Art This Week: Diaspora, Borders, and Healthcare

Home Away From Home
Opening Wednesday, March 14 at Aperture Gallery, 7pm to 8:30 pm. On view through May 10.

For some people, home is the place they have lived for their entire lives. But for immigrants, it’s not always so clear-cut. Photographer Taysir Batniji is originally from Gaza, in Palestine, but he is also French and splits his time between the two places. Members of his family, on the other hand, have ended up in America, in places like California and Florida. Batniji paid these people a series of visits, photographing and interviewing them about their sense of home and experience living in America. His new solo exhibition at Aperture Gallery combines these new images with archival material, such as old photographs and sketches of their family home made from memory, creating a portrait of generational memory and history contrasted with current lives.

Bordering The Imaginary
Opening Wednesday, March 14 at BRIC, 7 pm to 9 pm. On view through April 29.

In case you weren’t already aware, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located on the same island. Seeing as both have rich cultures and histories, including a darker side rife with colonialism, bigoted dictators, and bloody revolution, there’s a lot of both literal and figurative ground to cover when discussing the two. This exhibition is fittingly vast, divided into four multifaceted parts spanning from the 19th century to imaginings of the future, including ruminations on the evolution of portraiture, the contemporary diaspora, the history of the border, longstanding stereotypes, and more. Curated by Franco-Dominican CUNY Ph.D. candidate Abigail Lapin Dardashti, Bordering the Imaginary showcases the work of 19 Haitian and Dominican artists. And the primary sponsor for this show, rather than the latest trendy beer or liquor brand, is none other than beloved food company Goya.

Health Show II
Opening Friday, March 16 at A.I.R. Gallery, 6 pm to 8 pm. On view through April 15.

In 1994, an art show series called The Women’s Health Show cropped up in several Lower Manhattan spaces, delving into the ways healthcare in America has been inclusive of some and exclusionary of others, particularly women. On Friday, a revival of sorts of that show will begin in Brooklyn spaces A.I.R. Gallery, SOHO20 Gallery, and Triangle Arts Association, focusing not just on women’s treatment and prioritization in the medical sphere, but also people of color and people with feminized bodies who don’t necessarily identify as women. This will be accomplished through a variety of mediums, including video installations on “membranes and permeation,” workshops on trans health and self-defense, and panel discussions on building a future of black feminism. In addition to the galleries’s involvement, the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center and the Black Youth Project 100 are also chief collaborators.