What are the opening hours?

Monday 11am - 6pm Tuesday 11am - 6pm Wednesday 11am - 6pm Thursday 11am - 6pm Friday 11am - 6pm Saturday 11am - 6pm

http://www.fordfoundation.org/gallery

Ford Foundation Gallery, 320 East 43rd Street, New York, NY (2026)

12/09/2024

As ‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus’ comes to a close, we arrive at the conclusion of a truly remarkable arc of exhibitions over the last year. ‘Cantando Bajito’ has always been rooted in joy, hope, and solidarity, even as the shows have grappled with rising and insidious forms of gender-based violence in our contemporary world. ‘Chorus,’ the last movement of the series, has helped us conclude on that note of hopeful resistance, our voices rising up together.

We want to celebrate and express our deepest gratitude for the many people and groups who have contributed to this incredible show. Curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes, the exhibition brought together transnational artists and collectives whose work embodies the strength arising from collective care in shared struggles. The spirit of the show has been transcendent – attesting to art’s power to help weave solidarity and reveal the strength found in vulnerability.

Thanks to all who visited ‘Chorus.’ We’re so grateful as we reflect on the connections, conversations, and community the show has fostered.

With special thanks to members of the curatorial advisory group: Isis Awad, María Carri, Zasha Colah, Maria Catarina Duncan, Kobe Ko, and Marie Hélène Pereira.

Photos: Jane Kratochvil

Image Descriptions/Alt Text: Image 1: A group of people stand talking and looking at elements in a desk installation in a partially enclosed space in the gallery with white walls and a brown collaged kimono hanging on the wall in the background. Image 2: A group of five people stand on either side of a mannequin displaying an artwork in the form of a black robe with feather-like strands falling from it. Image 3: A group of people stand in the white-walled gallery, with four photographs in the background of dark-clad women with their dark hair in long braids. Image 4: ‘Chorus’ curators Mindy Seu, Beya Othmani, Roxana Fabius, and Susana Vargas Cervantes stand behind a piano with framed photos standing on it. Image 5: Two people stand in a space enclosed by a pink curtain with a white leafy pattern looking at two video monitors. A small, low pink table sits between two cushions on the floor in front of the video monitors. Image 6: A group of people stand looking at an installation of colorful woven textiles displayed on an iron structure. The weavings’ varied patterns, colors, shapes, and sizes reflect the work of a collective of disparate but united weavers. Image 7: A crowd of people stand in the gallery with several artworks on display in the background, including a pink curtained space and a painted fiery braid looping across a back wall.

12/06/2024

We were thrilled that artists’ collective Mai Ling helped usher us into the radical and immersive spirit of ‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus’ at our opening convening event, with their collaborative construction of an edible forest. Mai Ling is an anonymous collective dedicated to facilitating dialogue on racism, sexism, homophobia, and prejudgment, particularly against FLINT* (women, le***an, intersex, nonbinary, and trans people) of Asian descent. As members of the collective moved around the table, their faces concealed with leafy garlands, they showed the spellbound audience the sticky substance ‘kudzu’ that serves as muse and metaphor for coming together in their work. One by one, they invited audience members to add edible elements to a table, and finally everyone sampled the forest together.

As ‘Chorus’ nears its closing, we are equally thrilled that Mai Ling’s installation ‘Becoming Stickiness’ (2023/204) has been featured in the exhibition. The installation centers on their haunting and moving video work ‘Becoming Stickiness,’ where choreography sees bodies merge and ‘stick together’ like the plant kudzu, melting away imposed hierarchies and dichotomies. Mai Ling sheds light on art’s power to address and counter prejudice, as well as opening up what other more collective futures could look like.

‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus’ was curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes.

Photo credit: Jane Kratochvil and Sebastian Bach

Image Descriptions/Alt Text:
Image 1. Three people with garlands of green foliage over their faces, wearing dark colored shirts and pink gloves hold and stretch a white sticky substance. Image 2. A group of people stand around a long table with a forest created from food spread out on it, people in dark shirts with foliage over their faces adding elements to the table. Image 3. Three people with green foliage over their faces, wearing dark colored shirts standing behind a table with a forest created from food spread out on it. Image 4. A pink curtain with a white leafy pattern envelops a space in the gallery within which can be seen video monitors, cushions on the floor for sitting, and a low table with a pot on it. Image 5. Three people with dark hair wearing from left to right a black dress and scarf, a blue shirt and silver pants, and a black dress stand in a space enveloped by a pink curtain with white details, video monitors behind them and a pink table beside them with a pot on it.

12/05/2024

‘Exchange Journal’ (2024), a work by Tokyo-based q***r feminist artists’ platform FAQ?, takes inspiration from the ‘exchange diary’ used by Japanese children to share personal news and stories with their close community. The platform highlights the idea of the personal as political, and creates space for open exploration and exchange. Their work invites reflection on the radical power of zines and artmaking as a collective form, and how the ‘exchange journal’ in particular can be considered a kind of personally and politically significant zine.

The questions the platform frames evoke the fluid exploration they support:

F...figure, feminism, feeling…?

A...art, alternative, affordance…?

Q...q***r, questioning, qualia…?*

‘Exchange Journal’ by FAQ? Is on view as a part of the collective desk installation in ‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus.’ Don’t miss your chance to see this work and other collective projects before the show closes on December 7.

*Text is from FAQ?’s Instagram account.

Photo credit: Sebastian Bach

Image Descriptions/Alt Text: Bound pamphlet, loose leaf journal pages, and a miniature hole punch on a white desk.

12/05/2024

We are delighted to share a spotlight feature on curator María Carri, who has brought her rich insights to ‘Cantando Bajito’ as a curatorial advisor. A political scientist, educator, and curator from Buenos Aires, María’s interdisciplinary practice focuses on processes and explores new ways to promote critical thinking and collaborative work. Her deeply nuanced conceptualization of curation as a form of critical listening, informed by her experiences working with women weavers from the Wichí community, brings a vital perspective on contemporary conversations about art and museum practices. The exhibition’s development has benefited immensely from her insights.

María Carri holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from Bard College, a BA in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires, and completed postgraduate studies in Latin American Art History and Anthropology. María has participated in popular education projects and worked at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. She also held positions at Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam and Bard College in Berlin. She has received grants from Argentina's National Ministry of Culture and academic scholarships in the U.S. and Argentina.

Her recent curatorial projects include co-curating ‘Ñande Róga’ on Feliciano’s Centurión Archive at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) in New York City and curating ‘Silät,’ featuring textiles by Indigenous Wichí women weavers from the organization Thañí. María also edited a trilingual publication accompanying the exhibition. In 2024, she was a resident at Pivô Pesquisa in São Paulo.
‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus,’ curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes, will be on view through December 7. ‘Cantando Bajito’ is developed by curators Isis Awad, Roxana Fabius, Kobe Ko, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, Susana Vargas Cervantes, María Carri, Zasha Colah, Catarina Duncan, and Marie Hélène Pereira.

Image Descriptions/Alt Text: A woman with brown hair and glasses sits in a leather chair speaking, looking forward, addressing an audience (not pictured), one hand slightly raised and the other holding a microphone.

12/03/2024

Mexico City-based interdisciplinary artist Tania Candiani brings a deep interest in an expanded concept of translation to her work. Seeing her paintings from the series ‘Manifestantes’ (‘Protesters’) (2022-2024) in person on view in ‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus’ brings her experiments with translating through visual, sonic, textual, and symbolic languages to life with striking immediacy. Images of protesters from photographs taken at women’s marches in different global locations appear enlarged on her red cotton canvases, their outlines embroidered. Magic happens in the interplay between their bodies – their arms lifted in gestures of shouting – among each other and in relation to the viewer: their shouts become almost audible, the embroidered outlines like an echo. In the three paintings on view in ‘Chorus,’ women marching in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2021, in Mendoza, Argentina, in 2017, and in Mexico City, Mexico, in 2019, come together across time and space, their disparate voices joining in a collective call for an end to gender-based violence. Sound, visual form, and symbolic gesture merge into a kind of transcendent, transnational language, drawing the viewer into their chant and solidarity.

Candiani’s use of embroidery is another form of transformative translation; elements from ‘women’s work,’ craft, and the domestic sphere manifest as overtly political tools for resistance. This series began with the “Glitter Revolution” in Mexico, in which pink glitter was mobilized in public protests, transforming the seemingly decorative material into a highly visual and symbolic political statement. Here, the act of embroidery is revealed and celebrated as a powerful, expressive art form in its own right.

Tania Candiani’s international stature as an artist is attested to by her works currently exhibited at galleries around the world: this month alone she has work displayed in Mexico City, Abu Dhabi, and Albuquerque, as well as here in New York. We are thrilled to have these artworks on display as a part of ‘Chorus’ among pieces by other transnational artists.

‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus,’ curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes, is on view until December 7.

Photo credit: Jane Kratochvil and Sebastian Bach

Image Descriptions/Alt Text: Image 1: A woman smiling in front of three long red canvases. Image 2: Gallery interior with a white desk next to three red tapestries featuring silhouettes of women protesters.

12/02/2024

Don’t miss your last chance to see ‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus’, on view until Saturday, December 7. This uniquely collaborative show, the final movement of a three-part series on gender-based violence, features a curatorial collective desk, a special installation reflecting the curatorial ensemble’s collective approach.

‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus’ is a celebration of the power of coming together, and features collectives, archives, and artists whose work reflects vulnerability in shared struggle as a significant form of political power. The strength found in mutual care, making, and organizing in collective struggles can be felt as these artworks, including installations, paintings, collections, and more, mingle and rise together.

Conceived as a collective performance, the exhibition is based in collaboration at many layers, from the ensemble of curators to the collectives of artists, the artists reflecting collective political struggles, and finally the engagement of the public – the visitors who come in and become an important part of witnessing and participating in the spirit of the show. This collective quality highlights art’s unique power to connect people across contexts. Like the broader series, the show is rooted in shared joy, solidarity, support, and hope.

‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus’ is curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes. ‘Cantando Bajito’ is developed by curators Isis Awad, Roxana Fabius, Kobe Ko, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, Susana Vargas Cervantes, María Carri, Zasha Colah, Catarina Duncan, and Marie Hélène Pereira.

Photo: Sebastian Bach

A desk with two white chairs along two walls of a partially enclosed space in the white-walled gallery. A brown kimono collaged with photographs and multimedia is hung on the back wall over the desk, and a flower arrangement sits on the desk in the right corner. The desk has several documents and objects displayed on it, and along the other wall is a mounted clear rack holding books and other publications.

12/01/2024

We’re excited to turn to our next spotlight in our series on the curatorial team for ‘Cantando Bajito’ with a feature on curatorial advisor Zasha Colah. Zasha’s curatorial work considers a range of cultural practices that counter militarization and earthly extraction. She is particularly interested in the point at which these practices may cross over to become collective practices. Zasha’s deep interest in channels for collective resistance has brought a valuable perspective to the curatorial advisory group for ‘Cantando Bajito,’ a show grounded in consideration of collective and imaginative forms of struggle against gender-based violence.

Zasha Colah (Mumbai, India, 1982) is Curator of the 13th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. Her exhibitions explore artistic imagination, humor, and oral history, under conditions of sustained oppression. Colah is Artistic Director of Ar/Ge Kunst (with Francesca V***a, Bolzano, since 2023), lecturer in Curatorial Studies at Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (Milan, since 2018), as well as part of the editorial board of GeoArchivi (director: Marco Scotini/Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, published by Meltemi, Milan, since 2021). Colah was a member of Archive (Berlin/Dakar/Milan, 2020-23), a decentralized community of practice, and co-founded the Clark House Initiative (Mumbai, 2010-22), a collaborative of artists and curators concerned with ideas of freedom. Her doctorate addressed illegality and meta-exhibition practices in Indo-Myanmar since the 1980s (Sapienza—Università di Roma, 2020). She has been a research fellow at 221A (Vancouver, 2021-22) for a project segueing Indigenous geographies titled ‘The Scorched-Earthly.’ She co-curated the 3rd Pune Biennale with Luca Cerizza (2017), and was part of the curatorial team of the 2nd Yinchuan Biennale, led by Marco Scotini (2018). Zasha Colah lives in Turin and currently in Berlin to prepare the 13th Berlin Biennale.

‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus,’ curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes, will be on view through December 7.

The three-part series ‘Cantando Bajito’ is developed by curators Isis Awad, Roxana Fabius, Kobe Ko, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, Susana Vargas Cervantes, María Carri, Zasha Colah, Catarina Duncan, and Marie Hélène Pereira.

Image Descriptions/Alt Text: A woman with black hair stands behind a podium smiling.

11/26/2024

Approaching the entrance to ‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus,’ visitors are met in the corridor by a tableau radiant with warmth and community: a piano sits covered with lovingly framed photographs, and more vibrant and beautiful archival photos on the wall behind it complete the intimate space, with its profound affective blend of celebration, love, joy, grief, resistance, and power. This photo installation, ‘Constelaciones: Entre estrellas y cenizas’ (‘Constellations: Between stars and ashes’), (2024), evokes a deeply moving space for the memories of constellations of friends, both loved ones who have been lost and survivors who remember and honor them.
Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina, a collective that seeks to protect, build, and vindicate the history of the trans community in Argentina, has created an archive of more than 10 thousand pieces that span the 20th century through to the 1990s. Their installation in ‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus’ offers a deeply moving window into the power of their work.
Activists Claudia Pía Baudracco and María Belén Correa long dreamed of a space for collecting and sharing their memories. After Claudia Pía’s death in 2012, María Belén founded a virtual space from exile for sharing stories, photos, and documents. In 2014, with the help of the visual artist Cecilia Estalles, compilation and preservation work began to ensure the archive’s protection and development.
Archivo de la Memoria Trans Argentina’s installation and their broader work are a potent expression of the power of collecting as a political act and a form of essential protection in the face of violence and erasure toward marginalized communities. Their work is also a transcendent testimony to the power of love and solidarity and how they rise above all, like stars, holding people in the anchoring constellation of community and remembrance.

Photo credit: Jane Kratochvil

Image Descriptions/Alt Text: 4 people standing in an artwork installation with various framed archival photographs standing upright and on the wall behind them that reads “Cantando Bajito: Chorus”

11/25/2024

New York-based Dominican participatory artist and designer Lizania Cruz is interested in how migration, gender, race, and organizing affect ways of being and belonging. Through research, oral history, and audience engagement, she creates projects that expand and share pluralistic narratives. For the collaborative project ‘To Feel, To Resist, and To Flourish’ (2024), on view now as a part of the curatorial collective desk installation in ‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus,’ Lizania created a flower arrangement with four feminist organizers based on an interview with them about their experiences with community organizing.

This interview and the arrangement that grew out of it bring forward their experiences with community organizing and its many moments of joy, success, failure, rebirth, and resistance. The arrangement is accompanied by a zine that includes the interviews with the organizers: Ochy Curiel, a scholar and activist, Elena Lorac, an activist with Reconoci.do, Nana Gyamfi, Executive Director of Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), and Carol Giardina, co-founder of the National Women’s Liberation movement.

The flowers come together in a poignant and multifaceted affective expression of activism. The arrangement lives in the collective desk until it decays and is then replaced, reflecting the ongoing and living nature of the work of striving toward a world where all can flourish.

Cruz received the 2024 US Latinx Art Forum Fellowship and the 2023 New York City Artadia Award. In 2023 she was part of the Shed Open Call 2023. In 2021, Cruz was part of ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21 at el Museo del Barrio, their first national survey of Latinx artists. She was part of ‘52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone’ at the Aldrich Museum and has presented solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery, CUE Art Foundation, International Studio & Curatorial Program, ISCP, Alma Lewis, and Proxyco Gallery. Her work has been exhibited at Sharjah’s First Design Biennale, Untitled, Art Miami Beach, The Highline, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and more.

‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus,’ curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Miny Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes, is on view now until December 7.

Photo credit: and Sebastian Bach

Image Descriptions/Alt Text:
Image 1: A woman with curly hair in a sea green sweater smiles holding a red pamphlet in front of a floral arrangement on a white corner shelf. Image 2: Floral arrangement in a glass vase decorated with ribbons and a stack of red pamphlets.

11/24/2024

Textiles Semillas (Textiles as Seeds) is a union of weavers, artists, and activists from northern Argentina. The union is coordinated by Andrei Fernández (.f_d_z) and Alejandra Mizrahi () in partnership with ‘99 Questions,’ a program of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin that considers impacts of colonialism on art and museum practices. We are thrilled that the union’s installation of weavings, ‘El tejido mensaje-aliento-pensamiento-resistencia’ (‘The weaving message-breath-thought-resistance’) (2024) is on view in ‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus.’

The metaphor of seeds embedded in the name of Textillas Semillas speaks to the union’s work of carrying ancestral knowledge into the future. Weaving together stories and craft across time, just as seeds carry life forward, Textiles Semillas’ work is a form of remembrance and sustaining traditional Indigenous knowledge in the face of forces that threaten and invisibilize those sacred ways of knowing. Their installation of work by members of Indigenous communities in northern Argentina is a living entity, with each element a thread composing a larger, interlinked collection of stories, through the techniques and materials used: the artisanal dyes, the ancestral weaving and embroidery techniques, and the types of fibers, from sheep’s wool to fiber from chaguar, a plant traditionally harvested and developed into a fabric through painstaking and deeply skillful techniques by women from the Wichí community. Their practices carry traditions and stories from the territories and Peoples who nurture them.

The work of Textiles Semillas makes clear that their weaving is an important form of resistance that brings forward worldviews and knowledge with life-giving and unifying powers. Challenging colonial structures of thought and ways of conceiving of art and craft, the creations of the union center the sharing of knowledge across cultures, a way of being and artmaking that weaves past, present, and future into a pattern for a sustainable and connected world.

‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus’ is on view through December 7. ‘Chorus’ is curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Miny Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes.

Photo credit: Jane Kratochvil and Sebastian Bach

Image Descriptions/Alt Text: Image 1: Two women standing in front of an iron structure that holds various colorful and differently designed textiles. Image 2: Zigzag shaped metal frame holding irregularly sized textiles.

11/24/2024

We’re excited to turn to our next curatorial spotlight on Brazilian curator and cultural producer Catarina Duncan (), who has brought valuable insights on the power of collective creation and Latin American cultural practices to ‘Cantando Bajito’ as curatorial advisor. Catarina’s recent work has centered connections, conversations, and mutual support in women-run artistic collectives and land-rights movements in Latin America, illuminating the key role of art in contexts of social struggles. Her curatorial perspective brings forward hopeful visions for a more equitable world shaped by self-determined artistic voices and solidarities.
Catarina Duncan is curator at Solar dos Abacaxis in Rio de Janeiro. Graduated in History of Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London and postgraduate at the Centre of African Studies in the University of São Paulo. In 2021, she received a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Cisneros Institute and MoMa for the project ‘Territorial Re-Connections.’ She integrated curatorial teams for the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, ‘INCERTEZA VIVA’ (2016); the 36th Panorama of Brazilian art, ‘SERTÃO’ at MAM-SP (2019). She curated programs for the installation ‘Cura Bra Cura Té’ by Ernesto Neto at Pinacoteca (2019) and 'Plataforma Crítica Oficina Brennand' (2020). Represented the Latin American program 'Coincidência' of the Swiss Foundation Pro Helvetia (2017-2020). Developed artistic residencies at 'Arafura' in Mexico (2021), 'Pivô Pesquisa' in São Paulo (2021), 'Residents Art Dubai' (2019), 'Lastro Travessias Ocultas' in Bolivia (2016-2017) and 'Lastro Centro América' in Guatemala (2015-2016).

‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus,’ curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Miny Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes, will be on view through December 7.

‘Cantando Bajito’ is developed by curators Isis Awad, Roxana Fabius, Kobe Ko, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, Susana Vargas Cervantes, María Carri, Zasha Colah, Catarina Duncan, and Marie Hélène Pereira.

Image Descriptions/Alt Text: A woman with brown hair sits in a leather chair smiling to another person not pictured to the left, and has her hands crossed holding a microphone.

11/22/2024

In Hoda Afshar’s internationally celebrated photographic series ‘In Turn’ (2023), protest is reflected with poetic power to respond to violence with collective strength, hope, grief, and solidarity. Inspired by the women-led movement in Iran that began in 2022 in response to the death of Mahsa Jina Amini, who was arrested for not following Iran’s dress codes for women, the photographs of ‘In Turn’ show Iranian women who – like Afshar – are living in Australia engaged in symbolic visual protest in solidarity with their sisters in Iran. The title suggests both the turn of the hair in the braid, conjuring images of women publicly braiding each other’s hair that echo Kurdish female fighters who braided their hair before entering battle, and a social turn, a movement toward change and reclaimed power.

Afshar’s graceful visual metaphors convey the power that lies in coming together in mutual support, and how visual culture can help build these connections that transcend distances and borders. In one photograph, two women stand facing away from the camera, both clad in black, one in front of the other so that only one woman’s back is seen. Falling down the central woman’s back is her own braided hair, but also the braid of the woman in front of her who she holds. The curved lines of the two braids lie in parallel, interlinking the women, compounding their non-identifiability that protects them as they show care and resistance as one. In another photograph, a dove is released. The bird rising toward a sky that covers all humanity evokes the series’ spirit of transnational solidarity and hope that reaches beyond borders.

Photographs from Hoda Afshar’s internationally celebrated series ‘In Turn’ is on view now as a part of ‘Cantando Bajito: Chorus,’ curated by Roxana Fabius, Beya Othmani, Mindy Seu, and Susana Vargas Cervantes, through Dec. 7.

Photo credit: Sebastian Bach

Image Descriptions/Alt Text: Four images arranged horizontally featuring women in black with long braided hair.

Ford Foundation Gallery

12/09/2024

12/06/2024

12/05/2024

12/05/2024

12/03/2024

12/02/2024

12/01/2024

11/26/2024

11/25/2024

11/24/2024

11/24/2024

11/22/2024

Address

Opening Hours

Website

Alerts

Contact The Museum

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Monday	11am - 6pm
Tuesday	11am - 6pm
Wednesday	11am - 6pm
Thursday	11am - 6pm
Friday	11am - 6pm
Saturday	11am - 6pm