OPEN CALL for artists, architects, researchers, filmmakers, scholars, and multidisciplinary practitioners whose work engages with our current research theme of Homelands, focusing on the political dimensions of memory.
Submit a research proposal to be presented at our 2027 Homelands Symposium and for print publication in our Homelands Reader by June 11.
The selected proposal will receive a $5,000 artist fee as well as curatorial and editorial assistance from Storefront. This project includes an anonymized review process by a jury of curators, scholars, and leading cultural practitioners.
Tap the link in our bio to learn more and submit. The application will close June 11 at 11:59 pm EDT.
Design by @estudioherrera
To celebrate the arrival of "Black Fire!" by @thandiloewenson , we were recently joined by the artist and a number of invited practitioners and community participants for two evenings of listening and response.
We witnessed performances by Loewenson and Zimbabwean author Tinashe Mushakavanhu, heard generous contributions from the audience during the Open Mic, and learned about different lineages of Zimbabwean music and extraterrestrial soundscapes from Mhoze Chikowero, Shana L. Redmond, and Zoé Samudzi.
Thank you for joining us, and swipe in case you missed it!
“Black Fire!” will be on view every Wednesday–Saturday from 12–6 pm through June 27. Tap the link in our bio to learn more.
Photos by PJ Rountree.
For those currently in Venice for the Biennale, visit “Hard Teeth” the just-opened Kosovo Pavilion curated by @josesparza , our Executive Director and Chief Curator!
Kosovar artist @brilant.milazimi composes a painting installation in the newly re-opened Chiesa di Santa Maria del Pianto, with an architectural structure designed by @lanzaatelier . Across the curved horizon, Milazimi shows long lines of sinuous and ghostly figures winding through the landscape. These works point Kosovo’s longstanding concerns of displacement, stagnation, and autonomy.
Photo: Majlinda Hoxha. Courtesy of the Artist and the Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Tuesday, May 26, at 6:30 pm, urbanist and researcher Garine Boghossian presents “An Armenian Atlas / Աշխարհացոյց” an ongoing counter-mapping project that centers houshamadyans, memory books produced by Armenian Genocide survivors across diasporic centers, from Aleppo to Los Angeles.
Houshamadyans often include mental maps drawn from memory and lived spatial knowledge of the homelands from which Armenians and other minoritized communities were ethnically cleansed. Boghossian, herself a third-generation survivor, overlays these mental maps onto contemporary satellite imagery, alongside personal and archival photography. Through this work, she documents Indigenous dispossession, challenges the systematic erasure central to ongoing state-led genocide denial, and recovers lost spatial histories that gesture toward reparative futures.
Following the presentation, Boghossian will be joined in conversation by Lara Fresko Madra, Assistant Professor and Luma Fellow at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies.
Tap the link in our bio to learn more and RSVP.
Join us tomorrow, April 30, from 6–8 pm for a performance and open mic night. Partake in a performance and live publishing event that reframes the gallery as a darkroom studio. Thandi Loewenson and Zimbabwean author Tinashe Mushakavanhu transform the space into a site of literary production with readings, live acts of making, and copies produced in the space for one night only. The evening will spill onto the street and culminate in an open mic night of otherworldly encounters.
Tap the link in our bio to RSVP.
Join us tomorrow, April 28 from 6:30–8 pm for a Listening Session. Inside the new exhibition “Black Fire!,” we will explore sonic archives and radical alternate imaginaries through vinyl, audio recordings, and soundscapes. Each host brings distinct practices rooted in sound, memory, and speculative world-making. Part conversation, part back-to-back set, the session invites audiences into an intimate encounter with the otherworldly frequencies embedded in archival and experimental sound.
We are joined by scholar of African Self-Liberation Mhoze Chikowero, Grammy-nominated creator and writer, Shana L. Redmond, scholar of African American and Africana Studies, Zoé Samudzi, and Thandi Loewenson, whose exhibition creates space for the session.
This event is free and open to the public, but RSVP is strongly encouraged. Sign up at the link in our bio. 🔗
Design: @estudioherrera
“Black Fire!” by Thandi Loewenson is now open and on view through June 27!
Tomorrow, Children ages 4–12—and their guests—are invited to a Spooky Action Workshop at the gallery from 2–4 pm. Artist and educator Niceli Portugal (@niceliportugal ) will guide this program, where participants will use scrap materials and simple assembly techniques to create their own shadow puppets and bring them to life through a light projection. After the workshop, participants will build short shadow performances exploring the boundaries between fiction and collective narratives.
Next week:
🔥 4/28, 6:30–8 pm: Monstrous, Malodorous, Otherworldly: Listening Session with Mhoze Chikowero, Shana L. Redmond, and Zoé Samudzi (@babywasu ) (*Limited Capacity)
🎤 4/30, 6–8 pm: Darkroom: Performance and Open Mic with Tinashe Mushakavanhu (@tinsmush )
Tap the link in our bio to learn more and RSVP. 🔗
Photos: @cor.zo
Thank you for joining us yesterday for the opening of “Black Fire!” by architect and researcher Thandi Loewenson, during which she gave a performance on alien encounters.
More events will activate aspects of the exhibition in the coming days:
This Saturday, from 2–4 pm join us for a child-focused workshop where participants will create their own shadow puppets and bring them to life through a light projection. (Limited capacity)
Next week:
🔥 4/28, 6:30–8 pm: Monstrous, Malodorous, Otherworldly: Listening Session with Mhoze Chikowero, Shana L. Redmond, and Zoé Samudzi (@babywasu ) (*Limited Capacity)
Explore sonic archives and radical alternate imaginaries through vinyl, audio recordings, and soundscapes. The evening will open with a guided introduction before giving way to a call-and-response exchange between the hosts, who each bring distinct practices rooted in sound, memory, and speculative world-making. Part conversation, part back-to-back set, the session invites audiences into an intimate encounter with the otherworldly frequencies embedded in archival and experimental sound.
🎤 4/30, 6–8 pm: Darkroom: Performance and Open Mic with Tinashe Mushakavanhu (@tinsmush )
Partake in a performance and live publishing event that reframes the gallery as a darkroom studio. Thandi Loewenson and Zimbabwean author Tinashe Mushakavanhu transform the space into a site of literary production with readings, live acts of making, and copies produced in the space for one night only. The evening will spill onto the street and culminate in an open mic night of otherworldly encounters.
Tap the link in our bio to learn more and RSVP. 🔗
Opening this Wednesday from 6–8 pm with a performance by @thandiloewenson , “Black Fire!” presents a critical yet atmospheric examination of UFO archives tied to Zimbabwe, reflecting on what these uncanny stories of extraterrestrial encounters reveal about notions of race and the alien.
A series of events accompany this new exhibition:
🛸 4/25, 2–4 pm: Spooky Action: Child-Focused Shadow Workshop
Drawing on Black Fire!’s connection to light, shadow, and imagination, join us for a child-focused, hands-on shadow puppet workshop.
🔥 4/28, 6:30–8 pm: Monstrous, Malodorous, Otherworldly: Listening Session with Zoé Samudzi (@z.t.samudzi ) and Mhoze Chikowero (*Limited Capacity)
Explore sonic archives and radical alternate imaginaries through vinyl, audio recordings, and soundscapes.
🎤 4/30, 6–8 pm: Darkroom: Performance and Open Mic with Tinashe Mushakavanhu (@tinsmush )
Partake in a performance and live publishing event that reframes the gallery as a darkroom studio.
Tap the link in our bio to learn more and RSVP. 🔗
Shown here: Cynthia Hind records, Archive for the Unexplained, Sweden
Join us Wednesday, April 22, from 6–8 pm for the opening of “Black Fire!” by artist and architect Thandi Loewenson (@thandiloewenson ), during which she will give a performance lecture.
Black Fire! examines the intersecting geographies of race and the alien imagination, spanning from colonial captivity narratives to the anxious frontiers of settler colonialism across Zimbabwe. In her longstanding research, Loewenson traces the figure of the alien through meticulously indexed and archived sighting histories. Together these archives expose UFO mythology as an uncanny continuation of colonial history, and an expression of alternative cosmologies emerging from Indigenous knowledge and worldviews.
A series of programs will expand on the exhibition by reframing the gallery as a darkroom, studio, and printing machine, destabilizing the threshold between inside and outside:
🛸 4/25, 2–4 pm: Spooky Action: Child-Focused Shadow Workshop
🔥 4/28, 6:30–8 pm: Monstrous, Malodorous, Otherworldly: Listening Session with Zoé Samudzi (@babywasu ) and Mhoze Chikowero (*Limited Capacity)
🎤 4/30, 6–8 pm: Darkroom: Performance and Open Mic with Tinashe Mushakavanhu (@tinsmush )
Tap the link in our bio to learn more and RSVP. 🔗
Audio: Vana Vakatiza (The Children Ran Away), Light Machine Gun (LMG) Choir, and Cynthia Hind, “Tribal Reactions in Africa,” year unknown, recording held by the Archives for the Unexplained
Design: @estudioherrera
Last night we were joined alongside our co-hosts @nyreviewofarch at the Axel Springer Haus for an evening with Toshiko Mori. Mori completed this project in 2019. For this special evening, the building was open to the public and Mori was in conversation with NYRA editor Samuel Medina about the process and her practice.
Our members, the Storefront Circle, and other special guests toasted with us with drinks generously provided by Yola Mezcal (@yolamezcal ).
For more events like this, become a Storefront Member or join the Circle. Tap the link in our bio to learn more and support. 🔗
