, activated by a mural and a projection, honoring the beauty and resilience of immigrant street vendors Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez is a Mexican-born, Brooklyn-based artist whose bold “Neo Indigenous” aesthetic merges street culture with ancestral tradition. With roots in graffiti and street art, his work spans large-scale murals, fine art, design, sculpture, and installations—each piece a vivid reflection of cultural pride, social justice, and community empowerment. Internationally recognized for his dynamic visual language, Marka27 has exhibited globally and collaborated with major brands while creating landmark public art in cities across the United States. He is a Frieze Los Angeles Impact Prize winner and a Right of Return and Art for Justice Fellow, using his platform to amplify narratives around immigration, incarceration, and identity. Through his art, Marka27 invites viewers into a vibrant space where heritage and urban expression powerfully coexist.
A mixed-media sculptural installation that reimagines the transatlantic slave trade’s Door of No Return in Ghana as an archaeological ruin Yelaine Rodriguez is a Bronx-born interdisciplinary artist, curator, and scholar specializing in Afro-syncretic religions through photography and video performance. She received a BFA from The New School and an MA from New York University. Rodriguez has exhibited in Estamos Bien: LA TRIENAL 20/21, UNTITLED, and Photoville and at the Mexic-Arte Museum (Austin), American Museum of Natural History (New York), Wave Hill (New York), El Centro Cultural de España and Centro León Biennial XXVII (Dominican Republic), SurGallery & Critical Distance Centre for Curators (Toronto), Wereldmuseum (Rotterdam), and Santa Monica and La Escocesa (Barcelona). Rodriguez’s works have been featured on CNN, Artsy, EnFoco, Hyperallergic, Vogue, Aperture, and Elle. Her writing has appeared in ARTnews and academic journals such as Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture. She is currently pursuing her PhD in performance studies at Northwestern University. Luis Vasquez La Roche is an artist and scholar who resides between Trinidad and Tobago and Virginia and works in New York City. They hold an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. They have exhibited work and performed in institutions such as Field Projects (New York), Deakin University (Australia), La Vulcanizadora (Colombia), Black Ground (Colombia), Second Street Gallery (Virginia), Alice Yard (Trinidad), University of Chicago, LACE (California), AIR Gallery (New York), The Carr Center (Michigan), the ICA (Virginia), and Documenta 15 in Germany. They were an artist in residence at OAZO AIR in The Netherlands, Beta Local’s Itinerant Seminar in Puerto Rico, Mare Residency in Puerto Rico, Mar de Islas Performance Encounter in Puerto Rico, and at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in 2023. They are an assistant professor at George Mason University.
Public Programs and Performances
Friday, June 27
6:30 pm, Tyson Houseman
Tyson Houseman’s The Six Seasons is a live, operatic video performance and installation featuring soundscapes and lyrics sung in nēhiyawēwin (Plains Cree). Running time: 70 minutes
Saturday, June 28
1 pm, Patricia Encarnación
Patricia Encarnación and Ojos Caribe present Today’s Radical Act: Love, Part II, exploring radical love and limerence across Global Majority communities, with a focus on the Caribbean and its diasporas through video art screenings and a panel discussion. This iteration examines love through the lenses of origin, identity, kinship, embodiment, and land, foregrounding intimacy as resistance and tenderness as a method of decolonial praxis.
4 pm, Tyson Houseman
Tyson Houseman’s The Six Seasons is a live, operatic video performance and installation featuring soundscapes and lyrics sung in nēhiyawēwin (Plains Cree).
6:30 pm, Jarrett Key
Jarrett Key’s Hair Painting No. 40 is a live performance in the artist’s “Hair Paintings” series, in which they use their hair to create paintings honoring their grandmother, Ruth Mae Giles.
Friday, July 11
6:30 pm, Marwa Eltahir
Marwa Eltahir’s 99 Names: My Liberation Is Tied to Yours is an immersive, audiovisual performance examining themes of loss, grief, and connection using imagery from the Afro-Arab diaspora.
Saturday, July 12
1 pm, Chelsea Odufu
Chelsea Odufu’s Transmissions from the Archive: Unearthing Gold’s Frequency blends artist talk, sonic ritual, and collective reflection to explore our evolving relationship with gold, from sacred material and ancestral memory to currency and colonial extraction. Through personal storytelling, historical context, and the project’s soundscape, Odufu invites the audience to rethink gold as a living frequency and portal to the archive of self and spirit.
2:30 pm, Jarrett Key
Jarrett Key’s Hair Painting No. 40 is a live performance in the artist’s “Hair Paintings” series, in which they use their hair to create paintings honoring their grandmother, Ruth Mae Giles.
4 pm, Yelaine Rodriguez & Luis Vasquez La Roche
Their mixed-media sculptural installation Residence Time | The Sea Is History will be brought to life through a 15 – 20-minute poetry session led by Afro-Dominican poet Yaissa Jimenez. This performance will serve as a ceremonial tribute to the orisha Yemaja, embodying the cultural and spiritual significance of the work. The poetry reading will be given in Spanish.
Friday, July 25
6:30 pm, Zain Alam
This public program features a live musical performance by an ensemble reimagining the score for Zain Alam’s Meter & Light: Night, followed by an artist talk and Q&A.
Saturday, July 26
1 pm, Forgotten Lands Art
An interactive discussion about supporting early career artists in collaboration with Forgotten Lands Art, a platform that amplifies voices across the Caribbean diaspora and launches the careers of emerging artists.
4 pm, Mel Corchado
Through a panel discussion paired with a clothing swap, Mel Corchado explores how historical and contemporary systems of power shape our relationships to clothing. This public program is designed to challenge extractive consumption by centering inclusive sizing, diverse identities, and thoughtfully curated pieces—reshaping how we source, care for, and value our clothes.
Friday, August 8
6:30 pm, Marwa Eltahir
Marwa Eltahir’s 99 Names: My Liberation Is Tied to Yours is an immersive, audiovisual performance examining themes of loss, grief, and connection using imagery from the Afro-Arab diaspora.
Saturday, August 9
1 pm, AYDO
A panel discussion centered on themes of mythology, cosmology, and cultural inheritance, moderated by Danni Shen, curator at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.
4 pm, Jarrett Key
Jarrett Key will be presenting short videos of past “Hair Painting” performances providing context to the paintings currently on display, followed by a conversation with the audience.
Friday, August 22
6:30 pm, In the Works: Open Call
A conversation with Open Call artists from the fourth cohort sharing what it takes to develop new work and a sneak peek into their upcoming commissions.
Saturday, August 23
1 pm, Laurena Finéus
This public program will offer attendees an introduction to foraging. Participants will be led around the grounds of The Shed by a foraging practitioner. The program will conclude with a tour of the artist’s work and a Q&A session.
4 pm, Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez
Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez will host an artist talk exploring the creation and thought process behind his work Elevar La Cultura NYC.
Exhibition Tours
There will be free weekly tours of the exhibition every Friday at 3 pm.
Location and dates
Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Thursday, 2 – 7 pmFriday, 2 – 8 pm
Saturday & Sunday, 12 – 8 pm
The Shed is located at 545 West 30th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. View The Shed on a map.
Accessibility
Wheelchair Accessibility
The Shed’s Level 2 Gallery and Plaza are wheelchair accessible.
Assistive Listening
Assistive listening and captions for video artworks will be available from Access Kit on your smartphone via a QR code on the gallery labels.
Visual Description
A visual description audio tour will be available on your smartphone via a QR code to our digital guide on Bloomberg Connects.
Sensory Stations
The exhibition will include two sensory stations with various materials pertaining to the works on display.
Large-Print Texts
Large-print exhibition labels will be available at the entrance to the gallery.
Translation
Exhibition texts will be available in translation in Spanish, Mandarin, Haitian Kréyol, and Arabic.
General Accessibility
If you have any questions or requests, please email info@theshed.org or call (646) 455-3494. For information about accessibility and arriving at The Shed, visit our Accessibility page.
Program Credits
Open Call: Portals is organized by Dejá Belardo, Assistant Curator, Civic Programs and Visual Art.
The fourth edition of Open Call is organized by Darren Biggart, Director of Civic Programs; Dejá Belardo, Assistant Curator; Christal Ferreira, Program Manager, Civic Programs and Visual Art; and Daisy Peele, Producer, with support by Public Assembly (Tamara McCaw, Maggie MacTiernan, Annabel Thompson).
Open Call was conceived by The Shed’s Artistic Director Alex Poots, Tamara McCaw, former Chief Civic Program Officer; Emma Enderby, former Chief Curator; and Senior Program Advisor Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Production Credits
Ben Young, Shed Production Manager
Freddy Villalobos, Exhibition & AV Consultant
Ben Epstein, Exhibition Designer
Pablo Solano, Exhibition Producer
Neal Wilkinson, AV Consultant
Powerhouse Arts and Leerform, Fabrication Support
Related Series
Thank you to our partners
Support for Open Call is generously provided by
Additional support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; Sarah Arison, in honor of Misty Copeland; and The Wescustogo Foundation.
The creation of new work at The Shed is generously supported by the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Commissioning Fund. Major support for live productions at The Shed is provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, with additional support from The Shubert Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor, and the New York State Legislature.
The Shed is connected by