Open Call: Portals at The Shed, through August 24, 2025
“Twelve early-career, NYC-based artists and collectives present new works in Open Call: Portals, a free group exhibition in The Shed’s Level 2 Gallery and on the outdoor Plaza from June 27 to August 24. Open Call: Portals features new works ranging from painting and film to sculpture and performance by Zain Alam, AYDO, Mel Corchado, Marwa Eltahir, Patricia Encarnación, Laurena Finéus, Lily Honglei, Tyson Houseman, Jarrett Key, Chelsea Odufu, Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez, and Yelaine Rodriguez and Luis Vasquez La Roche, each exploring forces shaping our world, including colonialism, migration, and environmental crisis.
In this group exhibition, the artists explore personal stories and ancestral global history to open portals for passage, transformation, and resistance, forging profound connections between the past and present, memory and material, and displacement and belonging. 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.” — The Shed
Zain Alam. Meter & Light: Night. A three-channel audiovisual installation enacting the interlocking rhythms of time in Muslim life after sunset. Photo: Adam Reich.AYDO. Border Ecologies. 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. Photo: Adam Reich.
Mel Corchado. $TICKY $IN$. A collection of sugar garments exploring sugar’s history and its ties to identity, fashion, and the exploitation of land and labor. Photo: Adam Reich.
Marwa Eltahir. 99 Names: My Liberation Is Tied to Yours. An immersive, audiovisual performance examining themes of loss, grief, and connection using imagery from the Afro-Arab diaspora. Photo: Adam Reich.Patricia Encarnación. Tropical Limerence. 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. Photo: Adam Reich.
Laurena Finéus. Together, we could have made mountains. A collaborative textile and painting installation showcasing Brooklyn’s Haitian migrant stories and exploring dreams, sacrifices, misconceptions, and collective scars. Photo. Adam Reich.
Lily Honglei. KITES: Poems by an Immigrant. A painting series inspired by traditional Chinese kites that depicts Asian immigration stories reflecting the artist’s family saga and community life. Photo: Adam Reich.Tyson Houseman. The Six Seasons. A live, operatic video performance and installation featuring soundscapes and lyrics sung in nēhiyawēwin (Plains Cree). Photo: Adam Reich.Jarrett Key. Hair Painting No. 40. 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. Photo: Adam Reich.Chelsea Odufu. Echoes of Gold. A video installation foregrounding dance and movement to uncover the haunting legacy of the gold trade in Côte d’Ivoire. Photo: Adam Reich.Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez. Elevar La Cultura NYC. 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. Photo: Adam Reich.
Yelaine Rodriguez and Luis Vasquez La Roche. Residence Time | The Sea Is History. A mixed-media sculptural Corcinstallation that reimagines the transatlantic slave trade’s Door of No Return in Ghana as an archaeological ruin. Photo: Adam Reich
“Beyond the theme of this exhibition, we’re thinking about portals as invitations,” said Darren Biggart, Director of Civic Programs. “We hope that audiences find many entry points to engage with new ideas and connect with new communities. These 12 multivalent works provide diverse and unique openings to examine complex ideas and envision a better future.”
“These works by artists living and, or working in New York City remind us that identity, memory, and belonging are shaped not in isolation but in the unpredictable interstices of history and the present,” said Dejá Belardo, Assistant Curator of Visual Arts and Civic Programs. “In doing so, the exhibition Open Call: Portals subverts the typical understanding of its title. Instead of spaces meant solely for moving from one point to another, portals in this exhibition open a third space where we might linger, inhabiting the forgotten and the imagined.”
Title image: Installation view of Open Call:Portals. Photo: Adam Reich.
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