Street Altars, Remembrance of the Unseen

Ryan C. Clarke, Rachael Louise Elliott (Studio Senjeh), Alison Kuo, Kevin McCaughey, Laurel Schwulst and Ellie Hunter, Lunyee Yuan and Michiko Shimada

The earth is shaped by unceasing processes of becoming: the chloroplasts in a leaf photosynthesize sunlight into glucose; oxygen steals electrons from iron, causing the metal to blush and crumble with a corrosive stain. Materials degrade or are metabolized, morphing into something new. These transformations are as uncomfortable as they are sublime. Within the untamed vitality of the natural world, we create ephemeral spheres for preservation—a moment of pause within continual (al)chemical reorganization. In Brooklyn, street altars respond to this call for stillness as sites of memory that gather communal care, ritual offering, and spiritual connection. They are inscribed by impermanence. With every particle of dust that settles on a silk flower, these quotidian monuments dissolve their landscapes.

Street Altars, Remembrance of the Unseen invites nine artists to reflect on the certainty of change through the medium of urban shrines. At the invitation of Field Meridians and Miriam Gallery, the participating artists have created an installation of six altars dedicated to the elemental forces of air, water, fire, earth, and salt. As with memorials across the city, these shrines engage their surroundings and invite visitors’ interaction. A community altar is built over the course of the exhibition, incorporating materials contributed by visitors.

Closing at the end of June, the Summer Solstice, the exhibition disintegrates intentionally into the city’s fabric, traveling to Brower Park in Crown Heights. Installed at the park’s entrances, the altars invoke this threshold as another opportunity to mark transitions. The Summer Solstice Celebration includes public programming, an altar procession, and a communal dinner with Street Lab’s One Big Table hosted by Field Meridians and Mold magazine, their online and print magazine about designing the future of food.

In parallel to the themes explored in Street Altars, Remembrance of the Unseen, the installation’s dissolution also marks the closing of a chapter for Mold, which is divesting from the stasis of internet publishing to turn towards communal practices and ecological resilience. The installation is a held breath, released as a new chapter begins.

Ryan C. Clarke is a tonal geologist from the southeastern banks of the Mississippi. His work in the field of expanded earth science proposes counter-architectures of sociality based on the deltaic processes that built the land his home resides on. His “water” altar synthesizes his work in living shorelines and musical transmission.

Rachael Louise Elliott (Studio Senjeh) is a Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary designer, artist, researcher. She is currently a resident with the Bandung Residency based in NYC where she is researching natural indigo dyeing traditions across Black and Asian communities. Her “earth” altar transforms inert, “dead” and “broken” materials into a site for the remembrance of life, movement, and the boundless potential of Earth- made materials.

Alison Kuo is a second generation immigrant who pursues intersectional relationships across communities through artistic engagement. Her “fire” altar explores plant photosynthesis–transforming the fiery rays of the sun into food and energy. Tapping into Crown Heights groups like “Crown Heights Share” and “Crown Heights Plant Exchange” the altar is a place for neighbors to share and learn about propagation and seeds. Visitors are invited to take home a plant starter and contribute small plants to share.

Shannon Lai Activated through ritual, growth, memory and communal offering, Remembering Shwedagon is a living sculpture that draws on Lai’s recollection of Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Burma, where her parents were born. The piece is a personal reckoning and understanding of something that is larger than self, a channel for ancestral communion through growth, memory and care.

Kevin McCaughey is a designer and founder of Boot Boyz Biz (BBB), a project-based research practiced based in New York City. BBB emphasizes access to ideas and the activation of knowledge. “Agit-Nest” is about the poetics of transmission. Both the visible flow of information and the material necessity of an institution make transmission possible. Like Marx’s base-superstructure dialectic, the sculpture is simultaneously agitating via transmission and stabilizing by organizing a shared space. Bird houses are temporal and ephemeral; their construction is against the image of institution as fortress. “Separate the idea of fire from the fact of fuel, and you are left with a miracle”. - John Berger. There is no bird, so one can imagine it on its way, delivering its letter.

Laurel Schwulst and Ellie Hunter are artists who came together through a joint interest in art in the public realm, and the importance of providing opportunities for participation in the civic commons that aren’t always governed by institutions that require big budgets and lengthy bureaucratic processes. Their “air” altar draws from their ongoing work, Wind Chime Festival.

LinYee Yuan and Michiko Shimada, are Brooklyn-based artists, educators, and editors whose practices explores how relational architectures can support food sovereignty, nourishment, and thriving communities. Their “salt” altar explore the ways salt is a current marking time and change while connecting soil and shore, livingness and human-made forms.