New York Art Week arrives this week, and with it one of the art world’s most carefully curated invitational fairs, the New Yorker of art fairs.
The Independent Art Fair — now in its 17th edition — has moved into a massive new home at Pier 36 on the Lower East Side, more than doubling its footprint. The East River views from there are amazing.
Among more than 100 artists presented by 76 galleries from around the world, two moments matter most for followers of Latin culture.
Bogotá arrives in New York
SGR Galería of Bogotá is making its Independent debut this year — and it’s bringing Colombian artist Johan Samboni with it, in his first solo New York presentation.
Samboni comes from eastern Cali, one of Colombia’s most complex urban landscapes, and his work confronts it directly. He explores questions of marginality and identity, using materials like brick not for their aesthetic quality but for what they carry: the weight of lived experience in communities that exist on the edges of formal society. His practice asks who gets to belong, and what it costs. @johan_samboni_
This is something New Yorkers might not understand. Much of the world lives in a level of poverty that you’ll never see in NYC. Most of the Latin world lives under post-colonial social systems designed for those at the top to take everything, so those at the bottom are left to their own devices.
The poor build homes from brick, and build what they can with the money at hand. It may take generations to finish a home, one wall and one floor at a time. Samboni’s iconography reflects the Bolivian Indigenous flag, and the work of Colombia’s Indigenous goldsmiths who produced some of the ancient world’s finest gold art. They had a level of metallurgy that even today’s best scientists can’t reproduce.
Some of Samboni’s pieces are inspired by the shaman squat of some famous Colombian gold pieces. By squatting down to the ground, the Indigenous shaman becomes powerful by connecting the spiritual realms of heaven and earth.
Indigenous art isn’t just decorative like European art. It is a spiritual container for the Gods themselves. Pre-Columbian Colombian goldsmiths breathed life into their work by blowing oxygen into the fire through bamboo poles. See if you can feel it in Samboni’s work.
Cali, the world capital of salsa, is a great Colombian city. But the central government does not fully control the region, so many people live on the edge. Like many Latin American artists, Samboni’s practice is centered on the lives of el pueblo, the common people.
SGR Galería was founded in Bogotá in 2014 with a focused mission: to develop Latin American contemporary art and the careers of young and emerging artists. Their presence at Independent — one of New York’s most selective art fairs — signals a growing recognition that the most vital contemporary voices in the art world are coming from Latin America. ¡WEGA!
Also on the floor: Almeida & Dale (São Paulo) and SAUER (Rio de Janeiro), two of Brazil’s most respected galleries, both bringing Brazilian perspectives to New York’s biggest art week.
Independent Art Fair is the New Yorker of Art Fairs
Independent is not a typical art fair. It is produced by NYC’s own art community. It is invitation-only, curatorial in its DNA, and built around solo presentations rather than booth selling. More than 70% of presentations this year are solo exhibitions — meaning you experience an artist’s vision in depth, not a sampling. It premieres more solo New York debuts than any other art fair in the city.
The new venue, Pier 36, is a 70,000-square-foot light-filled waterfront space adjacent to the Lower East Side gallery district — the same neighborhood that has become ground zero for the most daring contemporary art in New York.
The Lower East Side is one of the neighborhoods that still retains some of the feeling of old New York. It is very art damaged. At times, you almost expect to see Basquiat turn the corner with a paint can in hand.
The architectural redesign was led by Brooklyn firm SO–IL, known for the Amant art space in Brooklyn and Kukje Gallery in Seoul.
Henry Street Settlement Benefit
This edition of the fair benefits the Henry Street Settlement, which was founded in 1893 by pioneering nurse and social reformer Lillian Wald. @henrystreetsettlement
The Lower East Side has been a place where New Yorkers begin their American lives since New York City was founded. It’s the first top for many and still a very Latin neighborhood with a large Asian population too.
Henry Street Settlement has been supporting Lower East Side residents for over 130 years. Its service of waves of Jewish, Italian, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and other Latin New Yorkers has had an impact on what it means to be American.
School nurses, special education, and free school lunches were introduced to American life by Henry Street members.
W.E.B. Du Bois founded the NAACP at Henry Street Settlement in 1909, with 200 reformers who enlisted “in the fight for humanity and democracy.” We really need that spirit now.
The Settlement’s Abrons Arts Center was founded in 1915 as the Neighborhood Playhouse, where preeminent modern dancers including Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille produced dance, music, and poetry.
Art fair galas offer some of NYC’s best people watching. Your gala ticket helps support this sacred ground.
Get Tickets
Independent Art Fair 🇧🇷 🇨🇴
Contemporary art fair produced by New Yorkers
Brazilian and Colombian art
Pier 36, Lower East Side
– Invitational Preview: Thu, May 14, 11am-5pm
– Henry Street Settlement Gala: Thu, May 14, 5-8pm, $150+
– Public Show: Fri-Sun, May 15-17, 11am-7pm (6pm Sunday), $48