On the Ground
From June 17th through September 9th, we will present an exhibition by artist Francisca Benítez and her explorations on the city through her work on performance and the politics of space. The exhibition will explore Benítez’s practice in relation to her participation in the defense of public space, including her engagement with groups such as Art Against Displacement, Chinatown Working Group, East River Park Action, and the Stop Shopping Choir. The latter currently occupies the storefront of a former bank at 36 Avenue C in the East Village, which has been transformed into the Earth Church, performing services on Sundays. This exhibition acts as an interlocutor between this site and Storefront’s gallery.
On the Ground is a yearlong research project and exhibition series about New York City’s ground floor. Through a close look at the urban typology of the storefront, this expansive endeavor presents newly commissioned artistic explorations and dialogues about the critical role storefronts play in shaping public life. The project will unfold through three exhibitions, a radio show, an open call, a public program, and a thematic reader.
Informed by Storefront for Art and Architecture’s peculiar relationship with the sidewalk, On the Ground reflects on the critical role storefronts play in shaping public life. While empty storefronts have been ubiquitous in the city long before the pandemic, the impact of the last two years has seen an even greater proliferation of ground floor vacancies which has altered the urban fabric, and in doing so, the experience of moving through the city.
This themed series looks at how ground floor retail spaces are markers of social, political, and economic transformation. Both inside and on the sidewalk, social infrastructures are set in motion (and sustained) on the ground floor of cities. Retail establishments sit at the intersection of a cultural ecosystem underpinned by local merchants, developers, supply chains, local governments, and ultimately, an amalgam of individual interests and collective identities. On the Ground invites artists, architects, designers, writers, scholars, and the public at large to engage with the unique stories of the storefronts that give identity to New York City’s changing built environment.
The threat to these evanescent urban spaces is not easily untangled. Small business storefronts, especially in a “post-pandemic” condition, are signs of economic dissonance. The voids visible by their vacancies across the city are evidence of a real and symbolic rise in eviction. Booming real estate markets and speculative rent increases are effectively decimating this mode of social resilience. Furthermore, commercial displacement is experienced differently across neighborhoods, having disproportionate effects on various socioeconomic and racial demographics. A focused study on storefronts is also a way to explore the spatial challenges of the rise in online consumption that has reshaped the street, threatening brick-and-mortar retail while inundating neighborhoods with delivery vehicles.
On the Ground probes how this fragile urban form can enable carescapes within diverse communities, providing refuge and belonging by maintaining an intimacy of local life.