Closing Event: 6th AIM Biennial Featuring AIM Fellow Activations
Saturday, March 30, 2024 • 1–6PM
Free, Optional RSVP
1PM: Storytime for Kids with Bronx Museum Educators
1:30–2PM: Activation with AIM Fellow Dario Mohr
2–3PM: Activation with AIM Fellow Yesuk Seo
3–4PM: Activation with AIM Fellow Aika Akhmetova
3:30–6PM: Activation with AIM Fellow Santina Amato
All ages are welcome to join us at the Museum for an exciting afternoon of artist activations marking the closing weekend of The Sixth AIM Biennial (Part One).
This event is free for everyone and you can let us know you plan to attend with an optional RSVP.
Learn more about the different activities taking place below!
Artwork images by Argenis Apolinario
1. Storytime for Kids
1–1:30PM
On the 2nd Floor
With Bronx Museum Education Staff
Young learners and their caregivers are encourage to join The Bronx Museum's Education Staff on the second floor of the Museum for Storytime!
Afterwards, you can head down to the galleries with the Museum's fun exhibition Family Guide, which includes a scavenger hunt!
2. Activation with Dario Mohr
'The Happy Planting Day Ritual'
1:30–2PM
In the Gallery
Click Here To Learn More>>
2023 AIM Fellow Dario Mohr's installation 'Atrophy Kingdom' (2024) is on view in Part One of 'The Sixth AIM Biennial.' He describes 'The Happy Planting Day' activation of his work in 'The Biennial' as follows:
"You may be wondering when this holiday takes place. Happy Planting Day is any day that you contribute a seed paper greeting card to one of the two baskets before you.
"These greeting cards contain African Daisies which are Indigenous to various parts of Africa. Mohr is of African descent and created this ritual in order to honor the ancestor veneration practices historically and presently practiced throughout the diaspora.
"Audience members like yourself are welcome to write a message to a deceased ancestor with the intention that they will receive it. Whether you decide to write your name on it or keep it anonymous, it should be noted that these will not be read by the artist.
"Once written, you can deposit it in one of the two baskets before you. The white basket will be planted here, at the Bronx based Paradise Garden, Wave Hill, under a sculpture that Mohr will be erecting there as the first Annual Sunroom Project Sculpture Artist. You can also opt to contribute it to the colored basket, which will be planted in South Africa at a later date.
"If you’d like to keep up with the Planting Ceremonies, Send an email to dm@dariomohr.com so that you can be notified when your card will be planted so that you can attend. The Wave Hill ceremony will take place, June, 2024! Your presence will be appreciated as we bring new life into the world in the form of African Daisies in honor of your ancestor's memory.
"For more on this, follow me on IG: DarioMohr_Art
"Additional Card Entries for this year’s planting ceremony were collected from:
1) Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts
2) Brooklyn Children’s Museum
3) Climate Museum
4) NYC Audubon
5) Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
6) Tafaria Castle, Kenya"
3. Activation with Yesuk Seo
'Heterotopia: Nowhere, Now Here'
2–3PM
In the Gallery
Click Here To Learn More>>
2021 AIM Fellow Yesuk Seo's installation 'Nowhere, Now Here' (2021) is now on view in Part One of 'The Sixth AIM Biennial.' Seo describes the 'Heterotopia: Nowhere, Now Here' activation of their work in 'The Biennial' as follows:
"A museum is a heterotopic place where people gather to see selected objects and artworks from different timelines. Regarding histories, cultures, local society, or curatorial visions, we discover new inspirations as if we were time-traveling from the past, the current, and the future. We confront an unrealistic reality under vulnerable conditions among territories: ideological conflicts, socioeconomic politics, colonial and imperial histories, and systemic structure from capitalism through art in the space of difference.
"'The 6th AIM Biennial' public program, 'Heterotopia: Nowhere, Now Here,' provides viewers with finding their entry points under no border zone and invisible boundaries in analog and digital ways at The Bronx Museum. Through an augmented reality perspective, Yesuk Seo will present her abstract ghostly screen space based on her architectural print installation, 'Nowhere, Now Here' (2021), associating memories of souvenir collections. Her multidisciplinary art project will settle in a given ghost space at The Bronx Museum on March 30th.
"The program lets viewers explore self-discovery and interact with 'The 6th AIM Biennial' exhibition."
4. Activation with Aika Akhmetova
'Nomadic Pastoralism'
3–4PM
In the Gallery
Click Here to Learn More>>
2022 AIM Fellow Aika Akhmetova's piece 'Tasks' (2023) is on view in Part One of 'The Sixth AIM Biennial.' They describe the 'Nomadic Pastoralism' activation of their work in 'The Biennial' as follows:
"A performative talk/lecture reflecting on the relationship between Kazakh identity and sheep. Starting with the background on Kazakh nomadic pastoralism, history of Kazakh famine of 1930-1933 and moving into current day racist tropes around Kazakh body and its relationship and or proximity to animals."
5. Activation with Santina Amato
'Flowers Will Die: A live performance by Artist Santina Amato'
3:30–6PM
On the 2nd Floor
Click Here To Learn More>>
Five photographs from 2022 AIM Fellow Santina Amato's series 'Portraits 0f Women With Their Weight In Dough' are on view in Part One of 'The Sixth AIM Biennial.' She describes the 'Flowers Will Die: A live performance by Artist Santina Amato' activation of her work in 'The Biennial' as follows:
"'Flowers Will Die' is a performance using bread dough, a signature material in Amato’s work. Within the live setting, dough creates a visceral experience where the comforting smell of bread dough consumes the audience’s sense of smell.
"'Flowers Will Die' sees Amato and two other women labour in the creation of 2-300 lbs of dough. Once the flour, water, and yeast has been labored over to form the dough, each woman carries as much of this ephemeral material from its place of creation to its place of activation and eventual death.
"A circle of women sitting in waiting will receive the dough. Once all the dough is deposited within the embrace of the women, the audience watches as the dough activates the sculpture they have created with their bodies, rising and consuming their limbs and bodies over a slow period of an hour and a half.
"The audience is encouraged to meander the museum while the activation is in process, returning to the room to see the sculpture’s slow morph.
"Amato’s work with bread dough stems from a cultural history of women’s labour within the domestic environment that was passed down through the women before her. Raised in Australia by immigrant poor rural workers from the south of Italy who themselves were raised during the depression era and fascist Italy, Amato was raised to see labour as way to fully experience the human condition. Being raised in a multicultural society, it was only when Amato entered adulthood, specifically womanhood, that the realization that the labour women are asked to carry is more than just physical. Her live performances play out the physical and psychological labour women are still expected to carry."