As an artist, I started as a photographer and subsequently pivoted to social practice art, in which the artist creates with a community as opposed to for an audience.
Instead of using paint and canvas or a chisel and stone, social practice artists use social systems, situations and public space as their materials. Some of my favorite projects: A slumber party for artists at the Queens Museum of Art. A publication, resembling a supermarket circular and distributed by small businesses, that consisted of recipes and stories about food contributed by new immigrants. Dancing, for six hours, throughout the Sol LeWitt murals at MASS MoCA, shifting the experience of visitors (even those who didn’t join in the dance).
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Growing up in New York City, I was the kid who always had marker on her hands and, later, the teenager who never left the apartment without her camera. I took pictures of absolutely everything and everyone in my orbit, and I always printed out copies for my subjects. For me, photography — and art, more broadly — has always been about sharing, connecting and community-building.
As a professional artist, I started as a photographer and subsequently pivoted to social practice art, in which the artist creates with a community as opposed to for an audience. Instead of using paint and canvas or a chisel and stone, social practice artists use social systems, situations and public space as their materials.
Some of my favorite projects: A slumber party for artists at the Queens Museum of Art. A publication, resembling a supermarket circular and distributed by small businesses, that consisted of recipes and stories about food contributed by new immigrants. Dancing, for six hours, throughout the Sol LeWitt murals at MASS MoCA, shifting the experience of visitors (even those who didn’t join in the dance). My earliest social practice projects drew on my massive archive of photographs, which memorialize quiet moments within hectic New York City life that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. One of those projects, in which I pasted life-size photos I’d taken of subway riders on top of advertisements in subway stations, led to my first coverage in The New York Times!
My work has been exhibited at MoMA, MASS MoCA, MoMA/P.S. 1, Studio Museum in Harlem, Queens Museum of Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Project Row Houses, Philadelphia Mural Arts, SculptureCenter and the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius, Lithuania. I have been an artist in residence at MoMA/P.S. 1, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Art Omi and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and am frequently called upon to present on my work at museums (Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA), universities (Columbia University, Parsons School of Design, Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design) and conferences (Arts in Education International Convening at Harvard University, Inbox Awesome in New York City).
COMMUNITY of COMMUNITY
Community of Community is a series of ongoing retreats where social practice artists gather around a theme, skill-share, support each other and ourselves, and explore the lineage of the field while living cooperatively together.
TIME CAPSULES FOR OUR GRANDCHILDREN
Commissioned through the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, Time Capsules for our Grandchildren, was created with the Southwark Middle School students who made individual time capsules for their future grandchildren.
THIS IS WHAT I EAT
This Is What I Eat is a single edition newspaper/cookbook created with residents living near and around Corona Plaza, Queens. Designed to look like a supermarket circular, This Is What I Eat was displayed and distributed for free in and around Corona Plaza and the Queens Museum.
DANCING WITH SOL LEWITT
Inside the Sol LeWitt retrospective at MASS MoCA from opening to closing hours, Stephanie Diamond danced without music and artist Adia Millett sat in silent mediation while Staff and visitors were invited to join them for all or some of the day.
MY PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE
On going since 1997, this is a personalized system to catalogue, archive, and store over 200,000 of my personal photographs. This was once a private system to store and organize my work, became the focus and starting-off point for many projects, and has become an art piece within itself.
