Event Recap: Crossing Brooklyn ArtTalks – Memory & Place

Earlier this month, the Brooklyn Museum opened Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond to build upon the show’s themes and explore different ideas central to art in Brooklyn, Hyperallergic has partnered with the borough’s foremost museum to organize three of our signature ArtTalks. On Thursday, December 11th, BRIC House hosted Hyperallergic & Brooklyn Museum’s last lecture, Memory and Place with artists Jennifer Dalton, Bryan Zanisnik, Andrew Ohanesian and Youmna Chlala.

During the discussion, when asked “why Brooklyn?”, Youmna Chala spoke on the freedom of Brooklyn for artists, “the materialistic art pulse is here”. Artist Jennifer Dalton spoke of the renewal of her project “Skin in the Game“, where she walked through all of Brooklyn photographing 396 reported sites in the borough, comparing the sites from 10 years ago seeing the tremendous change of Brooklyn.

If you’re from the city, scaffolds become part of your everyday environment. They go up, they go down and we hardly notice. Artist Andrew Ohanesian, originally from California, created a fake scaffold to test how people would react. When explaining the thinking behind his work he stated “If I can get you before you know it’s art, I’m happy.”

Artist Bryan Zanisnik, whose work is current in the Brooklyn Musuem, spoke of his recent project “Meadowlands Picaresque” where he and his parents pose for a living tableau within his large-scale installation inspired by his New Jersey childhood home.

BRIC also help their Biennial: Volume 1, Downtown Edition,” which features the work of 27 artists based in Downtown Brooklyn