Like a Slow Walk with Trees Please note the exhibition will be closed from May 9-28th due to installation in adjacent gallery.

April 23rd, 2024 I will be in conversation with Elizabeth Ferrer at Amherst College.

Sovereign Futures

This conversation brings together three New York City-based artists and organizers who center Land and communality in their work. In Sovereign Futures, Alicia Grullón, Madjeen Isaac, and Iakowi:he’ne’ Oakes will discuss how their artistic practices shape their relationship with Land while also being a tool for reimagining ways of living that prioritize housing, gardening, knowledge exchange, and other needs of their communities. Moderated by Gabriela López Dena, Associate Curator of Public Practice at Public Art Fund, the discussion will highlight the importance of building alliances between artists and organizations working to reclaim Land for collective purposes and fighting against forms of displacement.

Sovereign Futures is part of the exploration of Land and borders prompted by Nicholas Galanin’s Public Art Fund commission In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra. This program is organized in partnership with Smack Mellon, a nonprofit arts organization that nurtures and supports emerging, under-recognized mid-career and women artists in the creation and exhibition of new work by providing opportunities, studio workspace, and access to equipment and assistance for the realization of ambitious projects.

The question asked by some working-class communities in New York City regarding environmental art projects is, “Okay, but what about the people?”

What Good Is Eco-Art Without Community?

bronxmuseum.org/event/community-conveni…

Join us in celebrating Earth Day with a video festival and panel showcasing short films/videos by visual artists on issues around climate change, indigenous land rights, Black liberation and migration. Participate in a critical intercultural exchange and platform to discuss climate breakdown and what resistance looks like. After the festival, audience members are invited to join in activities led by local and international environmental justice activists taking a deeper dive into the films’ theme. Curated and organized by Alicia Grullon.

Part of this program is funded by Social Practice CUNY through generous funding from the Mellon Foundation.

Information on exhibitions

White Hot Magazine Review

Catalog & interviews.

Press release

|https://moore.edu/events/alicia-grullon-from-march-to-june-at-home-with-essential-workers/2021-07-31/\Alicia Grullon: From March to June: At Home with Essential Workers|

interview on exhibition and work

Ecofeminisms

TFAP@CAA 2021 Day(s) of Panels
Live on Zoom
Friday, February 12, 2021 from 5:00 – 8:00pm (EST)
Saturday, February 13, 2021 from 12:30 – 5:30pm (EST)
Free and open to the public. Registration required.

The Feminist Art Project, a program of the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, will present their annual Day of Panels during the 109th College Art Association Conference. This two-day virtual symposium on Ecofeminisms explores the intersection between feminism, the visual arts, and the environment to help us make sense of the fraught relationship between contemporary humans and the earth and to ponder ways forward.

Convener
Tatiana Flores
Symposium Chairs
Ana María Reyes, Laura Anderson Barbata
Presenters
Nicole Awai, Diane Burko, micha cárdenas, Elizabeth DeLoughrey (Keynote), Monika Fabijanska, Lilian Garcia-Roig, Macarena Gómez-Barris, María Elena González, Alicia Grullón, Nadia Huggins, Deborah Jack, Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Jolene Rickard, Gina Tarver, Cecilia Vicuña (Closing Keynote), Anuradha Vikram

Please Don’t Let it Be Too Close is the title of a new video and exhibition by Alicia Grullón commissioned by SPACES, which looks at the 2020 elections from the point of view of workers and the worries tying them together. During her virtual residency with SPACES, Grullón interviewed participants from the Cleveland area and broader midwest regarding the presidential election and their time in quarantine. These interviews formed the basis of her script visually supported with film montage, music, and theater techniques to conceive a narrative documenting the impact the election has had on people's lives. Shot entirely in her home due to COVID 19, she reveals parts of her surroundings in flux with elements both accidental and intentional or layered upon with green screen. The installation is completed with a selection of Grullón’s self-portrait series, “From March to June: At Home with Essential Workers” previously an online exhibition at The Bronx Museum of Arts in 2020.

Please Don’t Let it Be Too Close Alicia Grullon

Sneak Pick on developing work on view online at The Bronx Museum of the Arts through October 23rd.

Read more about my work here:
At Home with Essential Workers

Watch on MOMA PS1 our conversation on mutual aid work during COVID-19.

Click here: MOMA PS 1 IGTV

www.e-flux.com/announcements/342759/ali…

Organized Hope: Reflections on The People's Cultural Plan by Alicia Grullon

Read here From The LatinX Project at New York University

Cassell, Dessane, Hyperallergic, “ Tired of Netflix? Stream Experimental Films and Video Art ”, 3/24/2020.

Raicovich, Laura, Hyperallerigic ” What Properly Addressing the Migrant Crisis Might Look Like ”, 9/23/2019.

Bishara, Hakim, Hyperallergic “Brooklyn NonProfit BRIC Announces $100,000 in Prizes for Under Recognized Artists ”, 10/1/2019.

Art Forum, “Inaugural Recipients of BRIC’s $100,000 Colene Brown Art Prize ” 10/2/2019

Bringing Back the Future: An Interview with Alicia Grullon by Jehan Roberson in Women & Performance: a Journal of Feminist Theory

June 25th, 2019

"I sat down to talk with artist Alicia Grullón unsure of where we might go, but certain we’d address where we have been. Having met through my job and her artist residency at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, I knew Alicia’s work to be fiercely powerful and firmly rooted in the histories, voices, discussions, and love for people of color. It is this love, this unwavering dedication to communities of color, to our artistry, our histories, our beauty and our trauma that is the heartbeat of her work. She spans disciplines, geographies, and temporalities. What I appreciate most about her work is that it requires something of you. Through her acts of reckoning and of recuperation, she embodies adrienne maree brown’s concept of imaginative power, affirming that “it is our right and responsibility to write ourselves into the future.”

Please follow link on home page to PDFs on my site to read the interview.

News on curatorial work.

What is Here is Open: Selections from the Treasures in the Trash Collection
June 26—September 14, 2019
Hunter East Harlem Gallery, NYC

Reviews:
Bury, Louis, Hyperallergic "A Sanitation Worker’s Collection of Salvaged Objects ”, 9/7/2019.

Steinhauer, Jillan, New York Times “What is Here is Open: Selections from Treasures in the Trash Collection ”. 8/24/2019.

Ruberia, Xavier, Gothamist “Visiting the DSNY’s Museum of Trash, A Tribute to New York & Nostalgia ”. 6/25/2019


Curatorial statement:

For over 30 years, Nelson Molina worked for the New York City
Department of Sanitation (DSNY) as a sanitation worker. His regular pick
up routes were in Manhattan 11, a district bordered by 96th Street to 106th
Street between First and Fifth Avenues. While he worked, he found many
objects; some that needed repair and others that were fully intact.
As over 40,000 objects amassed, Molina created the Treasures in the Trash
Collection inside DSNY’s garage. The result of Molina’s labor of love is a
collection of objects that range from carefully posed, century-old framed
family portraits to needle point; from lost cassettes to castaway Buddha
statues; from colorful Pez dispensers to clocks and 8mm films. Each
object has become a rescued moment, recovered by Molina’s sense for the
importance of place, sustainability, and community.

What is Here is Open: Selections from the Treasures in the Trash Collection
is an exhibition that places works by seven New York City-based
contemporary artists alongside a selection of Molina’s found objects.
Molina and I chose objects from the Treasures in the Trash Collection
to accompany the contemporary artists’ works, creating unique, site specific
installations at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery. These ephemeral
installations blur the lines between art, memory, and archive, and take
on both an anthropological and artistic resolve that rests in community’s
vision of itself. The resulting project emphasizes the artistic and curatorial
processes of those who make, collect, and arrange art, and engaging the
similarities among these actions.

Most of the discarded items in Molina’s collection were found in and
around his local neighborhood of East Harlem. What is Here is Open seeks
to engage in a dialogue on the past, present, and future identity of this
community.

What is Here is Open is inspired by artist Fred Wilson’s curatorial projects,
including "Rooms with a View: The Struggle Between Culture, Content, and Context in Art" (Bronx Council of the Arts, 1987-1988) and his seminal
"Mining the Museum" (Maryland Historical Society, 1992). In his exhibition
projects, Wilson “focused on the meaning of the gallery or museum as both
a formal space and an ideological construct.”¹ His projects challenged
cultural institutions and their structure as elitist and racist, consciously
leaving out narratives from poorer black communities in history and art.
At a critical time of change in New York City, Molina’s 35-year work of
assembling thousands of discarded personal items into a collection fosters
a sense of self-determination and a belief in a resident’s ability to tell their
own story of where they live through found objects and display.

What is Here is Open both explores and challenges historical power in
mainstream art and cultural institutions by asking: Who gets to select
what art is, and who can create the spaces that house it?

Alicia Grullón
Curator

See pdfs for a download of the exhibition catalog

Visiting The DSNY's Museum Of Trash, A Tribute To New York & Nostalgia
Gothamist
June 25th, 2019
by Xavier Rubira

“This is a collection of the past, but it represents the present and the future at the same time," said Hi-ARTS Executive Director Raymond Codrington. “The collection evolves, it hasn’t stayed static.” Codrington is a cultural anthropologist who has been working with co-curators Alicia Grullón and Molina on the exhibit, which opens this Wednesday, June 26th. The exhibit will feature a series of art installations by several NYC based artists that gained inspiration from Molina’s collection. Molina and Grullón will be adding items from the Treasures in the Trash Collection to each installation; we dropped by there last week as they were pulling some final pieces.

They didn’t really know what the exhibit’s theme would be until recently, but Grullón says, “We are almost creating a home… Seeing who is here and who has been here.” She points to how real estate has played a serious role in New York’s shifting demographics, shaping entire neighborhoods, and how that is visible through discarded items.

"We’re not seeing each other as people with homes, with things that are dear to us, with memories, with experiences that shape a community, that shape a neighborhood, shape a block," said Grullon. "That humanity has been stripped because we start seeing apartments as these dollar signs that can be traded in and you can’t trade in people’s experiences, and stories, and lives."


Hunter East Harlem Gallery

What is Here is Open: Selections from the Treasures in theTrash Collection
Curated by Alicia Grullón and Nelson Molina

June 26 - September 14, 2019

Hunter East Harlem Gallery
119th Street and 3rd Avenue
Wed. to Sat. 12-5

Participating Artists: Tomie Arai, Dominique Duroseau, Maria Hupfield, Coronado Print Collective (Pepe Coronado, Leslie Jiménez and Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez), Shellyne Rodríguez

For over 30 years, Nelson Molina worked for the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) as a sanitation worker. His regular pick up routes were in Manhattan 11, a district bordered by 96th Street to 106th Street between First and Fifth Avenues. While he worked, he found many objects; some that needed repair and others that were fully intact.

As hundreds and hundreds of objects amassed, Molina created the Treasures in the Trash Collection inside DSNY’s garage. The result of Molina’s labor of love is a collection of objects that range from carefully posed, century-old framed family portraits to needle point; from lost cassettes to castaway Buddha statues; from colorful Pez dispensers to clocks and 8mm films. Each object has become a rescued moment, recovered by Molina’s sense for the importance of place, sustainability, and community.

What is Here is Open: Selections from the Treasures in the Trash Collection is an exhibition that places works by seven New York City-based contemporary artists alongside a selection of Molina’s found objects. Molina, along with curator Alicia Grullón, will choose objects from the Treasures in the Trash Collection to accompany the contemporary artists’ works, creating unique, site-specific installations at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery. These ephemeral installations blur the lines between art, memory, and archive, and take on both an anthropological and artistic resolve that rests in community’s vision of itself. The resulting project emphasizes the artistic and curatorial processes of those who make, those who collect, and those who arrange, engaging the similarities among these actions.

hemisphericinstitute.org/en/encuentro-c… Decolonization Now: Ground for Action|

Co-Facilitated with With Nitasha Dhillion

Description:

As one of the G20 nations, Mexico City is the perfect venue to bring together a hemispheric group to think through how the goals of decolonization and decoloniality can shape our work as artists, activists, and academics in the post-neoliberal world. This group will make field visits both to pay respect to indigenous and black sites of resistance and to learn about the Mexico City metropolitan area, with 21 million people, average age 27, 56% access to the Internet, and 60% informal housing threatened by biosphere crisis. This is the ground for present-day decolonization. The workshop will work towards creating a collaborative, free, downloadable decolonized “curriculum” in the sense of Paulo Freire’s “practices of freedom.” How can decolonizing remain grounded, continue to make territorial acknowledgements, advocate for restitution and reparations, and create new perception under these ever-changing conditions?

Format and structure:
In the workshop, all participants will share ideas and work from their own region and particular interests. The goal is to begin the work of collaboration by coming to understand each other’s situations, and to form community. While people of all experiences are welcome, this is not conceived as an “introduction to decolonizing” workshop but as a place for people working through the many challenges of the present to learn by sharing and through mutual support. The workshop intends to bring together practitioners, academics, and activists to share skills, knowledges and possibilities.

Faculty Feature: Alicia Grullón
RISK-TAKING AND RADICALISM WITH AN ARTIST-ACTIVIST

May 13, 2019

by Keren Moscovitch

Alicia Grullón is a multidisciplinary artist who uses New York City’s streets to instigate socially and politically motivated performance interventions. Grullón seeks to actively change the spaces in which she operates, in collaboration with the myriad diverse communities of the city. Her work as an artist-activist exemplifies the symbiotic relationship between artist and place. She is on the faculty of SVA’s City as Site summer residency, and is teaching a new SVACE course, Radical Aesthetics of Art.

Not Neutral - Salon Series
Guest respondents: ​Deana Haggag, ​Jongwoo Jeremy Kim, Alicia Grullon, LaTanya S. Autry

May 6, 6-8pm
RSVP on Facebook

READ Research and References from our Guest Respondents.​

In his response to the Walker Art Center's call for New Year Resolutions, Anthony Romero makes a suggestion to arts institutions to: "Recall that your institution is not part of some distant European colonial past but remains part of the ongoing project of colonial domination and that your function as a bastion of cultural legitimacy and valuation is predicated not only on your participation in the enduring colonial project of displacement and erasure but those of capitalism, hetero-patriarchy, able-ism, and white supremacy, as well." This series takes up Romero’s prompt for it’s May Salon: Not Neutral. This discussion will focus on how institutional practices assume a neutrality of place, or experience, and will explore how these false presumptions of neutrality belie the complex and often violent histories and structures that maintain its existence.

The Miller ICA Salons are facilitated topical conversations that include the general public and guest respondents whose life practice explores the chosen topic. The goal of these Salons is to animate engaged citizenship through conversation and exchange across difference and discipline in free public space. The 2019 Miller ICA Salons are a co-organized by the Miller ICA and facilitator, Dana Bishop-Root, who is an artist living and working in Braddock, PA.

Free + open to the public

In full support of the letter asking for the removal of war profiteer board member W. Kanders by 100 Whitney staff members and the 9 series of actions by the collective Decolonize This Place.

Please read the entire series!!! It is brilliant work by comic artist CM Campbell in Hyperallergic.

All vital and important to art history and society on the whole.

Protesting the Art Industry and the Money Behind Museums
This is the third installment in a six-part series by the artist that will be published every day this week (Mon–Sat) regarding the recent Whitney Museum protests and the issues at stake.

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 5, 2019: VOLTA is pleased to announce Alicia Grullón as the 2019 VOLTA Cares artist collaborator. This New York-based artist, curator, and activist from the Bronx partners with Kelly Street Garden (KSG) and oversees the design of the 2019 VOLTA tote bag.

"Grullón notes that, “Community gardens are such an important part of New York City history. They are sites of self-determination — a history rooted in Indigenous land rights, Black liberation, and migrant rights. The most impactful quality of community gardens is that they come out of a love of place and people. That's the heart of a community. In a concrete world as we live in, they are instrumental in centering us to the soil and place and understanding that we live on Lenape Land, and are disconnected from that history due to colonialism."

Our first exhibit PELEA: Visual Responses to Spatial Precarity explored how artists respond to displacement through their work and practice and provided a platform to examine visual strategies among contemporary Latinx artists. The show was curated by our inaugural artist in residence Shellyne Rodriguez with support from the Latinx Project’s curatorial team. The show ran from February 15th through May 11th, 2019 at the King Juan Carlos Center. You can access the exhibition catalog here: PELEA Exhibition Catalog

Participating artists were Groana Melendez, Francisca Benítez, Melissa Calderón, Mi Casa No es Su Casa, Alicia Grullón, Jehdy Vargas, Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez, Roy Baizan, and Shellyne Rodriguez. Their bios are below. The exhibition was cosponsored by NYU’s King Juan Carlos Center.

whiteboxnyc.org/event/12526/

Thu 02/28 Panel Discussion A Connection to Power: On Art, Land, and Food Sovereignty

Thursday, February 28th, 2019
6-8 pm
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003

"Peoples and communities have the right to maintain their own spiritual and material relationships to their lands...this implies the full recognition of their laws, traditions, customs, tenure systems, and institutions, and constitutes the recognition of the self-determination and autonomy of peoples." (Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology, Nyéléni, Mali, February 27, 2015)

What possibilities in art and community-centered agriculture contribute toward re-establishing dispossessed people’s relationship to land as a means to reclaiming the commons and undoing settler-colonial structures? A Connection to Power: On Art, Land, and Food Sovereignty features artists, activists, and urban farmers discussing movements around indigenous land rights, black liberation, food justice, and art in the midst of climate change.

Organized and moderated by Hemi Artist in Residence Alicia Grullon, in association with VoltaCares and the VOLTA Art Fair, panelists include Sheryll Durrant from the Kelly Street Garden Bronx in the South Bronx, artist and activist Marz Saffore from Decolonize This Place, and Indigenous rights activist Monte Stevens Jr. from the Colorado River Indian Tribes. This discussion will consider artistic practices and food-growing as acts of self-defense that are essential to surviving devastating environmental changes. A reception will follow.

Bios:

Alicia Grullón, a 2018-2019 Hemi Artist in Residence, directs her interdisciplinary practice towards critiques of the politics of presence, arguing for the inclusion of disenfranchised communities in political and social spheres. She is co-organizer and co-author of the People’s Cultural Plan, a coalition of artists, cultural workers, and activists responding to New York City’s first ever cultural plan in 2017. Her work has been shown at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, BRIC Arts, Spring/Break Art Show, and Performa 11, among others. Grullón is also a contributing author to Rhetoric, Social Value and the Arts: But How Does it Work?, ed. Nicola Mann and Charlotte Bonham-Carter (Palgrave Macmillan, London). Recent activities include the Shandaken Project inaugural artist residency on Governors Island and the Bronx Museum of the Arts AIM Alum program at 80 White Street. Grullón is an adjunct professor at The School of Visual Arts and City University of New York (CUNY).

A former marketing executive, Sheryll Durrant is an urban farmer, educator, food justice advocate, and a graduate of Farm School NYC. A 2015 Fellow of the Design Trust for Public Space, Durrant is currently the Garden Manager at Kelly Street Garden, and Farm Coordinator for New Roots Community Farm, managed by International Rescue Committee (IRC) — both in the South Bronx. Named by Food Tank as one of the Leading Food System Thinkers, Durrant’s work has been featured in The New York Times, WNYC, Yes! Magazine, and Ecowatch. Kelly Street Garden was recognized by the United Nations as one of only 3 gardens in North America for the "Feed Your City" initiative in 2017. As director of the urban farm and garden program for Sustainable Flatbush, Durrant developed community based urban agricultural projects in Brooklyn including a medicinal and culinary herb garden as an outdoor classroom on the grounds of The Flatbush Reformed Church, in partnership with Sacred Vibes Apothecary. She has presented workshops and talks at the MET Breuer, Black Farmers & Urban Gardeners Conference, Just Food, and Green Thumb Grow Together Conference.

Marz Saffore is a co-founder and co-facilitator of Decolonize This Place (DTP), an action-oriented movement centering around Indigenous struggle, Black liberation, free Palestine, global wage workers and de-gentrification, and a member of MTL+ Collective. Since 2016, DTP has organized an Indigenous Peoples Day/Anti-Columbus Day tour of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Saffore is currently working on a PhD in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. She is an adjunct professor in the Department of Art & Art Professions at NYU Steinhardt.

Monte Stevens Jr. is a water protector and proud member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes. Grandchild of Radical American Indian Movement activists, Stevens was raised with future-oriented parents who provided a foundation for their political views around Indigenous people, queerness, settler-colonialism, white supremacy, and academic supremacy. Stevens’ resistance has been through their existence as a femme queer Indigenous individual. Involved in direct actions against the Army Corp of Engineers on the atrocities at Standing Rock, Stevens has extended their activism in New York City to support efforts to build decolonization commissions in NYC museums, and to repatriate stolen artifacts to Indigenous communities. Stevens is currently pursuing social work studies at New York University.

About VOLTA Cares:
VOLTA New York is a contemporary art fair comprised of solo projects by leading and emerging international artists. VOLTA Cares was initiated in 2018 as a multitiered social programming outreach by the New York fair to more meaningfully connect with all levels of cultural purveyors, from public school students to patron collectors.

This event is free and open to the public. A photo ID is required to enter NYU buildings. 20 Cooper Square is a wheelchair accessible venue.

Image: Empanar! 2018. Print. Artist: Alicia Grullón. Image courtesy by the artist.

Surge is showing at St. Francis College through March 28th, 2019

www.sfc.edu/news-feed/~post/environment…

Showing "5 Speeches" in this dynamite group show at NYU from the LatinX Project

wp.nyu.edu/latinxproject/event/pelea-vi…

www.artnews.com/2018/11/15/shandaken-pr…

Review by Louis Bury in Hyperallergic

Alicia Grullón’s short film, "Surge" (2018), stands out in this context because it is a single artwork rather than a distillation of a social practice project. The film’s clever conceit — that it is a trailer for a longer Hollywood movie — lampoons the sensationalism of pop cinematic representations of climate change. An imagistic montage of floods and political protests (such as Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock) passes onscreen, as the New York City Teen Poet Laureate Aaliyah Daniels voices over an untitled poem of hers about environmental racism. Surge is an important reminder that climate change impacts the present, not just a distant apocalyptic future, and that its harms are distributed unequally along race and class lines.

hyperallergic.com/454395/ecological-con…

BRIC is pleased to present Reenactment, on view January 18 through February 25 at BRIC House, Downtown Brooklyn’s largest contemporary art gallery. An Opening Reception will take place on January 17 from 7-9pm that is free and open to the public.

This group exhibition — curated by Jenny Gerow, Assistant Curator at BRIC —will examine the aesthetics and politics of historical reenactment in contemporary art. In traditional reenactments, events like the American Revolution and Civil War are embodied by amateur performers using storytelling and props, all too often approaching history as unchangeable and absolute. Through work in performance, video, and photography, this exhibition looks at six artists of color who are unsettling cultural mythologies and origin stories, and who approach history as fluid. The histories represented range from the Battle of Brooklyn to the refugee crisis in Syria, exploring race, identity, and representation, and asserting the lived experiences of people left out of history.

The exhibition features work by Crystal Z. Campbell, Ken Gonzales-Day, Maria Hupfield, Alicia Grullón, Farideh Sakhaeifar, and Marisa Williamson.

Associated public programs include Coffee & Conversation, a Saturday tour and gallery talk on February 3 at 12pm; and a Performance & Discussion by some of the artists on February 7 & 9 at 7pm.

Her Art Will Be Cannibal

Jan. 16 through Mar. 7, 2018

Curator: Alicia Grullón

Main Gallery

Her Art Will Be Cannibal, curated by interdisciplinary artist Alicia Grullón, is inspired by the work of the Martinique poet Suzanne Césaire and her book “The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent (1941-44).” Artworks in this exhibition break down patriarchy, class, and racial paradigms in contemporary contexts, re-stating and affirming the discourse of art from the view of women. Moving through photography, video, text, performance and drawing, their work serves as a manifesto, uncompromising in beliefs and identities. The exhibit highlights a narrative of humanness seldom given visibility, and allows room for the artists’ visions to take over.

Participating Artists:Damali Abrams, Francheska Alcántara, Chloë Bass, Ayana Evans, Jessica Lagunas, Shellyne Rodriguez and Misra Walker. Engaging public programs will include four performances and one panel discussion with participating artists.

Image: Ayana Evans, I Carry You and You Carry Me in Martinique, Collaborative performance with
Tsedaye Makonnen as part of FIAP 2017, Forte d'France, Martinique. Digital Photography by JB Garret.
Performance Art Documentation Series.

Over 120 Prominent Artists and Scholars

Today, more than 120 prominent scholars and artists have signed and sent a letter to the Commission — and shared it exclusively with Hyperallergic — calling for the removal of three monuments and two historic markers. The signatories include such well-known art historians as Ariella Azoulay, Claire Bishop, Lucy Lippard, Fred Moten, Deborah Willis, Gregory Sholette, and Hal Foster, and artists, including Alicia Grullon, Jackson Polys, and Martha Rosler.

hyperallergic.com/406545/artist-omer-fa…

Alicia Grullon, who was a speaker representing Mothers on the Move (MOM) at Sunday’s protest, was disappointed by the artist’s response.

“Since Fast completely missed the point of Sunday’s protest, here’s perhaps a critique he might understand,” she wrote to Hyperallergic in a long email reflecting on Fast’s video piece also on display at the James Cohan Gallery. The video is inspired by the life of August Sander, the German photographer. She believes Sander’s work may touch on a few things that Fast may be missing.

“As noted on the Tate Museum’s website, ‘Five Things to Know About August Sander‘: ‘Sander once said ‘The portrait is your mirror. It’s you.’ He believed that, through photography, he could reveal the characteristic traits of people. He used these images to tell each person’s story; their profession, politics, social situation and background.’

“Beyond superficial observation, the depth of Sanders’s relationship is in the exchange occurring in the lens — the comfort in the space allowing what needs to be said about a very specific place and time. This level of connection is one for which many documentary photographers aim. If Omer Fast (and on that note the curatorial team at James Cohan as well) had dedicated research, thought, and care in understanding Sanders’s portraits as testaments of successful relationships between artist and subject, Fast’s rather empty installation of a Chinatown shop before gentrification, as noted in his artist statement, could have been avoided. Yet perhaps the installation is a portrait of Fast — shallow and blinded by the colonized gaze.”

features.columbiaspectator.com/eye/2017…

Alicia Grullón is sitting at what looks like a kitchen table, telling stories from her past—sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish. There’s one story in which she reads a love letter written to her grandmother almost 100 years ago. And then, in another story, Grullón says that she can’t read. There’s a part where she sings a jazz standard, “All of Me”: “Your goodbye / Left me with eyes that cry / How can I / Get along without you?” Her singing reminds me of when Rodolpho sings “Paper Doll” in the first act of A View From the Bridge, all tender and earnest.

Grullón finishes and pauses for a moment. “That was my song.”

Grullón is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Bronx. This video project, called Storytelling, is playing on a small screen in Columbia’s Wallach Art Gallery, which is open to the public. She is the Wallach Network Fellow there, a role created to help build the gallery’s relationship with the local community, and Grullón made this video as part of her work as a fellow.

hyperallergic.com/405812/james-cohan-ga…


Alicia Grullón of MOM made the most impassioned speech as she held up her copy of Edward Said’s well-known post-colonial theoretical text, Orientalism, and said, “I brought this because it appears that the [James] Cohan Gallery and Omer Fast missed that class.”

She continued, speaking in a manner that sounded like the declaration of a manifesto:

You will not use art to erase us. You will not use art to displace us. You will not use art to profit off our backs. You will not use art to shape us in what you want us to appear. 'Find another connection to the rest of the world. Find something else to make you legitimate. Find another way to be political and hip. We will not be the bridge to your riches and success. We will not be the bridge to your humanness. Forget it. Stretch or drown, evolve or go extinct'.

Continued work with colleagues on the People's Cultural Plan.

hyperallergic.com/401477/the-peoples-cu…

New Yorkers face a massive crisis in housing and affordability and huge inequities in funding for arts and culture. Public land is being sold off to developers; homelessness is reaching heights not seen in the city since the Great Depression; and most of the arts community hangs on by a thread. We need a cultural plan matching the scale of the crisis, proposing bold, courageous action — but Mayor de Blasio’s “CreateNYC” Cultural Plan disappoints, with its cosmetic and feel-good narrative. Where’s the activist mayor who pledged to fight Albany so that New York City could collect higher income taxes? Where are the City Council members who faced arrest protesting the 2015 expiration of the rent laws?

We’re pleased that CreateNYC highlights the need for greater equity, seeking to make our cultural institutions more inclusive. This mandate reflects a commitment to the work begun in 2015 with the Department of Cultural Affairs’ (DCLA) first ever diversity survey — whose results informed some of our work on the People’s Cultural Plan (PCP). We’ll continue to encourage such efforts and take action to fix this malignant problem. It’s imperative that New York take the lead, because New York is a city of color.

Nonetheless, CreateNYC is missing fundamental components, which fall broadly into two categories: the lack of concrete funding commitments, and the absence of adequate anti-displacement policies. We will address funding first, because CreateNYC was undertaken by the DCLA, whose primary mission is to fund cultural organizations.

|http://hemi.nyu.edu/hemi/en/artists-in-residence

hyperallergic.com/386042/in-harlem-a-ne…

Alicia Grullón‘s “Storytelling” (2017), a video piece that comes out of the time the artist spent with the residents of Jackie Robinson Senior Center at the Grant Houses on Broadway and 125th Street. The video consists of her foregrounded re-enactments of selected moments within the lives of the people she spoke to, while in the background, a mix of images constantly shift to give historical context to the story she is telling. There is something in Grullón’s concern for these otherwise invisible lives that is genuine and touching.

www.villagevoice.com/2017/07/26/the-upt…

Among other works, Alicia Grullón’s new video performance stands out. The artist spent time at the senior center in the nearby Grant Houses public housing complex; she enacts stories the residents told her, mixing video of life at the center with archival images relevant to their tales

Columbia’s New Harlem Museum Opens, With Art From Its Neighbors by Jason Farago June 1, 2017

And Alicia Grullón — from the Bronx, technically, though a fellow of the Wallach — embedded herself in the senior citizens’ center of the Grant Houses, a public-housing project not far from this gallery, to listen to the life stories of its longtime residents. Her video “Storytelling” sees Ms. Grullón winningly narrate their histories and dreams, in both English and Spanish, against a digital backdrop of Hollywood clips, Billie Holiday concerts and documentary video of the old-age home.

nyti.ms/2suNviN

June 3rd from 7-8:30 I will be at the Brooklyn Museum for Target First Saturday Community Resource Fair presenting PERCENT FOR GREEN- my on going project focused on passing green legislation in NYC addressing climate change. I will be with climate Scientist Dr. Debra Tillinger and some mermaid surprises.

www.brooklynmuseum.org/calendar/view/20…

#climatechange #percentforgreen #mermaid #parisaccord #environmentaljustice #targetfirstsaturdaysbkm #wewatedarevolution #PRIDE

www.artnews.com/2017/05/22/columbia-uni…

Columbia University Starts ‘Uptown’ Triennial for Artists Living and Working in Upper Manhattan
#aliciagrullon #uptown #nyc #art #harlem #storytelling #place #video #performance

artistsallianceinc.org/programs/les-stu…

Join me, at AAI open studios where I will be a guest! this weekend May 19-20th.

#aliciagrullon #guest #artistsallianceinc #openstudios #weekend #nyc #art #fun

Artists and Activists Propose a “People’s Cultural Plan” for New York City
#culturalplan #peoplesculturalplan #artists #activists #equity #justice #nyc

Artists Propose Alternate Cultural Funding Plan for NYC

www.artforum.com/news/id=68314

#aliciagrullon #occupymuseums #whitneybiennial #debtfair

www.pratt.edu/events/single/?id=59260

A History of Performance Art as Protest at the 8th Floor On April 26, Martha Wilson will bring together a slew of artist-activists for a teach-in
#political #art #percentforgreen #marthawilson #Rubinfoundation

A New Cultural Plan for NYC Runs into Objections from Artists

www.sustainablepractice.org/2017/03/04/…

alumniarts.columbia.edu/event/queens-mu…

#aliciagrullon #MierleLadermanUkeles #queensmuseum #MaintenanceArt #climatechange #activists #artists #political #art #nyc

hyperallergic.com/343699/id-prefer-not-…

On yet another (“An Auto-Ethnographic Study: The Bronx,” 2008), Alicia Grullón engages Bronx pedestrians in discussions about gentrification while wearing a newspaper papier-maché mask unnervingly redolent of Hannibal Lecter. Each of these performance gestures constitutes a tiny act of bodily resistance whose efficacy depends precisely on its smallness.

artistsspace.org/exhibitions/decolonize…

www.sdrubin.org/all/join-us-thursday-ju…

#RubinFoundation #ArtandSocialJusitice #The8thFloor

smackmellon.org/index.php/exhibitions/u…

Friday, June 17, 11:30am-8pm: Filibuster #2
In Of the People curated by Erin Donnelly

For this live re-enactment of Senator Bernie Sanders' Bush Tax Cuts filibuster, the interdisciplinary artist will follow strict filibustering rules: continual speaking, no bathroom break, no sitting or leaning and no eating or drinking until the 8.5-hour performance is complete.

Eliciting public reactions from the finger to the fist pump during its cross-country tour this year, the T.RUMP Bus by t.Rutt (Mary Mihelic & David Gleeson) will make a stop in Brooklyn, while in the gallery, Alicia Grullon’s endurance performance of Filibuster #2 strives to withstand the force of income inequality. The closing reception includes Martha Wilson as Donald Trump – Politics and Performance Art Are One and the Same and a panel discussion with select exhibition artists.

hyperallergic.com/304597/the-political-…

creativetimereports.org/2016/06/08/alic…

Blouin Artinfo Blogs

Photo by: Angelys Ocana

ArtnetNews




"3. Alicia Grullón, Filibuster performance at BRIC House
Alicia Grullón is taking on the Texas senate in her upcoming Filibuster performance at BRIC House, where the artist will re-enact all eleven hours of senator Wendy Davis' 2013 filibuster against a sweeping anti-abortion bill that would have shut down 37 out of 42 abortion clinics in the state. Despite Davis' efforts, Texas House Bill 2 passed that same year, restricting access to reproductive health centers, and creating nightmare scenarios for women.

Grullón's previous performances include No Cookies (2010), where she recreated protesting workers' signs at the Stella D'oro cookie factory in the Bronx, and Illegal Death (2007), where the artist "re-enacted" the death of a young undocumented Honduran worker who froze near Huntington Station that same year."

The performance can be streamed online.
Image by: Jason Wyche

Location: 647 Fulton Street, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: 10:00 a.m.–9:00 p.m.

BRIC HOUSE ALICIA GRULLON RECREATES WENDY DAVIS' FILIBUSTER

It began with a pair of pink Mizuno Women’s Wave Rider 16 Running Shoes. On June 25, 2013, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis stood for 11 hours in these pink sneakers, filibustering against a restrictive abortion bill and creating history. Bronx artist Alicia Grullón will recreate this piece of history in its entirety (in an identical pair of pink Mizuno shoes) from 10am until 9pm Wednesday, April 13 at BRIC House.

By inserting herself, a woman of color, into the Senator’s role, Grullón’s reenactment becomes the retelling of a historic moment from a new point of view. Charged with fresh cultural, social, and political significance—it also questions, as Grullón said, “how stories change when you change the face of an actor.”

The sneakers Wendy Davis wore - Grullon will wear the same ones.
The sneakers Wendy Davis wore – Grullon will wear the same ones.
Grullón’s piece, Filibuster, reflects on the platforms provided to the empowered, a key women’s rights issue, and the filibuster as a specific form of speech. Grullón channels her interdisciplinary approach, using performance, video, and photography, into criticism on the politics of presence. She argues for the inclusion of disenfranchised communities in political and social spheres by way of social interventions and performative reenactments that assert the lived experiences of people left out of, or in this case, central to history.

“I started doing reenactments in 2007 with Illegal Death, where I reenacted the death of an undocumented worker who was found frozen to death in a forest on Long Island,” Grullón said. “He had been living out there near an LIRR station and was found several days later.”

Grullón stood for four hours in the snow in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx during her performance. Thereafter, she planned a series of reenactments of true events including Senator Bernie Sanders’ 8.5-hour talk to filibuster the extension of the Bush tax cuts, a Korean farmer’s protest at the WTO Cancun conference, and an aspect of Amadou Diallo’s murder.

“Senator Davis’ filibuster fell along the lines of these other events where moments of protest or tragedy highlight the impact of imbalanced history and policies on the social sphere and on the body of other[s],” Grullón said. “Her filibuster on women’s healthcare highlighted and reignited the necessity for an equitable feminist history and a call for younger women of color to take the lead since many of the women affected by the closing of clinics are poor and/or of color.”

For Grullón, the alternative narratives that emerge from these socially engaged practices consider race, class, gender, activism, and the inner-workings of all four as they shape the contemporary social condition.

This event takes place as part of the Whisper or Shout: Artists in the Social Sphere exhibition, a show interested in the communication methods of artists involved in critical social and political issues.

Art News 9 Art Events to Attend

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13
Performance: Filibuster at BRIC House
Alicia Grullón will perform Filibuster, a work that reenacts Texas State Senator Wendy Davis’s iconic 2013 filibuster to block an abortion bill in its entirety. During this 11-hour period, Davis wasn’t permitted to sit down, drink water, go to the bathroom, or deviate from the topic at hand. A press release states, “By mirroring Davis’ feat, Grullón not only performs a significant moment in the history of women’s rights, but, as a Latina, also brings forward broader issues, such as poor women’s access to health care, cultural norms related to abortion, and cultural stereotypes.” Filibuster is part of a larger group show ongoing at BRIC House titled “Whisper or Shout: Artists in the Social Sphere,” which examines social justice issues through different forms of communication.
BRIC House, 647 Fulton Street, 10 a.m.—9 p.m.

Brooklyn Paper

www.sva.edu/events/events-exhibitions/a…

www.newyorkminutemag.com/debt-down-to-a…

www.marketwatch.com/story/when-art-imit…

A link to a nice interview with Quinn Dukes of Performance is Alive for RECALL, Art in Odd Places 10 year impact on 14th street.

www.performanceisalive.com/blog/alicia-…

creativetime.org/summit/speakers/alicia…

nocdny.org/2015/10/06/register-now-city…

A fun night and great conversation with activists from around NYC on ecologic from Pacifica Radio o WBAI 99.5FM. A great host Ken Gale and David Occhiuto.

nuarchive.wbai.org/mp3/wbai_150901_2000…

I will be presenting and talking about PERCENT FOR GREEN for the United States Society for Education in the Arts Regional Conference. It opens on July 17 through July 19th. My session is on Saturday.

www.queensmuseum.org/events/united-stat…

www.huffingtonpost.com/marcia-g-yerman/…

hyperallergic.com/221521/in-the-bronx-a…

www.elmuseo.org/event/uptown-bounce-jul…

AT EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO
Join us for a variety of events, including a guided tour of both Museum of the City of New York and El Museo del Barrio, brief artist talks in the galleries featuring artists Miguel Luciano and Shellyne Rodriguez from our exhibition PRESENTE! The Young Lords in New York. In our courtyard, Alicia Grullón presents her interactive performance Pick It!, in which she invites audience members to create signs protesting an issue of their choice. Also outside, enjoy sidewalk shenanigans by FEEGZ and crew. El Café features the musical stylings of DJ Turmix, a specialist in Boogaloo which was a favorite of the Young Lords and their generation; and video projections by Louis Cameron

I was on a great panel discussing Marc Bathmuti Joseph's "Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos" earlier this month. Here's some info:

BLACK JOY SALON HOSTS: EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO
& LA CASA AZUL BOOKSTORE
FRIDAY, JUNE 5, 4PM – 6PM
EL CAFE @ EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO, 1230 5TH AVENUE

In collaboration with Creative Time and La Casa Azul Bookstore, El Museo del Barrio presents a roundtable discussion on themes in Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s new artwork, Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos. The piece will unfurl under a parachute on the Great Hill of Central Park on Fridays and Saturdays from May 15 to June 20 as part of Drifting in Daylight: Art in Central Park, a free public art exhibition co-presented by Creative Time and the Central Park Conservancy.

El Museo invites the public to discuss ideas related to black joy, #blacklivesmatter, and other related themes in its cafe space. Performance artist Alicia Grullon, multidisciplinary artist Shani Peters and spoken word poet LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs will join Professor Tanya Katerí Hernández, author of Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response in discussing these topics. Everyone is invited to participate.

Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos is a cycle of musical, dance and spoken word poetry performances that evoke “black joy” at the permeable boundary of northern Central Park. Invoking the history of Central Park, the legacy of hip-hop, the Great Migration, New Orleans ‘second line’ parades and contemporary racial politics, Marc Bamuthi Joseph has composed a vibrant and participatory performance that moves through the Park’s paths, congregating regularly under a parachute-turned-revival-tent for moments of intimate performance and celebration from 12:00-6:00pm every Friday and Saturday. The Harlem community is invited to salons and picnics around the artwork on the Great Hill lawn.

twitter.com/creativetimenyc/status/6069…

t.co/vRNaCS06YT

It's a survey of my projects to date. So excited to be working with Christine Licata curator and the incredible community of Casita Maria staff and youth.

www.casitamaria.org/grullon

Part of the exhibition "All Together DIfferent: A survey of artists working in the lower east side" presented via Culture Push from whom I received an honorary fellowship and incredible support for my work on PERCENT FOR GREEN. Up until April 1.

mannycantor.org/atd/
www.culturepush.org/

I will be performing and exhibition my video piece, "Morir Sonando" at the Bronx Museum of the Arts presented by the Bronx Arts Alliance in concert with New York Armory Arts Week. Opening reception from 6-10 pm.

1040 Gand Concourse, LowerLevel Gallery
#D to 165th Grand Concourse #4 to 161st
www.bronxmuseum.org/community/bronx-mus…
www.facebook.com/BronxArtsAlliance

Caribbean: Together Apart Contemporary Artists from (part of) the Caribbean
published by Fabrica 2014

fabricashop.myshopify.com/products/cari…
www.e-flux.com/announcements/luciano-be…

A great directory featuring Bronx artists. Have a look!

bx200.com/portfolio/alicia-grullon/

Read my interview with Nicolas Dumit Estevez. Please scroll down to the link below the images. THe interview will either open in your browser or download.

www.elmuseo.org/back-in-five-alicia-gru…

Read an on-going dialogue moderated by A Blade of Grass on the Gramsci Monument by Thomas Hirschhorn. Read my comment in relations to some wonderful contributions by curators, critics, and educators.

www.abladeofgrass.org/growing-dialogue-…

Huffington Post reporter Marcia Yerman quoted me in regards to the Marisol exhibition at El Museo del Barrio and the exhibition's influence on my work during my residency.

New Work at #El Museo del Barrio. It's been an exciting time to create art and in light of recent events an important one to use art. See the work I have created Tuesdays to Saturdays from 11-6 at 104th and 5th Avenue. Thanks!

elmuseodelbarrio

This was an exciting opportunity to be on stage with some of my favorite artists. Moderated by Nicolas Dumit Estevez I shared the stage with the Guerrilla Girls, Juan Sanchez and Mary Ting. What a humbling experience to be with them.

www.elmuseo.org/event/day-in-day-out/

www.tumblr.com/search/nicolas%20dumit%2…

I love to do interviews especially about art, culture, current events, and the city. Read the following interviews I did for the Bronx Documentary Project.

Lizzy Alejandro:
drive.google.com/file/d/0B909ySdxCH-XeX…

Barbara Korman:
drive.google.com/file/d/0B909ySdxCH-Xdj…

Sean Paul Gallegos:
drive.google.com/file/d/0B909ySdxCH-XWT…

Bill Gibbons
drive.google.com/file/d/0B909ySdxCH-XME…

CPI in collaboration with First Street Green, is producing a series of public roundtable discussions, architectural installations, and activities in July and August 2014. I am co-facilitating a roundtable discussion with Ed Woodman, Balancing Connections: What to Expect When Trying to Save the World Through Social Practice Art on August 10th, 2014.

firststreetgreenpark.org/blog/2014/08/0…

From 10 am to 2 pm on Sunday August 3, I will have a PERCENT FOR GREEN booth as part of Boogie On the Boulevard! Come talk about problems in your area! Learn about the Percent for Green Bill!
The center lanes will be closed to vehicular traffic from 165th - 167th Streets (it’s actually four city blocks).

Panelist, August 3, 2014, 1:00 to 3:30 at the Point CDC, 940 Garrison Avenue Bronx , NY Brought to you by Tanya Fields and The Blk Projeck

A great review of PERCENT FOR GREEN by the very gracious people at Art in Odd Places.

http://www.artinoddplaces.org/percent-for-green-art-and-environmental-activism-working-together-to-create-legislation/

I will be speaking in London in April on my project PERCENT FOR GREEN for an academic session, "But How Does it Work?"

http://aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2014/session4

Association of Art Historians 2014
40th Anniversary Conference & Bookfair
Royal College of Art, London
10 - 12 April 2014

Art in Odd Places RITUAL - Catalogue Launch
Tuesday, December 17, 5:30-7:30pm
Panel Discussion at 6:15pm
AiOP RITUAL co-curator Kalia Brooks, Rob Andrews,
Lawrence Graham-Brown.
Moderated by catalogue editor, Juliana Driever

Residency Unlimited
360 Court Street, Brooklyn
Subway F/G to Carroll Street
near the President Street exit
Enter through the green doors

RSVP by December 16 at noon to artinoddplaces@gmail.com

excerpt from artfcity.com/2013/08/08/at-the-bronx-mu…

"In the social department, though, nobody rivals Alicia Grullon, who begs the camera for spare change in her video Five Speeches. Regular MTA riders know them all: defensive, apologetic, hopeless, uplifting, and entertaining. “I live in a homeless shelter and need some food for me and my kid,” she explains in the first speech. “No, I don’t qualify for social services, I don’t have an address.” In another, she tries hopelessness, reading off a piece of scrap paper: “I was just released from prison ten months ago, and my mother has recently died.” By the end, she’s strumming a guitar and singing an off-tune Amazing Grace. “Nothing’s keeping me warm,” she says, “Except for that smile.” She smiles. It had the power of Adrian Piper flatly telling us “I’m black” in her video Cornered: she scrutinizes a situation with such cold directness that neither viewer nor artist has anywhere left to hide. In this version, art’s not a job, but something closer to life."

Shifting Communities Roundtable Series at the Andrew Freedman Home

Thursday, May 31 from 3-5pm
Alicia Grullon "Becoming Green in the Bronx"

Artist and activist Alicia Grullon presents Becoming Green in the Bronx, a social practice project examining green initiatives that are reshaping urban environments and appling those values in areas where sustainable living practices are needed. For this roundtable discussion, attendees will be invited to participate in discussions to find practical solutions for issues on specific environmental challenges people experience in their everyday lives. What we learn from this process will form the basis of creating new community-inspired measures for how arts and culture engage with ideas of balancing ecological, social and economic success in stratified urban environments exemplified throughout the bouroughs of New York City.

As part of No Longer Empty's This Side of Paradise exhibition at the Andrew Freedman Home, the Bronx River Art Center will present a continuation of the Shifting Communities Roundtable Series. The Andrew Freedman Home, located at 1125 Grand Concourse in the Bronx, was once built to be a haven, a paradise, for the rich elderly who had lost their fortunes. Referencing this quixotic history, This Side of Paradise references the past and reconnects the vision of Andrew Freedman with the Bronx of today.

www.bronxriverart.org/events-archive.cf…

www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/bron…

archives.jrn.columbia.edu/2010-2011/big…

www.brooklynrail.org/2008/11/artseen/pe…

"The most successful of the works featured in Pedestrian was Alicia Grullón’s “Revealing New York City: The Disappearance of Others.” Quietly parked beside a blank brick wall between First Avenue and Avenue A, Grullón sat in front of a small white table holding a small basin in which newspaper clippings about the housing changes in the city floated in papier-mâché paste. In front of the basin there was a small sign that read “Gentrification-Free Zone.” A collapsible shopping cart and another small white table, held bags of staples like rice, beans, and wheat tagged with exorbitant prices ($3000, $1000, $5000). From a distance, Grullón looked like any other Latin American merchant selling street food. Only her textured blue and gray papier-mâché mask, covered with cut-up headlines, and her Beefeater-like motionlessness triggered my “art” barometer. While I admit I’m growing increasingly weary of the gentrification binary that artists habitually draw attention to, Grullón’s silent protest drove home its pain, anguish, and poverty in a way that none of the other works approached. It exuded a sense of dignity that didn’t preach loudly (okay, not too loudly), and if the text tended to dumb-down the piece, her performance elevated it."