Soul of Nations Foundation, Gallery— 340 East 64th Street, New York City

Performative Exhibition:  Kinstallations, by Justin Sterling & Regan de Loggans, Opening: Friday, February 24, 2023, at 6PM

Sponsored by Chashama. 

Soul Center— New York presents the concept for a hybrid institution that includes space for vernacular sculpture, ceremonial performance, and collective experimental healing. Its basis is a research and process-oriented platform, a space for showing, broadcasting, and making art public, while offering another place for reflecting, meeting, and creating community. Ideally, its program model will be to support the creation of innovative, site-specific, socially engaged artworks in the public realm, particularly in vacant spaces of historical and architectural interest in Manhattan, until a permanent spaces in the neighborhood reveals itself. 

We believe that art should belong in the public domain and we aim to promote an artistic approach that favors civic mindedness and that considers the viewer an active contributor to the liveliness of the work. guiding purposes and principles will include presenting public exhibitions of art that respond meaningfully to the environment and Indigenous communities; promoting cultural exchange and education programs that foster dialogue and understanding among cultures and communities about shared artistic, historical, and societal issues; and providing an accessible platform for artists and researchers to address ecological, cultural, spiritual, and other existential themes.

This program model presents the concept for a hybrid institution that includes space for vernacular sculpture, ceremonial performance, and collective experimental healing. Its basis is a research and process-oriented platform, a space for showing, broadcasting, and making art public, while encouraging the nature of ephemerality in dialogue with healing practice. Soul Center will carve out a space in New York through its ability to slow down the art-making process, enabling artists to work at their own pace through the evolution of projects over time

GALLERY SPACE

Soul of Nations will be partnering with ChaShaMa to hold our first independent gallery exhibition in February 2023 at 340 East 64th Street, to exhibit Kinstallations, a collaborative performance of Indigenous-infused sound and movement made to evoke the sensations of humanistic flow and queer interconnectedness from the past, present and future. The gallery space will also offer short-term studio spaces. 

EXHIBITIONS

Physical and online exhibitions include the display of vernacular sculpture and performance; elements of work that exemplifies essential cultural qualities which include the modulation, richness, and materiality of surface; sculpture; and the orchestration and sequencing of movement which embody power and beauty of the contemporary that is sourced from traditional techniques of BIPOC culture. Artist residencies, performances, and exhibitions will showcase living Indigenous emerging contemporary artists of all ages, while only including objects created before 2019. Soul Center for the Arts endeavors to revitalize vernacular traditional, and even ancient, forms of sculpture and performance for intentional cultural and ceremonial purposes, all the while looking toward the future for inspiration.