May 13, 2018

6:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Broadway-Lafayette St, Lafayette St & Houston Street, New York, NY 10012

No Longer Empty, Queens Museum, AMERINDA, and MTA Arts & Design welcome audiences to a free public rededication ceremony of Signal, an installation developed in collaboration with Mel Chin, Peter Jemison (Heron Clan-Seneca), and members of the Iroquois Six Nations (Haudenosaunee).

Mel Chin’s Signal is a permanent installation that was commissioned by MTA Arts & Design as part of the Broadway-Lafayette St station rehabilitation. For this project, Chin’s concept was to insert Native People’s presence, as a living culture, onto the Dutch-derived tile infrastructure found in MTA stations.

The rededication ceremony is a part of Mel Chin’s exhibition, “All Over The Place”, and will be hosted by members of the Six Nations who will share remarks on current climate justice conflicts in the region. As part of the ceremony, the artists will present a new plaque commemorating the contribution of Chin and Jemison in the production of the work – a public action that joins the current debate surrounding the role and meaning of public monuments in reckoning with a more complete understanding of U.S. history.

Following the ceremony will be a community dinner and discussion with indigenous cultural bearers at Kenkeleba House, co-hosted by AMERINDA and No Longer Empty. Open to participants and audiences of the Open Engagement Conference, the dinner will take place within an exhibition curated by AMERINDA – Recovering Memories: Vernacular photography from the historical Native American Brooklyn neighborhoods and Contemporary Photography from the New York Movement of Contemporary Native American Art. Dinner will be inspired by indigenous contributions to the culinary arts and prepared by Chef Quentin Glabus, a chef from the Frog Lake Cree First Nations of Alberta, Canada. For tickets to this dinner, click HERE.

These images will be shown alongside works by three contemporary, female Native American photographers currently living in New York City. Works on display will be curated by Amerinda and on view at the Kenkeleba House gallery. Food for the event will be inspired by traditional indigenous cuisine of the Americas, designed by members of AMERINDA and a local First Nations chef. Including these photo exhibitions and cuisine at the gathering will create a direct connection to the value brought to New York City and our country by First Nations cultures, and help forge deeper connections across this network of potent creators—a reality we are eager to amplify and support.

Image: Mel Chin, Signal, installation view, 1997. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Transit Authority Art & Design. Photo by Rob Wilson.

Videography and editing by Benjamin Lundberg Torres Sánchez