As part of a survey of working artists on the Lower East Side at the Manny Cantor Center, Culture Push displayed work and artifacts from eight projects that came out of The Fellowship for Utopian Practice. The show, curated by Linda Griggs and Yona Verwer, celebrated the organizations and artists that have called the Lower East Side home and who have been participating in the radical history of art and politics there. 

Contributing Artists

Nancy Nowacek shared a series of symbols, created in 2014, that were used in the launch of the Citizen Bridge project during her fellowship in 2012. In this project, she worked toward constructing an effective way to build a pedestrian bridge to Governor's Island. 

Esther Neff presented small diagrams from the Theatre as Theory conference, a collaborative project that she worked on with Yelena Gluzman during her fellowship in 2012. 

Benton Bainbridge showed a collaboration from 2002 with Bill Etra, who was the subject of Telematic Etra. His project allowed Bill, who is immobilized from congenital spinal stenosis, to talk with and inspire other artists through video chat room discussions.

Chloë Bass displayed artifacts from her Department of Local Affairs project in 2013, in which she sought to heighten the communal awareness of place as a site of everyday exchange. 

Go! PushPops, led by Katie Cercone and Elisa Garcia de la Huerta, offered a poster and necklace made from their Diamond Tribe Goddess workshops in 2013. These workshops offered a safe space for low-income queer youth to explore movement as a self-empowerment tool.  

Alicia Grullon shared documentation from Percent for Green, her project in 2013 which facilitated community coalition and utilized art-making as a means to create solutions for environmental progress in local communities.  

Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy displayed photographs of participants in a T-shirt giveaway that took place in relation to their 2013 fellow project, The New York Times Feminist Reading Group. Organized as a series of collaborative public performances and a culminating publication, their project invited others to annotate and discuss New York Times issues through a feminist lens.

Barrie Cline and Sol Aramendi shared documentary art from participants in Usa tu celular, their fellows project in 2014 that led art-making and coalition-building workshops for day laborers to create self-representations that counter the criminalized stereotypes.