A ‘Fair’ Roger Ailes Memorial, The Secret Life of Plants, and More Art This Week

The Roger Ailes Memorial Show: Fair and Balanced
Opening Thursday, July 6 at yours mine & ours, 6 pm to 9 pm. On view through August 4.

When news surfaced that Roger Ailes of Fox News had departed this earthly plane, certain left-leaning pockets of the internet reacted similarly to the announcement that longtime Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia had kicked the bucket. That is, they were not mourning in the typical sense, unless your regular mourning routine includes Twitter jokes and dances of joy. Now, a little over a month since he passed, LES gallery yours mine & ours will be gathering an array of artists to memorialize the man. And remember, being memorialized may have a positive connotation, but it merely means that people are publicly remembering what you did.

A press release for the show has opted not to include a traditional exhibition description, instead reprinting in full an essay by Monica Lewinsky that ran in The New York Times on May 22, 2017. Entitled “Roger Ailes’s Dream Was My Nightmare,” Lewinsky articulates for many paragraphs how Ailes and Fox was one of the first to incessantly cover her sexual involvement with Bill Clinton in a way that she writes made her “[cease] being a three-dimensional person.” The fact that this exhibition elected to uplift a woman’s story instead of trumpet about its own prestige should give you a clue of what’s in store.

SaveArtSpace: The Future is Female
Opening Friday, July 7 at The Storefront Project, 6 pm to 9 pm. On view through July 16.

If you’ve been seeing billboards around lately that look a little more interesting than your average advertisement, this does not mean that the ad industry has begun prioritizing artistic expression over selling stuff. Rather, these large-scale public art installations taking up space typically reserved for advertising is the work of SaveArtSpace, a nonprofit in Brooklyn that presents the work of local artists on billboards and the like. Their latest endeavor, The Future is Female, showcases only women artists and seeks to “explore and celebrate the ever-evolving intersectional feminist movement.”

There will be a gallery show component in addition to the public installations, opening Friday night in the Lower East Side. Work will be on view from the selected artists, which have been curated by a panel of women creatives, including Bushwick fixture Meryl Meisler. Though the buzzed-about phrase “The Future is Female” has seen a varying array of controversy from claims of gender essentialism to t-shirt plagiarism, the group of artists participating seem like they will brighten up your day while you walk through the trash-scented summer city air.

Mexico: At the Crossroads
Opening Friday, July 7 at Amos Eno Gallery, 7 pm to 9 pm. On view through July 22.

This multidisciplinary group exhibition is named for a fresco created by Diego Rivera, which was displayed in Rockefeller Center from 1932-1934. Its lifespan was not intended to be that brief, but it was cut short due to its controversial nature. Known for possessing leftist politics, at the last minute Rivera decided to turn the mural from a more generic depiction of a man imagining a better future to a scene with recognizable figures like Vladimir Lenin and a Rockefeller “drinking martinis with a harlot.” The capitalist upper crust Rockefellers, shockingly, were not exactly pleased, and the mural was destroyed.

Keeping in mind the many ways Mexican people have been marginalized throughout America’s history, Mexico: At the Crossroads will display contemporary art about Mexico and US-Mexico relations. The title doesn’t just reference Rivera: “We find ourselves at a crossroads today where labor conditions and wealth inequality combine to create an anonymous Mexican workforce and perpetuate racism and cultural ignorance,” the gallery states.

The Secret Life of Plants
Opening Saturday, July 8 at Freight + Volume Gallery, 7 pm to 10 pm. On view through September 3.

What do plants do when their humans are out of the picture? Greenery in the home (no, not that kind) has long been imbued with a curious sense of agency, as it is encouraged that people who own plants go above and beyond the typical watering routine. This could include speaking to your plants, singing to them, and even adding menstrual blood to its soil (this, some claim, can add nutrients to the soil). This week, a group art exhibition co-curated by Jennifer Coates and Nick Lawrence seeks to explore this multifaceted plant-human relationship.

Inspired by the 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants, which included case studies such as hooking up a plant to a polygraph test, because maybe plants have been given too much agency and are now dastardly liars, who knows. The works on view use plants as source material in a variety of ways: as parts of sculptures, as subject matter for paintings, and more. It’s not just a superficial exploration of plants. “Climate change is threatening both flora and fauna on this planet, so attuning one’s mind to plants seems like a timely, important ritual,” the exhibition description states.