Apply to Codify Art's Mutual Aid Fund

Codify Art is launching a mutual aid fund in response to COVID-19’s disruption in accessing basic necessities. Any Black queer and/or trans person can apply to receive $100 to go towards covering income loss, food, housing, medical care, child care, transportation and/or any other critical needs that have been impacted by the crisis.

Please complete this quick 30 second application due Wednesday July 1 at 11:59pm. Two fund recipients will be chosen by random draw and will be notified by Friday July 3. Stay tuned when additional funds will be made available in the future.

Happy Juneteenth & Donate Today!

Dear Codify community, 

Happy Juneteenth! Today we commemorate the liberation of Black folx who were enslaved in the U.S. On June 19, 1865, Union army General Gordon Granger announced federal orders to free enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas—a full two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. We encourage our community to reflect, take action and celebrate this day in support of Black Lives.

Last week, each Codify member took over Instagram for one day to help fundraise for a QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) organization of their choice. We are overjoyed to share that we and our community raised $9,398 collectively for the Okra Project, F2L Relief Fund, Emergency Relief Fund, FIERCE, and Snap4Freedom. We are FLOORED by the outpouring of support. We have even had commitments of recurring donations! Thank you to everyone who has already donated. 

We are only $602 away from making it to $10,000 and we would love to continue supporting these efforts. Can you help us make it to #10kbyMonday? In addition to individual gifts, we encourage you to consider a recurring donation of any amount over time. After all, the revolution is a marathon not a sprint. Click on any of the links below to donate to the cause of your choice. Be sure to let us know the amount of your donation so we can ensure we meet our #10kbyMonday goal!

Okra Project

The Okra Project is a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People wherever we can reach them. Additionally to honor Nina Pop, Tony McDade, and the many Black Trans people who have been murdered by state-sanctioned violence, The Okra Project is dedicating $15,000 to create the Nina Pop Mental Health Recovery Fund and the Tony McDade Mental Health Recovery Fund.

F2L: Relief Fund

The F2L: Relief Fund provides commissary support to incarcerated QTBIPOC in New York State. THE F2L NETWORK is a volunteer-led effort to end the incarceration of our community through resource redistribution and direct action. Founded in 2016, F2L has organized over 50+ Pack the Courts, raised over 100k in commissary, bailed out 8 individuals, and kept many more community members out of State custody by securing adequate legal representation and providing financial assistance during trial.

Emergency Release Fund

The mission of the Emergency Release Fund is to ensure that no trans person at risk in New York City jails remains in detention before trial. If ​cash bail is set for a trans person in New York City and no bars to release are in place, ​bail will be paid by the Emergency Release Fund. Trans people experience constant injustice. Behind bars it can be fatal. It’s on us to make sure no one—not one person—falls through the cracks. We can and we will.

FIERCE

FIERCE is an LGBTQ youth of color-led organization. We build the leadership, political consciousness, and organizing skills of LGBTQ youth. In New York City, we organize local grassroots campaigns to fight police harassment and violence and for increased access to safe public space for LGBTQ youth.

Snap4Freedom (Solutions Not Punishment Co.)

The Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative is a Black trans and queer-led collaborative that builds the power of our people to wage and win campaigns that force systematic divestment from the prison-industrial complex and investment in the services that support us.

New Alternatives Workshop: collaborative storytelling

We were so excited to return to New Alternatives for our second workshop using the supplies donated through November’s Codify Art Supply Drive. Last time, we thought about emotional spaces, mental health, and free creative expression. This time, we talked about the choices artists make to best express these feelings in their work. Some questions we asked: What feeling do you associate with blue? With red? With green? What does speed look like? Something slow/calm? What does something soft look like? Something sharp? These quick exercises in color, shape, and pattern were translated into paintings on small ceramic tiles that could be mixed & matched into different narratives. Check out some images of the work below!

Harvest Collegiate HS Workshop

January 16th 2020 Codify was invited to @harvestcollegiatehs  to lead a Poster making workshop with High school students. We asked the students create posters and images that addressed: What/who do you want to affirm? What is something in your community that you want to talk about? The work and discussions were so powerful and inspiring. Topics ranged from bathroom rights to gang violence and love. Check out some of the amazing work created

2019 Year in Review

If you were to catch a glimpse of a Codify member’s Google calendar, you’d see nestled in all the color blocks one small marker in October: “CODIFY BIRTHDAY”

We’re closing out 2019 as a five-year-old organization (accepting birthday gifts here!). As much as we’re pumped to share all the things we have planned for this milestone year, first we want to take a look back at the exciting turns and developments of the last 12 months. Some highlights for the busy:

• Codify co-founders Jon Key and Jarrett Key, as well as Codify artist Ilana Harris-Babou, are in Forbes 2020’s Art & Style picks for 30 under 30! 

• We built a new partnership with New Alternatives, a non-profit that works to increase the self-sufficiency of LGBTQI+ homeless youth, for the first Codify Art Supply Drive. With a van full of donations, we ran a workshop at New Alternatives exploring art as a vehicle for personal narratives.

• We launched our Microgrant initiative and awarded our first grant of $100 to artist Nafis White. 

Read on for details and a full 2019 review:

Unity Week at the Horace Mann School

We returned to the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, where Jon Key and Jarrett Key gave keynote speeches at the high school’s Unity Week, a four-day extravaganza of sessions that explored the intersection of art and justice. The keynote and talkback highlighted Jon and Jarrett’s work, as well as Codify's journey from founding to today. After the talkback, we led a mark-making workshop for middle school students, introducing a range of gestures, materials, and techniques for personal expression. Altogether, we worked with approximately 800 middle and high school students.
 

Codify Art ReConnects

After taking the summer to recharge, we came back in September to host CodifyConnects at Prospect Park. We spent the afternoon in the glorious end-of-summer sun, holding space for our community to reunite and spend some quality leisure time together. We were astounded and inspired by the response — over 25 people joined us over the course of the day! In the days following, we received messages from attendees expressing how rejuvenating the event was. We’ll definitely be planning more of these in 2020!
 

Art Supply Drive

This year, we were thrilled to build a new partnership with New Alternatives, a non-profit that works to increase the self-sufficiency of LGBTQI+ homeless youth by enabling them to transition out of the shelter system to stable adult lives. We started the Codify Art Supply Drive to empower LGBTQI+ housing insecure youth to share their personal stories and to inspire creativity by ensuring access to the necessary tools. We believe that personal narratives drive empathy, and that art is the perfect vehicle for sharing and forging meaningful connections. 

BRIC and the Public Theater generously acted as donation sites to collect the brand-new or gently-used art supplies that were given to New Alternatives. We collected a van filled with over 15 canvases, gallons of paint, hundreds of markers, pencils, pens, paper, yarn and so much more during the course of the drive. Afterwards, Codify led a workshop with the New Alternatives youth using the donated supplies, and were blown away by the amazing works of art they created! Thank you to everyone who donated.
 

Microgrants

Since our founding in 2014, one of our dreams was to support QTPOC artists through grants. In October, the seed of our dream sprouted. Congratulations to Nafis White, our first Codify Art Microgrant recipient! Nafis used this grant to support her residency at MASS MoCA this fall. Nafis White is a multidisciplinary fine artist who creates her work from objects commonly found in beauty supply stores; natural, industrial, and irrigation components; and the seemingly limitless horizons of our global and political landscapes. 

Be on the lookout for our next email with full guidelines on how to apply to the $100 Codify Art Microgrant. And don’t worry, the application form will be quick and easy!

 

Forbes 30 under 30

This year, Forbes 30 under 30 for Art & Style selected three of Codify’s very own. Congrats to Codify co-founders Jon Key and Jarrett Key, as well as artist and sculptor Ilana Harris-Babou, who showed with us in Codify’s 2017 summer show THRESHELD at Underdonk. Codify Art is so pleased to be represented on this list amongst some of the nation’s most exciting emerging talent! Congratulations to all who are featured.

Thanks again  from all of us at Codify Art for supporting us this year. We do this work for our community. Have a very happy and safe New Years.

New Alternatives workshop: Mental health and creative expression

We loved partnering with @new_alternatives_nyc to put on a workshop about creativity and the power of sharing your narratives through art. Check out some of the amazing paintings created with the help of everyone who donated to our Art Drive. We are excited about working together with New alternatives next month for another workshop!!!!

Codify Art Supply Drive

 Donate Art Supplies for LGBTQI+ Housing Insecure Youth

From Nov. 1st–Nov. 30, Codify Art is accepting brand-new or gently-used art supplies that will be given to New Alternatives, a non-profit that works to increase the self-sufficiency of LGBTQI+ homeless youth by enabling them to transition out of the shelter system to stable adult lives.

Items Needed:
Construction Paper
Makers
Colored Pencils 
Craft Paint
Brushes
Pencils
Glue Sticks
Scissors
Hot Glue Gun 
Canvas
Watercolors

New Alternatives’ work includes:
Long-term support
Weekly case management
Education services
Life skills training
Community-building recreational activities
Opportunities for self-expression
Programs for HIV+ youth. 

The Codify Art Supply Drive means to empower LGBTQI+ housing insecure youth to share their personal stories and to inspire creativity by ensuring access to the necessary tools. We believe that personal narratives drive empathy, and art is the perfect vehicle for sharing and forging meaningful connections. 

So we are calling on you! 

Drop off your brand-new or gently-used art supplies at one of our donation site partners: The Public Theater in Manhattan and BRIC in Brooklyn.
Look for the hot pink bucket labeled
“Codify Art Supply Drive” in the lobby.

BRIC: 647 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY, 11217 
The Public: 425 Lafayette St, NY, NY 10003

Codify Art is a multidisciplinary QTPOC artist collective based in Brooklyn. As an artistic, curatorial, and producorial organization, our mission is to showcase and support artists of color, particularly women, queer, and trans artists of color. 

In Partnership with

Home Body at Spring/Break

Make sure to catch Codify member Jon Key's newest paintings at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in "Home Body," presented by Ross + Kramer Gallery!

WHEN
March 5–11, 2019
11AM–7PM

WHERE
SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Booth W15
866 United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017

TICKETS

Press release below.

“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”  —George A. Moore

Who we are in the world merely echos who we become in the refuge of our own homes. With “Home Body,” Ross + Kramer Gallery presents a dual show, curated by Ché Morales, in which artists Jon Key and Bianca Nemelc deal with mythos, identity, and what both mean within the sanctuary of their personal homes.

The first room titled “The Violet Den” is filled with work by artist Jon Key and is a constructed space of refuge and rest for the recurring character that appears in the majority of his paintings, the Man in the Violet Suit. According to Key, “[the room’s] surroundings simultaneously examine the interior psychology and reality of the Queer Black man.” By deconstructing the Violet Suit pattern and figure with each painting and found object abstraction, Key will extend the mythology of the The Man in the Violet Suit’s journey. Within this space we are given a reflection of what one man becomes outside the suited image that embodies who he is in the outside world.

In the second room titled “Motherland”, we come across a space created by artist Bianca Nemelc. This room and the paintings it contains are dedicated to the women that have passed down their ancestry through the home cooked meals in her family’s kitchen. Bianca states, “In any kitchen, the bowl is a vessel to explore the most intimate parts of our identity with those around us. A bowl gives the ability to share and carry lineage and tradition in its contents as it is passed across the thighs of unknowing company. Sometimes it arrives on your lap overflowing with stories of the kitchen from which it came, and other times bowls stand empty, waiting to filled and spilled by eager hands.” Viewers are encouraged to participate in a fully immersive experience as speakers play audio of women in the kitchen humming and cooking by themselves. With this space Nemelc invites us into the traditions of the culture that created her by feeding her soul literally and figuratively.

2018 Year in Review

We know it’s only November, but as Codify moves in new and exciting directions (stay tuned!) we wanted to take stock of what our community has helped us accomplish this year. A quick summary for the busy:

• Curate and produce five art exhibitions, three presentations/lectures, and three educational workshops.
  
  

• Start paying the artists we curate! In 2018, Codify Art will have spent a total of $1,000 in artist honorariums. This was our biggest goal for 2018, and because of you, we were able to do it. Your dollars directly support the lives and art-making practices of QTPOC artists. This is HUGE for us. Thank you.
  
  

• Build new relationships with four New York Institutions: La Mama Galleria, Horace Mann School, Bellwether Collective, and Harlem School of the Arts. Building and cultivating these relationships allows us to introduce QTPOC artists to new organizations and new audiences.

And for the curious, in more detail and in order of appearance:

Unity Week at Horace Mann

Partnering with the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, Codify led two art-making workshops and one artist critique as part of Unity Week, a four-day extravaganza of workshops and speakers dedicated to exploring identity, justice and community. Altogether, we worked with approximately 50 middle and high school students. In the workshops, we encouraged identity development through creative self-portraiture, and with the AP students, we spoke candidly about pursuing a career in the arts, in addition to providing more detailed portfolio reviews.

Codify Art, a Group Show at The Public Theater

We make a practice of having a Codify group show every year, and in 2018 we started strong with an exhibition on the mezzanine of The Public Theater. Featuring work by Codify members Sharina Gordon, Jarrett Key, Jon Key, and Son Kit, the show acted as a touchpoint for theater-goers to engage in an interdisciplinary conversation around contemporary artmaking.

Hair Paintings and Other Stories at La Mama Galleria

It was all hands on deck for this one, but no one worked harder than Codify member Jarrett Key to put up Hair Paintings and Other Stories, Jarrett’s first New York solo show! Produced in collaboration with the Bellwether Collective, the exhibition ran for one month, during which there was a live hair painting performance, an artist walkthrough, and even a swanky launch party for Morcos Key, a new design studio run by Codify member Jon Key and Partner/Codify collaborator Wael Morcos.

SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2018

Codify returned to SPRING/BREAK Art Show in 2018, this time doubling our efforts to curate two projects: OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU, featuring work by Kira Nam Greene, Son Kit, Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin, and Taehee Whang, and UNTILL, with work by Jarrett Key and Jon Key. OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU explored the diasporic Korean experience through the lens of a post-North Korean nuclear apocalypse while UNTILL (the first exhibition to exclusively feature the Key Twins) uncovered the lost histories of black American ancestry through the mining of family history. Presented during Armory Arts Week, SPRING/BREAK acts as an opportunity to place QTPOC narratives before a much wider audience, asserting the necessity of our voices in the art world.

Revision: Translating Histories at Harlem School of the Arts

Codify, in collaboration with the Harlem School of the Arts, curated Revision: Translating Histories as part of a yearlong curatorial framework around translation. Featuring works by Nathalie Jolivert, Aqeel Malcolm, Oluseye, and Shaina Yang, the exhibition expanded upon the idea of “Historical revisionism” to examine how personal symbologies are retold, reworked, and interpreted through each artist’s experience. Artists Aqeel and Shaina also gave an artist talk to get deeper into the narratives underwriting their pieces.

Brown Paper Zine Fair

We returned for the second annual Brown Paper Zine & Small Press Fair organized by 3 Dot Zine to present The Survival Library, a Codify project begun in 2017 with Pioneer Works’ School of Apocalypse. Codify members Sharina Gordon and Jarrett Key introduced The Survival Library to an intimate audience before sharing their own contributions—#BlackMentalHealthMatters and STILLS: Letters to Grandma, respectively. They then opened up the conversation with a third Library contributor, Zakiya Collier, and invited submissions from QTPOC makers (we’re still open for submissions!).

Bau Haus Semi-Annual VII: THE RETROSPECTIVE

Codify members and Bau Haus occupants Jarrett Key and Son Kit broke their own rule of “new work only” for the seventh installment of the Bau Haus Semi-Annual show, but we can forgive them because THE RETROSPECTIVE marked the end of an era. The final exhibition in their Bainbridge Street space, THE RETROSPECTIVE looked back at all the work created by Jarrett and Kit over their 5 years of live/work/host/party/collaborative residence in Bed-Stuy. The exhibition doubled as a goodbye to the both of them before they moved to Providence to begin grad school at RISD.

—

On that note, we’re here to say that Codify is entering a new phase: we’re excited to engage with new QTPOC artists outside of Brooklyn, as much as we’re excited to find new models of support for our longstanding community in NYC. This past year of expanded programming was made possible by your wonderful support and your generous contributions. Donate today to help us grow in 2019

BAU HAUS SEMI-ANNUAL VII: THE RETROSPECTIVE

Bau Haus, in collaboration with Codify Art, is pleased to present THE RETROSPECTIVE, featuring work by Bau Haus founders and inhabitants Jarrett Key and Son Kit. This exhibition will be on view for one night only during the opening reception: Saturday, July 28, 7–10PM.

LOCATION:
516 Bainbridge St, Apt 1L
Brooklyn, NY 11233

Twice a year since February 2015, Bau Haus has gutted and reanimated itself for the Bau Haus Semi-Annual Show in the name of experimentation, self-exploration, and community-sharing. Amidst its myriad guiding structures, The Bau Haus Semi-Annual has maintained one cardinal rule: all featured work must have never been shown elsewhere.

For THE RETROSPECTIVE, we’re saying fuck it.

Please join us for the final(!) Bau Haus show in its Brooklyn iteration before we move to Providence, RI for grad school. Like our very first exhibition (YELLOW PERIL BLACK POWER), THE RETROSPECTIVE is a two-person show of Bau Haus founders Jarrett Key and Son Kit and features greatest hits from the past alongside pieces either brand new or never-been-shown-in-NYC. 

Afterparty to follow in the same space. Some of the work will be cleared for safekeeping, so be sure to come early!

-----

Jarrett Key is a Brooklyn-based visual artist whose work integrates movement, song, and painting. Their Hair Painting Series re-imagines the collective bodily memories and rituals of the Black community by engaging its narratives of strength, courage, and resilience in an examination of past, present, and future.

Jarrett grew up in rural Alabama and began their art practice in New York after graduating from Brown University in 2013. 

Jarrett has been featured in exhibitions and residencies at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, La MaMa Galleria, The Columbus Museum, Gallery 67, Swiss House/MGLC, Galerija Kresija, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, Caelum Gallery, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Outlet Fine Art, Former Pfizer Pharmaceutical Factory, Secret Dungeon, La Maison D’Art, Shanghai Theater Academy, and East Meet West Gallery.
Jarrett’s work is in the collections of the Schomburg Center, the Museum of Modern Art Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, among other institutions. The Hair Painting Series series has been featured at the Studio Museum in Harlem and at the Harlem Arts Festival in Marcus Garvey Park.

Son Kit is a Brooklyn-based artist and curator originally spawned in Los Angeles, CA.

Kit utilizes video, illustration, installation, and text to explore non-binary second-gen yellow narratives in pursuit of a New Canon of Korean-American Science Fiction Authored Entirely by Them. Their current body of work leverages climate change fantasy as allegory for diaspora through world-building projects set in a future Earth covered entirely by water. Common themes include evolution, anthropomorphization, war/machines, mythology, and translation.

Recent exhibitions include Anthropiscine War Machine at SOHO20, OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU at SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2018, and Speculative Skins at the Naughton Gallery in Belfast. Kit has spoken at the Brooklyn Museum, RISD, and Brown University, and has been featured in Art in America and Artspace, amongst others. Kit is a co-founder of Codify Art, a multidisciplinary collective of, and platform for, QTPOC artists, and of EST, a research collective investigating the intersection of Asia, technology, and racialized futurisms.

Revision: Translating Histories

Codify Art, in collaboration with the Harlem School of the Arts, is pleased to present Revision: Translating Histories, a group exhibition of works by Nathalie Jolivert, Aqeel Malcolm, Oluseye, and Shaina Yang. This exhibition will be on view from April 12–June 2, 2018, with the opening reception on Thursday, April 12, 6–8PM.

In historiography, the term “Historical revisionism” identifies the practice of re-interpreting orthodox views of historical events, from assumptions around the motivations of participants, to the introduction of new evidence. Revision: Translating Histories extends revisionism to personal symbologies, to examine how these signifiers are translated, codified, and questioned through the artists’ experiences. Both past events and imagined futures are denatured across multiple retellings, a generations-long game of Telephone where each recipient passes the dominant narrative through their own filters to create increasingly specific interpretations. At each nexus, the listener becomes the teller; they inherit an open document to honor, challenge, or subvert—and in the process, convey a story that gets closer to their truth.

Aqeel Malcolm
Deconstructing the Barber-Cape (detail)

Originally from Port-au-Prince and now based in Brooklyn, Nathalie Jolivert examines the patterns and stratifications of Haitian migration through graphic, stylized paintings reminiscent of travel posters and architectural signage. Her “Carnet de Voyages” series juxtaposes the aspirational imagery of flight advertisements with allegorical commentary on the risks of movement for most Haitian citizens, for whom a plane ticket would be an impossible expense. “La Sirène,” the mermaid spirit of the sea in Haitian vodou, is a recurring motif, both as a threat to those who attempt to escape poverty or disaster by boat; and as a figure of memory, trapped in a water glass in a Manhattan cafe as Jolivert’s mind turns from her meal to the tap-tap buses of a different commute.

Aqeel Malcolm’s Deconstructing the Barber-Cape takes apart, then weaves together, the barber cape, a stand-in for the barbershop as a locus of black masculinity. Examining the performative potential of a simple—yet highly recognizable—piece of nylon-polyester, Malcolm enters this fraught space as runway, as tapestry, as craft, reclaiming the familiar drape in service of a vision of the black male inseparable from his queerness.

Drawing from Yoruba culture—its sculptures, mythology, beliefs and the angular facial features of its people— Oluseye embraces and merges the physicality and the spirituality of the black male form. The works on view position Catholic symbolism in Oluseye’s work, as an autobiographical tool referencing the co-existence of Yoruba traditions and Christianity in his upbringing and self-actualization. This interplay of Yoruba and Christianity charts the survival of Yoruba spirituality over the Middle Passage via its strategic nesting within Christian practices and echoes the current fascination with Yoruba in popular culture. The works’ narratives are further complicated by the juxtaposition of Christianity against the homoeroticism evoked in Oluseye’s portraits. He interrogates Christianity’s complex history with homophobia, and its deployment as a colonial tool against indigenous ways of being and frameworks for gender performance. Oluseye’s work offer multiple points of reference for understanding tradition, multiple indigeneities and contemporary lives.

Through intricate and fluid figurative compositions, Shaina Lee-Shuan Yang invokes the body-as-vessel and its requisite symbols, points of connection, and liminal spaces. Yang’s drawings and paintings reflect the superstitions of their Taiwanese family, using the number 31—the number of strokes in Yang’s Chinese name and a corresponding good luck counter—to render each figure or to determine the number of figures in the composition. Sensitive to the precarity of visibility and the shared experiences of existence, Yang questions both infinite solitude and infinite community through rituals created over the course of their queer, first-generation American experience.

Codify Art is a multidisciplinary QTPOC artist collective dedicated to creating, curating and producing work by artists of color, particularly women, queer, and trans artists of color. Codify believes that the existing vocabulary of the arts is inadequate for engagement with the stories of marginalized groups; in response, they create and claim space to collectively build an alternative, inclusionary language. Their output spans art exhibitions to evenings of performance to publications to networking events for the Q/T/W/OC community. Codify Art is Jarrett Key, Jon Key, Son Kit, Sharina Gordon, and Leandro Zaneti and is based in Brooklyn, NY.

For more information, contact HSA Art & Design Director Adrienne Tarver at atarver[at]hsanyc[dot]org

Spring/Break Art Show Price List

View fullsize

Title: Tiger rug
Artist: Taehee Whang
Year: 2017
Medium: Silkscreen on fabric and tarp, aroma diffuser
Dimensions: 11” x 80” x 90”
Price: $3000, edition 1 of 2

View fullsize

Title: Anthropiscine War Machine 2: North American Front
Artist: Son Kit
Year: 2018
Medium: Galvanized steel, vinyl, acrylic transfer, PU fish, RX-78-01[N] Gundam Local Type (North American Type), glass, plastic, air locks, fish hooks, coarse salt, gochugaru (Korean pepper flakes), water
Dimensions: 41” x 37.25” x 31.75”
Price: $2500

View fullsize

Title: Nebraska Suite No. 6: Hail to the Chef
Artist: Kira Nam Greene
Year: 2015
Medium: Watercolor, acrylic, gouache on paper
Dimensions: 44” x 30”
Price: $7500

View fullsize

Title: Spam, Spam, Egg, Spam, Rice and Spam
Artist: Kira Nam Greene
Year: 2016
Medium: Watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil on paper mounted on panel
Dimensions: 45” x 30”
Price: $7500

Title: Untitled (Broken English)
Artist: Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin
Year: 2017
Medium: Bisque, tube, motor, Hyangyak
Dimensions: 12” x 8” x 8”
Price: $1200

View fullsize

Title: Untitled (Lactic Acid)
Artist: Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin
Year: 2017
Medium: Glass jar, vegetable oil, Hyangyak
Dimensions: 24” X 8” x 8”
Price: $650

View fullsize

Title: Untitled (Self-conditioning)
Artist: Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin
Year: 2017
Medium: Bisque, tube, motor, Hyangyak
Dimensions: Each vase 12” x 8” x 8”
Price: $4000

OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU

Framed as yet another speculation into a post-North Korean nuclear apocalypse, OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU asks specifically after the real and imagined survival of Korean bodies who are subject to the war games and thought exercises of their Western surroundings. The exhibition looks to food and preservation techniques as integral motifs in war, post-war, and future survival, and features work by Kira Nam Greene, Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin, Son Kit, and Taehee Whang.

---

Title: Judges 16:18
Artist: Jarrett Key
Year: 2018
Medium: Perfect bound book
Dimensions: 11” x 8.5”
Price: $80, edition of 50

Title: Cargo Ship II
Artist: Jarrett Key
Year: 2018
Medium: Oil on gessoed canvas
Dimensions: 24” x 20”
Price: $2000

Title: Slave Ship IV
Artist: Jarrett Key
Year: 2018
Medium: Oil on gessoed canvas
Dimensions: 24” x 36”
Price: $2500

View fullsize

Title: COMFORT MARK
Artist: Jarrett Key
Year: 2018
Medium: Plaster, wire, bubblewrap, acrylic paint
Dimensions:  43.5” x 17” x 8”
Price: $2000

Title: Our Voice (Soundscape)
Artist: Jarrett Key
Year: 2018
Medium: Digital audio
Dimensions: 7min
Price: $400, edition of 3

Title: Proof
Artist: Jon Key
Year: 2018
Medium: Perfect bound book
Dimensions: 10.75” x 8.25”, 34 pages
Price: $80, edition of 50

View fullsize

Title: Cotton & Magnolia (Wallpaper)
Artist: Jon Key
Year: 2016
Medium: Digital print of painting
Dimensions: 24” x 108”
Price: $250/roll, edition of 100

View fullsize

Title: Man in the Violet Suit No.6 (Twins No.1)
Artist: Jon Key
Year: 2017
Medium: Acrylic on paper
Dimensions: 60” x 35”
Price: $5000 SOLD

View fullsize

Title: The Twins in the Violet Suit No.2
Artist: Jon Key
Year: 2018
Medium: Acrylic on paper
Dimensions: 46” x 35”
Price: $3800

View fullsize

Title: The Twins in the Violet Suit No.3
Artist: Jon Key
Year: 2018
Medium: Acrylic on paper
Dimensions: 35” x 52”
Price: $4500 SOLD

View fullsize

Title: Violet Dreamscape No.3 (Twin Lakes)
Artist: Jon Key
Year: 2018
Medium: Acrylic on paper
Dimensions: 25” x 25”
Price: $2500

View fullsize

Title: Violet Dreamscape No.4 (Hudson)
Artist: Jon Key
Year: 2018
Medium: Acrylic on Paper
Dimensions: 25” x 25”
Price: $2500

UNTILL

The two artists in UNTILL, Jarrett Key and Jon Key, are black twins from rural Alabama.
The stories of their ancestors were never recorded in written form. These stories travelled instead as secrets, orally passed down through generations until they became the secrets filling the graves of their kin. The works in UNTILL mark their endeavor to recreate the lost stories of their immediate family as well as those ancestral histories that were consigned to the oblivion of the Middle Passage. They arrive in the past (1619–1953), the present (1954–2018), and the future (a dreamscape) as strangers excavating answers to understand their own history. 

UNTILL

Right next door to OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU, is UNTILL, a co-curatorial collaboration between Son Kit and Sharina Gordon. UNTILL features some familiar Codify faces, Jarrett and Jon - “The Key Twins”. Are you ready for your sneak peak?

UNTILL’s curatorial statement begins,

Photo by John C. Edmonds

“I came, I saw, I conquered,” wrote Julius Caesar to the Roman Senate. The Roman people considered him a hero, as much as the Bosporan Kingdom saw him as the stranger come to destroy. But history remembers Caesar’s words more than it remembers the Bosporan Kingdom, and it remembers Caesar’s words because we have his letter. Power in part is the ability to dictate what perspectives are recorded, preserved, and disseminated for perpetuity. The duality of Hero/Stranger necessitates this question then: how does one recover the stories lost to power and conquest?

As you probably know, Jarrett and Jon are twins (!!! WE KNOW. WE ARE SHOOK TOO!) from rural Alabama. Like many black families, the stories of their ancestors were never recorded in written form. The stories travelled instead as secrets, orally passed down through generations until they became the secrets filling the graves of their kin. In UNTILL, Jarrett and Jon mark their endeavor to recreate the lost stories of their immediate family as well as those ancestral histories that were consigned to the oblivion of the Middle Passage. Through their work, they arrive in the past (1619–1953), the present (1954–2018), and the future as strangers excavating answers to understand their own history.

UNTILL marks the first exhibition exclusively featuring work by the Key Twins’. Part family history project, part artistic exploration and discovery, UNTILL dispels the notion of a black monolith, by showing how twins preserve, process and perpetuate their family chronicle in ways that are radically different. Through their own ancestral exploration, the Key Twins offer an account of the common lived experience of young, black, queer folks existing in 2018 America.

About The Key Twins

Jarrett and Jon a.k.a. “The Key Twins” were born in rural Seale, Alabama. We received our formative education in Providence, RI: Jon attending RISD, and Jarrett at Brown University. Since moving to New York, we have worked individually and collaboratively to cultivate and expand our Queer Black voices. Jon integrates his design & art practice with multi-disciplinary narrative works and installations. Jarrett is a multidisciplinary artist, who investigates the relationship between traditional visual art and performance practices. Our work has been featured in performances, publications, exhibitions, and workshops including Angell Gallery Toronto, 32nd Biennial of Graphic Arts MGLC Ljubljana, Fierman Gallery, MoCADA Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The American Theater Wing/Circle in the Square on Broadway, NYU Tisch, California College of Art, Yale University, Shanghai Theater Academy, and Lebanon American University. Our work and collaborations led to the co-founding of CODIFY ART, a Brooklyn based QTPOC Arts Collective with other artist, dancers, and writers. Our mission is to create, produce, and showcase work that foregrounds the voices of people of color, particularly those of women, and queer people of color.

OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU

First up is Son Kit’s room, OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU. We don’t usually do this but since you’re here, we figured we’d share part of the Kit’s curatorial statement. This is what it feels like to be an insider.

Kit writes, “The Risk of Nuclear War with North Korea,” cautions The New Yorker. “How to Deal With North Korea,” advises The Atlantic. “North Korean despot Kim Jong-un is ‘plotting to nuke Yellowstone super volcano’ and spark eruption that will split US in half,” cries The Sun. The reputability of these individual publications aside, the majority of reporting on the DPRK—whether the close tracking of missile tests or hasty screenshots of Trump’s newest Twitter feud with Kim—constructs an English-language narrative whose plot can only climax in nuclear holocaust.

Expert opinion on the actual possibility of war fluctuates with each new development, but sensationalism profits through steady escalation. Aided in no small part by the impossible personalities of both the U.S. and North Korean leaders, American headlines keep an otherwise footnoted peninsula on the front page for a terrified public.

OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU is an exhibition of works by diasporic Koreans currently residing in the U.S. Displaced (whether directly or generationally) by a war into a country that does not remember it, the hyphenated Korean experiences estrangement in visibility and invisibility: though they are seen as perpetually foreign yellow bodies, their status as American residents implicates them in American fears. If one Great Leader nukes the U.S., they will die with the U.S. If the other Great Leader retaliates with “fire and fury,” who dies then? Who dies first? Who do they fear for? Where do allegiances originate—from land, from blood, from whoever will spare them in the aftermath?

Kit frames the exhibition as a speculation into a post-North Korean nuclear apocalypse. OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU asks specifically after the real and imagined survival of Korean bodies who are subject to the war games and thought exercises of their Western surroundings, and features work by Kira Nam Greene, Son Kit, Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin, and Taehee Whang.

About the Artists

TIFFANY JAEYEON SHIN
Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin (b. 1993) is a Korean-Canadian-American artist, curator, educator, and community organizer. Shin explores the interconnections between sexuality, gender, and transgression; history, memory, and cultural myths; and social hierarchy in relationship to coloniality. Shin uses Taoist indigenous knowledge to explore the porousness of bodily boundaries and the ceaseless movement of living processes, like fermentation, echoing the history of colonialism. Shin is interested in entangling the history of conquest and the literal digestion of material - herbs, medicine, and food - into a new system of relations that emerge from a complicated history of entanglement. Shin lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Shin has collaborated with and/or exhibited at Trestle Gallery, Local Project, Abrons Arts Center, Miranda Kuo Gallery, and many others. Shin has exhibted her firtst solo show at the AC Institute. Shin is the recipient of the NARS Emerging Curator 2017 award. Shin works and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

KIRA NAM GREENE
Kira Nam Greene’s work explores female sexuality, desire and control through lush still-life paintings of food, surrounded by complex patterns and abstract designs. Imbuing the feminist legacies of Pattern and Decoration Movement with transnational/multicultural patterns, Greene creates colorful paintings that are unique combinations of realism and abstraction, employing diverse media such as oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor and colored pencil. More recently, Greene’s interest in food has expanded into examining ethical aspects of modern food consumption and the proliferation of advertising imagery on our visual culture in a series of paintings of mass produced and brand name food products. In this latest series, Greene combines typical Pop Art tropes with global motifs, subverting the marketing slogans out of context among highly crafted patterns rooted in older cultural traditions. Born in Seoul, Korea, Greene lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from School of Visual Arts, BFA from San Francisco Art Institute, Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University and BA in International Relations from Seoul National University. Greene has shown her work widely at venues such as Accola Griefen Gallery, Jane Lombard Gallery, Kiechel Fine Art, A.I.R. Gallery, Brown University, Salisbury University, Wave Hill, Bronx Museum of Art, Noyes Museum and Sheldon Museum of Art.

TAEHEE WHANG
Taehee Whang is a Korean American interdisciplinary artist and educator who works in video, printmaking, and sculpture. They completed their BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2016. They collaborated and worked with various institutions such as Eyebeam, Asian Art Archive, Children’s Museum of the Arts (CMANY), Studio REV-, BUFU, RISD Museum, and New York Arts Practicum (NYAP).

SON KIT
First spawned in Los Angeles, CA, Son Kit scored their degrees in Visual Art and Literary Arts at Brown University in Providence, RI. Kit employs climate change fantasy as allegory for displacement and diaspora and utilizes video, illustration, installation, and text to explore non-binary second-gen yellow narratives in pursuit of a New Canon of Korean-American Speculative Fiction Authored Entirely By Them. Kit has most recently exhibited with the New Museum, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, SOHO20, The Naughton Gallery, OUTLET, and Associated Gallery. They are a Co-founder and Chief Curator at Codify Art, a multidisciplinary collective of, and platform for, QTPOC artists.

SPRING BREAK IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER.

Y’all, it’s been a week! On Monday we started load-in for SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2018 (as you may have seen on our Instagram story), on Thursday we closed Hair Paintings and Other Stories… and today we’re putting the final touches on our rooms at SPRING/BREAK Art Show. You read that right, room$$$. Plural. We’ve got two entire rooms this year and we’re so excited to share the work with you this week. We can’t wait to introduce you to our featured artists.

First, we thought we’d start by talking about SPRING/BREAK Art Show. What is it? Who is it? What’s the deal? SPRING/BREAK Art Show was first produced in 2012 by curators, Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly who together make up The They Co. Over the last seven years SPRING/BREAK Art Show has become an internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical and historic New York City exhibition spaces to activate and challenge the traditional cultural landscape of the art market, during Armory Arts Week. In exchange for no-cost exhibition space, visionary perspectives both established and unknown are charged with engaging these areas under a unifying theme and pushed to extend the boundaries of typical market week practices, low overhead and shifting curatorial themes their assets to this end.

This year’s theme is “Stranger Comes to Town.” In their call for submissions, Gori and Kelly proposed, “Even in a land looming with a copper Goddess, one practically begging for the whole world’s Strangers, America’s symbolic territories have consistently mobilized against the Outsider—even, as if obeying vampiric protocol, after inviting them straight in the front door. Yet more than any other country, we are an entire nation of Strangers. This Stranger-ness compounds in its particular foreign associations, but also evaporates under a fairly quick makeover by naturalization, from each territories’ particular Laws of the Land. What is this transformation process—and once you become ‘one of Them’ is there a full moon that can ever turn you back? What the hell alchemy makes us ‘Us’ anyway? And just what kind of Tod Browning-style freak-show of assimilation have we put together here among the accepted and desirable of every part of our world?... A Cultural Trend is also a stranger, new in town. As is Youth, forever evicting the Young before them from the relevancy of trends prior. What becomes Timeless, how does our shit turn gold and when do Golden Years make it gold-er? And what other aspects of everyday life construe the dichotomy of Local/Out-Of-Towner? … SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2018 seeks works about foreignness, migration, assimilation, and the alchemy of two or more dissolving into each other—or story, as the adage suggests—its limitations, arcs, and disassembling in the realm of formal art practice as a further articulation of Them and Us, narrator and audience; two strangers to one another, caught in an exchange.” For a full synopsis of the curatorial statement, visit SPRING/BREAK Art Show’s website!

In response, we got to work on the two proposals that were selected, OUR GREAT LEADER WILL NUKE YOU and UNTILL. Come back tomorrow for more information on each of our rooms and to find out more about the artists that will be featured this year!

Bau Haus Semi-Annual VI: Hello, World!

Bau Haus in collaboration with Codify Art is pleased to present Hello, World!, featuring work by Jarrett Key, Jon Key, Sharina Gordon, Son Kit, and Wael Morcos. This exhibition will be on view for one night only during the opening reception: Saturday, November 11, 7–10PM.

Hello, World!

@Bau Haus, 516 Bainbridge St. #1L Brooklyn, NY

November 11, 2017

When learning a new programming language, tradition dictates that one begins by writing a “Hello, World!” program. It is a simple script, used to illustrate the basic syntax of the language, and the successful output of “Hello, World!” by the computer marks the first instance of communication between human and machine. 

For writers, artists, or anybody disposed to imagination, world-building contains a similar moment of first contact: one constructs an entrance into a visionary space, and the space offers itself up for introduction. Determining the rules of the world thereafter feels less like an exercise in creation and more an exploratory relationship, in which the roles of architect and adventurer are conflated or confused.

Does one create a world by imagining it? Or does the world precede the imagination, which only allows access to it? In either case, how does one measure agency? 

This question dogs the steps of speculative fiction, so often the venue for playing out scenarios we cannot will into our existence. Is it a concession, a capitulation, to have to escape elsewhere than one’s actual life, one’s physical life, the systems one is born into? Is it, instead, an act of power, where one manifests the world one sees for the rest us to reckon with?

Rather than offering direct answers, the work in Hello, World! is the promised introduction into worlds that engage the questions. In landscapes, soundscapes, artifacts, and ecosystems, Hello, World! examines the ways in which we interpret, navigate, exert control over or are destroyed by the lives we imagine for ourselves.

---

ABOUT BAU HAUS

BAU HAUS is a live/work project and process space located in Bed-Stuy. Alternately called a studio, an exhibition venue, halfway house, community lab, conceptual incubator, and a great party, Bau Haus is committed to works-in-progress and proofs of concept in the spirit of experimentation, self-exploration, and accessibility. The Bau Haus Semi-Annual Show happens twice a year and features work that has never been shown anywhere else; it is less a culmination of the artists’ work thus far and more an invitation into dialogue regarding works to come. Bau Haus is inhabited and run by Jarrett Key and Son Kit.

The “Bau” in “Bau Haus” is a derivative of “boo” and akin to “darling,” not to be confused with the German school, “Bauhaus.”

THRESHELD: final days!

THRESHELD is up for only two more weekends at Underdonk! We at Codify Art were so pleased to be able to curate this group show of wonderful Q/T/W/OC artists. The response thus far has been amazing—whether to the meditative calm of Janaye Brown's video Bather, After Dinner, or the cheeky sensation of the foot massagers in Orlando Estrada's Varied Pleasures, or the surprising greeting of Inhye Lee's motion-sensitive Smile Trio: Who thought of this little song, to name a few. Come by to see the work Sat/Sun until September 10 from 1–6PM, or catch us at our closing event, Friday, September 8, from 7–9PM!

Janaye Brown, Bather, After Dinner, 2016

Orlando Estrada, Varied Pleasures, 2014

Inhye Lee, Smile Trio: Who thought of this little song, 2014

THRESHELD at Underdonk

Codify Art in collaboration with Underdonk is thrilled to present THRESHELD, a group exhibition of works by Janaye Brown, Orlando Estrada, Jes Fan, Ilana Harris-Babou, Inhye Lee, Pastiche Lumumba, and Adrienne Elise Tarver. THRESHELD explores the intimacy of routine, home as a constructed space, and ritual as a sanctified mundane. Please join us for an opening reception Friday, August 11, from 7–9PM. The exhibition will continue through September 10, 2017.     

The Morning Routine is a standard opener across modern storytelling mediums because of its effectiveness as an introductory moment; its universality acts as a bridge between character and audience while simultaneously establishing individuality through the specificity of its components. 

By contrast, the minutiae of the average person’s routines are rarely offered up for scrutiny, conducted as they are inside personal spaces and known only to the most intimate circles. It is a safe assumption—but an assumption nonetheless—that what is quotidian to the individual would be quotidian to the rest. What happens when one finds that their own routine can only be extrapolated so far?

From within the field of ritual studies, Evangelos Kyriakidis offers a definition of ritual as an outsider’s—or “etic”—identification for a set of actions that, to the outsider, seem illogical. An insider (“emic”) can also use the term to acknowledge that an activity may appear nonsensical to an uninitiated viewer. To return to the question then, does a uniquely personal routine cross that ambiguous line into ritual? 

THRESHELD employs the vocabulary of home goods and small moments to map the shifting delineation of our circles and our thresholds, how objects are imbued with significance by the body, and the privileging of private actions as they pass into the public eye.

---

Janaye Brown's video work explores perception of time and fragmented narratives. Brown has exhibited at venues and film festivals including New York City’s Studio Museum Harlem, the Dallas Video Fest and The Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. She has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Bruce High Quality Foundation University. Brown received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin in 2013 and her BA in Cinematic Arts and Technology from California State University Monterey Bay in 2010. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Orlando Estrada is an artist based in New York City.  He holds an MFA from the University of Florida and a BFA from Florida International University. He comes from a family tradition of spiritual mediumship and is fascinated by humans, their bodies and the subtle energies they emit. Being a very friendly person, he enjoys developing deep emotional connections and falling in love

Jes Fan is from Canada/ Hong Kong, China. They hold a BFA in Glass from Rhode Island School of Design. They are the recipient of various awards, such as the Pioneer Works Residency, Edward and Sally Van Lier Fellowship at Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), CCGA Fellowship at Wheaton Arts, and John A. Chironna Memorial Award at RISD. Recent solo shows include "No Clearance in Niche" at MAD Museum, NY; "Disposed to Add", at Vox Populi Gallery, PA; "Ot(her)" Brown University, RI. They have had group shows at Queens Museum, NY; Para Site, Hong Kong; Fisher Parrish Gallery; NY, Outpost Artist Resource, NY. Fan is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. 

Ilana Harris-Babou uses music videos, cooking shows, and home improvement television as material in an abject exploration of the American Dream. She works primarily in ceramic sculpture and video installation. She received an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University in 2016, and a BA in Art from Yale University in 2013. She has shown her work throughout the US & Europe. Her solo-exhibition One Bad Recipe will open this fall at the Museum of Arts & Design in New York City.

Inhye Lee has a mixed background in anthropology (BA, Seoul National University) and interactive arts (MPS, ITP New York University).  Her work has been exhibited at World Maker Faire, Korean Cultural Service NY, Soho20 Gallery, Dumbo Arts Festival, Currents New Media Festival, SpaceWomb, 3rd Ward, Art Gate Gallery, Museum of Television & Radio, Chelsea Art Museum, Mattel HQ (USA), Shin Museum, Sang Sang Madang (Korea), Spazio Contemporanea, Telecom Italia Future Center (Italy), Art Paris, Galerie Charlot (France) and Scope Basel (Switzerland).  She also has participated in Steampunk Festival, Hoosac River Lights (USA) and Media Lab Prado’s workshop (Spain, as a collaborator), working with other artists. She received residencies from the Signal Culture, the Staten Island MakerSpace (2015), and the Institute for Electronic Arts/Alfred University (2013). She is a recipient of Artist in Gallery Prize (Galerie Charlot) at the 8th Arte Laguna Prize in Venice, Italy (2014).  She and her scientist collaborator are invited as artist in residence at the School of Visual Arts’ Visible Futures Lab next spring.

Pastiche Lumumba is an artist, curator, and DJ living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His multidisciplinary work examines the element of context and its effect on subjective experience. In 2013, Pastiche founded The LOW Museum and served as executive director for three years. He is currently a resident at the Bruce High Quality Foundation University’s year long MFU Studio+Teach residency where his primary focus is Memes.

Adrienne Elise Tarver is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn recently selected by ArtNet as one of “14 Emerging Female Artists to watch in 2017.” She has had solo exhibitions at Victori+Mo and BRIC Project Room in Brooklyn, New York, A-M Gallery in Sydney, Australia, and Art Matrix Gallery in Chicago, Illinois. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and BFA from Boston University.

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART study sessions

On Friday, June 9, 7:30–9PM, Codify Art will be hosting a Study Session at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

So what is a Study Session? From the Whitney's Public Programs:

Study Sessions is a new, ongoing event series inspired by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s notion of study as “what you do with other people.” For each Study Session, an artist, writer, or cultural worker selects an artwork on view in the Whitney’s galleries as a departure point for thinking through an urgent question in our contemporary political landscape. Participants are invited to join in open-ended discussions and engage with creative practice. Study Sessions may take the form of workshops, listening parties, performances, readings, or film screenings.

For our Study Session, we will be responding to the Whitney’s newest exhibition, WHERE WE ARE: SELECTIONS FROM THE WHITNEY’S COLLECTION, 1900–1960. 

Where We Are "traces how artists have approached the relationships, institutions, and activities that shape our lives. Drawn entirely from the Whitney’s holdings, the exhibition is organized around five themes: family and community, work, home, the spiritual, and the nation." 

War Series: Shipping Out by Jacob Lawrence

Codify Art will facilitate a conversation around the themes of Nation and Work with Jacob Lawrence's War Series (1947) and Elizabeth Catlett's I am the Negro woman linocuts as our departure points. Framed as a writing and zine-making workshop, our Study Session examines the work as each artists' effort "to create her or his own vision of American life" and invites you to share your own contemporary reimagining. Bring a pen or pencil!

THE SURVIVAL LIBRARY at The Whitney Study Sessions

ICYMI, Codify Art is working with Pioneer Works' School of the Apocalypse to bring you The Survival Library, a project that:

...aims to consolidate and contribute to an ongoing collection of publications and media works centered around the personal narratives of W/Q/T/POC. We respond to the hostility of American society by amassing the knowledge gained in the course of our individual navigations into a shared archive. The Survival Library does not seek to replicate pre-existing nexuses developed for concrete resistance actions, which are invaluable and already available. Instead, it seeks to create an analogous resource for emotional responses: a confirmation that You Are Not Alone in your experiences, a torch warded against this gaslighting world of “alternative facts.” The [works are] available online and/or in-person—depending on optimal channels of dissemination—as a guerrilla hub of valid, examined feelings.

searching for a home that holds all of me (2017) Sharina Gordon

Trans (2017) Jarrett Key

Physical works from this archive will be on view at our workshop! Be inspired, feel seen, and connect with folks from your community. Our goal for the Study Session is that you leave with the beginnings of a zine that tells your story. We hope that you'll contribute to this ever-growing collection of QTPOC voices and works. See you soon.