Homeroom Ongoing Presentation First Floor, MoMA PS1 Established in October 2020, Homeroom is a new program space that embodies MoMA PS1’s commitment to community-centered practices with artists at the core. ​​Located on the Museum’s first floor, the space is a platform for activations by partners and collaborators, who author each rotating presentation to amplify and celebrate the work of artists affiliated with their respective organizations. Through these distinct presentations, Homeroom activations tell a larger narrative of community building and intersectionality, with collaborators returning through various threads of PS1’s program, often in conversation with one another. Recalling the histories of the building as the first school in Long Island City and then a site for creative experimentation since PS1’s founding in 1976, Homeroom offers opportunities to connect with others, to learn and unlearn, and to imagine generative ways of being that prioritize care and reciprocity. “At PS1 we understand community is not a monolith, but an ever-evolving constellation of artists, collectives, organizations, and neighbors gathering to address, problematize, and envision creative solutions to pressing issues of our time. With new initiatives like Homeroom, we are building on the decades of artist-driven programs that are the DNA of PS1” said Kate Fowle, Director. Current Activations Freedom to Grow: The Lower Eastside Girls Club & jackie sumell Through April 2023 Freedom to Grow: The Lower Eastside Girls Club & jackie sumell is the culmination of over two years of collaboration between jackie sumell, the Lower Eastside Girls Club (LESGC), and MoMA PS1, and an extension of Growing Abolition , a multipart project investigating connections between ecology and prison abolition. Featuring a mural, photos, drawings, plant pressings and medicine, audio interviews, and more, the installation presents the results of sustained conversation and co-creation between sumell and interns from LESGC. Since the summer of 2021, sumell and a group of interns from the LESGC have participated in a series of workshops and conversations exploring several guiding questions: What can plants teach us about abolition, healing, and expanding our horizons of possibility? What would a world look like in which we all have what we need, with networks of safety and support created by and for our communities? How can we put abolition into daily practice, as a process of creating and nurturing alternatives to the structures that harm us? Designed with the LESGC interns, Freedom to Grow traces the creative journey spurred by these questions. Over the course of their internship at PS1, the LESGC interns engaged in podcast recordings, poetry writing, plantings, trips to local community gardens, tea tastings, and artmaking, all of which find expression in the installation. The space also features a zine for visitors to take home, an invitation to continue exploring questions around abolition on their own The Lower Eastside Girls Club (LESGC) supports young women and gender-expansive youth of color throughout New York City in leveraging their inner power to shape a better future for themselves, their community, and the world. Through free, year-round, innovative programming, they connect young people with their passions, celebrate their curiosity, and channel their creative energy. Together, they are building a just and equitable future filled with “Joy. Power. Possibility.” Upcoming Activations Malikah May 5 – October 9, 2023 MoMA PS1 presents an intergenerational storytelling project with Malikah, a global grassroots collective of women committed to building safety and power through healing justice, self-defense, and financial literacy. Imagined specifically for the Homeroom space, this installation brings together ten women from Little Egypt and the North African community in Astoria, Queens, to weave together stories of migration and belonging, as told through personal narratives, archives, objects, and photographs. Facilitated in collaboration with local community leader and founder of Malikah, Rana Abdelhamid, the installation will offer a lens into this thriving Queens community in this moment of rapid gentrification and change. Malikah is a global collective of women committed to building safety and power for themselves and their communities. Over the past ten years, they have created healing spaces and trained over 20,000 women in 20 cities across the globe in self-defense, economic empowerment, and organizing. Together, they are building a global grassroots movement to amplify every woman’s power. Past Activations Courtyard Coalition April 14–November 14, 2022 The Courtyard Coalition is an interdisciplinary, process-focused program that highlights PS1’s Courtyard as a cultural and spatial asset for critical questions at the intersection of cultural institutions, civic space, and urban life. Over the last two years, PS1 worked with urban strategist Becca Goldstein and architect Dominc Leong to gather thought leaders and experts both from the local community and a larger network—including artists, curators, community organizers, technologists, and designers—to gather diversified perspectives on building new frameworks for the use of the Courtyard. Six cohorts: local community, cultural institutions, social justice, technology, art, and space (architecture and design), each with four to six participants, responded to prompts, brought their own inquiries, and challenged the institution to interrogate its allocation of resources and space. Each cohort conversation yielded many ideas for equitable and sustainable approaches to the future of the Courtyard, as well as further questions to explore. Presented in a dedicated space in Homeroom, the Courtyard Coalition included a report of these findings as well as a participatory mapping project led by urban planner Cara Michell. This ran parallel to the Queensbridge Photo Collective’s history of the neighborhood, centering personal histories of Long Island city in an effort to better understand and preserve forgotten or erased perspectives of this rapidly changing community. Queensbridge Photo Collective: Still Like Air I'll Rise June 2–September, 2022 Using photography, archival research, memorabilia, and oral histories, the Queensbridge Photo Collective will create a multidisciplinary activation of Homeroom that reflects upon the lives of their members, who grew up in the neighborhoods around PS1. Founded in 2019, the Queensbridge Photo Collective is a group of accomplished women photographers, formed with support from 5 Corners Collective, Inc., a non-profit that works with community groups to teach and exhibit photography. All members are over the age of 65, residents of the Queensbridge Houses, and some are PS1 elementary school alums. The installation will trace the history of 20th-century Long Island City and PS1’s role in that history—as a public school, an art institution, and a symbol of neighborhood change and transition. Queensbridge Photo Collective will also be in residence at PS1 for the duration of the activation, and will host collaborative public programs with neighboring organizations and community members. Slow Factory: The Revolution Is a School January 28–April 23, 2022 Slow Factory transformed Homeroom into a site of collective learning and co-creation at the intersection of climate justice, social equity, and regenerative design. The presentation featured video, printed ephemera, installation, and a workshop series, all of which invited interaction and collaboration from visitors. The Revolution Is a School featured Slow Factory’s participatory digital project, I Really Love This Song, which brought together videos from over 20 artists along with submissions from the public, each responding to prompts about identity, embodiment, social action, and artistry. Slow Factory’s commitment to the classroom as a revolutionary space took form in a series of workshops and conversations hosted by artists and leaders in the fashion, food, and culture fields. Free and open to the public, the workshops imagined new pathways into climate and social justice inviting back past Homeroom collaborators, such as Nuevayorkinos’ Djali Brown- Cepeda, along with new participants, including sidewalk seamstress Makayla Wray, embroiderer and researcher Mava, and landscape architect turned plant designer Olivia Rose. Nuevayorkinos: Essential and Excluded October 22, 2021–January 20, 2022 Nuevayorkinos is a digital project by filmmaker and archivist Djali Brown-Cepeda dedicated to documenting and preserving New York City’s Latinx culture and history through family photographs and stories. This counter-archive empowers participants to tell their own stories as a radical act of self-determination and liberation. In fall 2021, Nuevayorkinos partnered with key leaders of the Fund Excluded Workers Coalition, Make the Road, New York Communities for Change, and the Street Vendor Project to activate Homeroom as a site of celebration of immigrant culture and labor in Queens and New York. The presentation amplified hunger strikers, organizers, and decision-makers who secured the historic Excluded Workers Fund in 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At $2.1 Billion, this fund represents the largest economic assistance program for essential immigrant workers excluded from state unemployment or pandemic relief. Featuring photography, film, installation, and testimony created in collaboration with Make the Road, Nuevayorkinos, and PS1, this activation highlighted the collective labor and triumphs of excluded worker organizing, while honoring their migration stories and drawing upon diasporic visual cultures. A central part of this collaboration was the large-scale event Nuevayorkinos: A Celebration of Life and Labor in the newly inaugurated public plaza outside PS1’s front entrance as well as in the Courtyard, with participants from The Street Vendor Project and Make the Road providing food, music, and art-making for all ages. In January the activation concluded with the premiere of Veinte[y]tres, a short film by Djali Brown-Cepeda commissioned by PS1, which documents the twenty-three day hunger strike held by excluded workers across New York City in spring 2021. The Fortune Society September 9–October 11, 2021 The Fortune Society—a 54-year-old nonprofit based in Long Island City—activated Homeroom with art, poetry, and resources created by artists and mentors in their Creative Arts program. Located within walking distance of PS1, The Fortune Society’s overarching mission is to support successful reentry from—and promote alternatives to—incarceration, thus strengthening the fabric of our communities. The family at The Fortune Society aligns itself with radical hope, and believes in the healing and transformative powers of imagination and creativity. Their presentation included texts and artworks from the latest edition of their Voices of Fortune publication, with illustrations by Guy Woodard, photography and self-portraits by community members, and a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising. Visitors also viewed We Choose to Bloom—a film produced over a year-long collaboration between Fortune Society artists and PS1 set on Rashid Johnson’s Stage in the PS1 Courtyard—and participated in a postcard initiative to connect with people who are currently detained on Rikers Island. The activation also included the debut of We Are More Than a Label, a “language matters” zine created by Fortune Society community members, which is an appeal to learn more about the use of humanizing, person-first language, and offers word choices that can be used when communicating about people affected by the (in)justice system. Fortune Society also activated PS1’s public plaza in an event titled Pennants & Poets, an installation and spoken word event created by artist Jenny Polak in collaboration with writers from The Fortune Society and Hour Children Working Women. The event featured 50 flying pennant flags printed with poems and messages from people who have been directly impacted by incarceration. Black Trans Liberation: Memoriam and Deliverance June 12–August 16, 2021 Black Trans Liberation aims to end homelessness within the trans population by providing access and resources that empower and celebrate the transgender, non-conforming community. They are committed to dismantling the current 35-year life expectancy of Black trans people and abolishing systemic oppression. PS1 collaborated with Black Trans Liberation and founder Qween Jean to transform Homeroom into a sacred space of affirmations and offerings centering Black, trans, two-spirit, and gender non-conforming people. The space was intended for those who identify as trans to hold sanctuary, and to remember and honor loved ones. For those who identify as allies, this space encouraged visitors to learn about, protect, and celebrate Black trans legacies and lives. In conjunction with the activation, Rashid Johnson’s Stage was activated with song, dance, and protest by The Stonewall Protests, a grassroots collective that met throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to educate, participate in healing rituals, release pain and foster joy within the movement for abolition and liberation. Visual AIDS / What Would an HIV Doula Do? May 12–May 31, 2021 Running concurrently with the exhibitions Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life and Gregg Bordowitz: I Wanna Be Well, PS1 collaborated with Visual AIDS and What Would an HIV Doula Do? to present a new print and digital zine called "Harm Reduction is Not a Metaphor: Living in the 21st Century with Drugs, Intimacy, and Activism." The zine highlights conversations on 21st century harm reduction practices by and for communities impacted by unjust healthcare systems, punitive drug laws, and other forms of oppression. Since the Homeroom activation, Visual AIDS has held workshops at PS1 with their Women’s Empowerment Art Therapy Group. On February 5 and 6, 2022, Visual AIDS installed their LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN project on the second floor, featuring hundreds of heartfelt valentine cards on handmade paper created by an intersecting group of artists and HIV positive women made in collaboration with Dieu Donné, Fire Island Artist Residency, Positive Women’s Network, and the Well Project.