There's No Me Without You

Joselia Rebekah Hughes Ariana Martinez Alex Dolores Salerno Finnegan Shannon

There's No Me Without You is an installation grounded in artist Finnegan Shannon's longtime fantasy of an exhibition space that meets their access needs. The PW Resident Alum reimagines a 12-foot mechanized conveyor belt as a vehicle to bring artworks to visitors, who are invited to sit on surrounding furniture and engage with a parade of objects through any combination of touch, sight, and sound. During its three-month run, the interactive installation acts as a foundation for three successive solo presentations of new works created for this project by emerging and established figures of New York City's disability art scene: Joselia Rebekah Hughes, Ariana Martinez, and Alex Dolores Salerno.

Thoughtfully designed as a space for rest and play, There 's no me without you continues Shannon's ongoing exploration of conveyor belts. In their own words, "This infrastructure follows in a lineage of disabled hacking: taking something not built for this purpose, and trying to figure out what it can do and how it can create the experience that I am interested in, which is having a multisensory art experience without having to stand for long periods of time."

The title stems from Shannon's relationship to the concept of interdependence, particularly as it pertains to disability culture. The artist emphasizes the collaborative nature of both their practice and their everyday life—made possible through a community of writers, artists, activists, and friends—and challenges the concept of the individualized ‘genius.' "Interdependence is central to my life as a disabled person," they note, describing what can be both a utopian ideal and a daily reality. "I rely on other people and other people rely on me. That is naturally also part of my work, so it is inherently collaborative. My practice values the insights and expertise of all who touch it and shape it."

The exhibition at Pioneer Works opens with a presentation by Ariana Martinez—a soundscape accompanied by a collection of objects that comprise a "tactile score." Using contact microphones to make environmental field recordings, it explores touch as a shared language between ecologically entangled entities. "In the absence of shared speech," Martinez asks, "how might we extend the range of our senses to access other forms of understanding?"

From October 7th, the installation hosts Joselia Rebekah Hughes's Masque On: Y 'all taking spiritual hits; I'm making plans, a multi-channel video on portable DVD players in which the artist performs as actor, editor, writer, and researcher. Using Black study-informed disability methods and interventions, Hughes interweaves her concerns and priorities with escape routes and linguistic capacities to explore the aesthetics of being Black, alive, disabled, and laughing.

The final presentation originates from Alex Dolores Salerno's personal and familial experience with coffee, while investigating the debilitating relationships between commodity crops, colonial exploitation, and the climate crisis. Through rest, play, and stim with ritualistically crafted objects as well as found and archival materials, the work prompts us to ground our coffee and everyday practices of consumption in a deeper sense of connection and accountability to the more-than-human world, our global dependencies, the earth, and one another.