DISCLAIMER

BUSHWICK OPEN STUDIOS @ SILENT BARN:

“Silent Barn is a collectively directed art space in Brooklyn, New York. Functioning round-the-clock as a center of multidisciplinary experimentation, Silent Barn is a place to produce, present, and interact with art of all forms.

In addition to hosting public performances and events, Silent Barn is home to a complex of studio and living spaces which serve as an experimental sandbox and public platform for a variety of individual artistic, cultural, and entrepreneurial projects. Residents live and work amid artistic activity as caretakers of Silent Barn, extending a feeling of welcome to audiences and artists.” ~Excerpt from Silent Barn’s Mission Statement

Participating independent art studios, galleries, and projects: (see http://silentbarn.org/stewdios/working for more details) Aftermath Editions http://www.aftermatheditions.com/ “Screenprinting & Textiles Studio & Artist Collective” Martha Ursula Moszczynski http://martymarthamartin.tumblr.com/ “Muraling, site-specific installation and sculpture” Sean Benjamin https://www.instagram.com/_liker_s_/ “Video and performance artist” Disclaimer Gallery http://disclaimergallery.tumblr.com/ “Curation collective dedicated to sustaining a gallery run by and for marginalized groups. We value representation, accessibility, and fighting dominant power structures” Casa Experimental http://casaexperimental.tumblr.com/ “Gallery & bilingual art school for Bushwick youth exploring experimental modes of artistic thought” Mellow Pages www.mellowpageslibrary.com “Library and reading room” Detective Squad https://www.facebook.com/d4squad/ “A space to build, play with and buy experimental electronics. shop/gallery/venue and lil’ DIY hack lab”

bel—air http://www.bel-air.org/ “Community radio station”

Educated Little Monsters https://www.facebook.com/ELMYOUTHGROUP/ “Black and brown youth movement bringing you the truth through all forms of art from dance, music & theater & Social Justice”

Gravesend Recordings http://gravesendrecordings.com/ “Recordings of performances. Capturing moments of sounds and noises before they escape through the ceiling. In the hopes of preserving something”

Better https://better.space/ “Creating AI to automate and facilitate the work of community organizers”

Silent Barn is also home to many murals and semi-permanent art pieces. Including two new murals by Arielle Avenia and Anna Rindos. (see https://www.facebook.com/silentbarnart/ for more)

We have a Double Opening on the 9th!!

Everyday Things Exhibition by Megan Tatem in Disclaimer

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Beyond Bricks and Mortar: Stories of Community and Resilience in Casa Experimental

“Everyday Things” is a tongue in cheek solo exhibition by intermedia artist Megan Tatem. Featuring a series of culturally suggestive photographs, “Everyday Things” provides social commentary on the hidden politics of racial stereotypes while also concealing its own agenda in a clever cocoon of relevant rhetoric and latent sarcasm. “Everyday Things” toys with the concept of cultural association and how we apply them during our everyday lives. In regards to most ethnicities, there are general assumptions that are made in regards to their proclivities and their customs. African Americans like chicken, white people can’t dance, most Asians are supposedly good at math, Hispanics have “fiery” tempers⏤all familiar folklore; but the stereotypes that are bestowed upon certain ethnicities are not always lighthearted and at times can have dire consequence. The assumption that a majority of the color community are criminal minded ex-convicts who are armed and dangerous and should be shot on sight has manifested in the continuous stream of fatal incidents that has resulted in a thread of blood soaked headlines that features unarmed citizens wrongfully murdered by overzealous law enforcement. This exhibition is about the art of perception, the art of analysis. “Everyday Things” allows the audience to come to their own conclusions while also making them aware of the nature of those very conclusions. — Words by Akeem Duncan

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Join us for the opening of a collaborative project featuring stories of community and resilience from public housing residents organized by More Art, Cynthia Tobar, & Aldo Soligno. Featuring RBSCC and their Hope Gardens Senior Center. “This collaborative project between public housing residents and community organizations/volunteers seeks to highlight the on the lives and experiences of residents in public housing residents as they face the changes in their communities as a result of diminishing affordable housing stock and gentrification. This multi-media exhibit aims to bring longevity to public awareness around the issues that residents have had to contend with for decades. Through this project, we hope to inspire forceful action against the human rights violations inflicted on our forgotten neighbors in public housing. Utilizing various media platforms such as video and photography; “It’s Our Community” will foster intergenerational partnerships with young people, adults and seniors to collect and convey the stories of their lived experiences.”

HEY YALL! I been kinda quiet on here recently cause I’ve been hella busy working on this super duper compilation #POWERVHS made up of dope women n femme video artists.

It will be premiering at its installation this FRIDAY July 8th at Disclaimer Gallery in Silent Barn in Brooklyn, NY!!

Hope to see y’all there!!!

RAFiA SANTANA is a Brooklyn-born-and-raised artist and self proclaimed media maniac. As a child born to a family of Black artists she was given the freedom and privilege to develop her talent for communicating through craft. However, growing up small, female, and Black she found that she was frequently and persistently misunderstood. As an act of perseverance and self preservation she used several different mediums to express herself when one wasn’t enough.

#POWERVHS is a visual mixtape born out of a need to see black & brown women and femme artists as masters of their own image and overseers of their own practice in a hypermasculine white world that overvalues itself.

I gathered just a tiny fraction of dope artists I know (the majority of which are black or brown) and sent them the title of the project and asked them to submit whatever they had that fit their interpretation of POWER. I had been approached by a local analog video artist white dude to release the project through his VHS studio only for him to pull on our deal, after I curated and edited the work, because of my “attitude.” Pissed off, and never one to leave a job undone, I turned to my friends on the internet to donate to POWER to cover the $$$ I dropped to buy all the supplies I needed to make this tape a physical reality and I carried the weight that a white man believed to be too heavy.

To make the object more accessible I made it a DVD but, since this format will soon be just as obsolete as VHS, the name stays.

Artist info under the jump