Whitewall’s Southeast Asian Art Expert, Meenakshi Thirukode, and Jasmine Wahi are co-curators of Project For Empty Space. It’s a pop-up style collaboration that brings art out of its traditional New York neighborhoods, and into places like an empty lot on the Lower East Side. Tehniyet Masood’s club house-like installation is on view through the rest of the month at 181 Stanton. Since the opening early this fall, the response in the neighborhood has been positive. Says Thirukode in her curator statement, “Public art of course is tricky. People can either love it or hate it. In our case we have been fortunate to have overwhelming positive feedback. It’s not about the end result -the final piece. It has come to be so much about the process and the organic way in which it has all evolved. Even each passerbys interpretation is something we don’t have control over. There are no labels, no audio tours, no authority or expert to tell you what your looking at, based on which you can compare your own interpretations. The structure is just there.”
The way in which the installation is unmarked certainly does breed curiosity on the street level. It catches your eye when walking by – you want to explore, find out why its there. When we visited the site in October, Wahi spoke of the challenges of taking over an empty lot in New York – working with the city, getting insurance, etc. A neighbor popped by to chat with Wahi about turning the space into a garden when the project came to a close. Says Wahi, “Project For Empty Space, for me, is not only a public art installation, but it’s a community education experience. Meenakshi and I both had a strong interest in public art and the power that it had on a community: for me the interest in the work being for a community was very important.”
Project For Empty Space has certainly become apart of the community - recently Wahi and Thirukode met with the Lower East Side Girls Club as part of their “Meet the Curators” program.
