PES x Long Harlem Gallery Presents:

Passing Between the Lines
September 17 - November 15, 2020

Project for Empty Space is pleased to partner with Long Gallery Harlem to present a series of window projects featuring past Artists in Residence from our Newark program. 

Kicking off the series is 2018 AIR, Shoshanna Weinberger. Weinberger presents a new body of work at Long Gallery from an ongoing series entitled Strangefruit. Works featured in Passing Between the Lines explore the multiple layers and meanings of the black and white stripe pattern. Stripes are often associated with animals, incarceration, fences, borders, flags and barcodes. The work signifies the displacement of marginalized bodies and the relentless ongoing social and political systems of abuse in this country. Employing coils of hair tied-up in gold links, Afros and some featuring lips, these muses are obscured from their identity creating a psychology of the familiar and ambiguous.

The word “passing” in the exhibition title is a direct reference to the literary legacy and anthology of Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen. Larson’s fictional stories about women as “emotional nomads” navigating on impulse to shapeshift among society in order to survive or ‘pass’ between the lines of race is easily identifiable to the artist. These works reference Weinberger’s autobiographical history, one of a bi-racial identity that commonly falls on the periphery of cultural ambiguity. The work explores Weinberger’s experience with “invisible blackness”, “passing” and “Double- Consciousness”. As a result, the works are anonymous portraits that represent intersectional-identity, alienation and otherness.

Passing Between the Lines will be on view by appointment from September 17 - November 15, 2020.