Collective Mobilities

Collective Mobilities

Alex Strada

DeKalb Gallery

February 3-March 9, 2025

Hours: Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday 1-5pm or by appointment

(please email Alex: )

Soft opening: Monday, February 3rd, 1-5pm

Please come to explore the exhibition and drop off lightly worn clothes or any essentials outlined below. Refreshments will be served.

Collective Mobilities is a collaborative exhibition that centers on redistribution and mutual aid to support Pratt’s neighbors experiencing homelessness. The project was conceived and organized by multidisciplinary artist Alex Strada, the Public Artist in Residence with the NYC Department of Homeless Services and Department of Cultural Affairs, and Fine Arts Civic Engagement Fellow at Pratt. Homelessness is often stigmatized and framed as a problem to be solved by city agencies alone. This exhibition challenges that perspective, emphasizing the shared responsibility of New Yorkers to address homelessness amidst the rampant dehumanization of people dealing with housing insecurity, including asylum seekers. By forging partnerships among students, mutual aid groups, city workers, and researchers, Collective Mobilities demonstrates the transformative potential of creative, community-driven care.

At the core of the exhibition are the Mutual Aid Mobile sculptures, which Strada designed with architect Ekin Bilal and were fabricated by Yasu Izaki using Pratt’s Fine Arts woodshop. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the Pratt community is invited to donate clean and lightly used clothing and other essential items. Strada will work with students and volunteers to wheel these portable sculptures loaded with these items to the shelters nearby campus for direct distribution.

When parked in the gallery, the mobiles will be adorned with plants grown by residents of Project Renewal’s Third Street Men’s Shelter in Manhattan at the on-site greenhouse, as part of a horticultural therapy program grounded in harm reduction. These plants will be available for sale, with all proceeds going directly to support recreational activities chosen collectively by the residents.

Lining the walls of the exhibition are maps conveying critical information for understanding homelessness in relation to housing inequities, NIMBYism, and the unequal distribution of shelters across the boroughs despite New York City’s Right to Shelter law. Strada worked with School of Information Associate Professor John Lauerman and graduate assistants Yuanhao Wu and Nathan Smash to synthesize this open source data. The 2D maps on view were co-designed by Strada and Bilal so that the palette of the maps mirror the Mutual Aid Mobiles, situating data as inextricably linked to action. GIS iterations of these maps are available using a QR code so this information continues to be available beyond the length of the exhibition.

From October-December 2024, Strada’s Studio in Social Practice class collaborated with the Auburn Family Residence, an NYC Department of Homeless Services shelter nearby campus. Class participants include BFA student Jackson Ebbin, Ayla Ellenbogen, Semoi Khan, Zander McKenzie, and MFA students Eric Geithner and William Kim. Through a series of workshops, these students skill-shared with their neighbors leading lessons in material exploration using cyanotype, collage, color-mixing, and drawing. The monitor depicts the experimental, playful works produced during these sessions. The hand stitched cyanotype on view was made collectively by Auburn residents and the Social Practice students using upcycled fabric scraps from B&J Fabrics. Upon the closing of Collective Mobilities, this fiber artwork will be brought to Auburn where it will be permanently displayed.

https://www.pratt.edu/events/collective-mobilities/

ITEMS NEEDED FOR REDISTRIBUTION:

Throughout the exhibition, we will be collecting the following lightly used items:

• Clothing for all ages and genders (including infants)**
• Shoes
• Tote bags
• Backpacks
• Hats
• Gloves
• Scarves

**Coats and leisurewear are particularly in need.

Please ensure all items are cleaned prior to drop-off and placed in bags labeled with the appropriate age group (e.g., toddler, adult) and gender (e.g., any, F, M).

We also need new, unused essentials, including:

• Unopened food (in keeping with Pratt policy, food must be sealed)
• Toothpaste
• Toothbrushes
• Shampoo and conditioner
• Soap
• Deodorant
• Body lotion
• Tampons and pads
• Diapers
• Socks
• Underwear

All items can be brought directly to the gallery during open hours.

TO PARTICIPATE:

Please reach out to Alex Strada ([email protected]) if you would like to be part of the activation of the mobiles off-campus.

Related Reading List

adrienne marie brown, Emergent Strategies

Coalition for the Homeless, “Myths and Facts”

Aruna D’Souza, Imperfect Solidarities

Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Matthew Desmond, Poverty, By America

Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics

Tom Finkelpearl, What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation

Pablo Helguera, Education for Socially Engaged Art

bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space

Bettina M. Love, We Want to Do More Than Survive

Thomas J. Main, Homelessness in New York City: Policymaking from Koch to de Blasio

David J. Madden and Peter Marcuse, In Defense of Housing

Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

Martha Rosler, If You Lived Here: The City in Art, Theory and Social Activism

Robert Rosenberger, Callous Objects: Designs Against the Homeless

Sarah Schulman, Gentrification of the Mind

Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

Host or Publisher Pratt Institute