Is human nature anti-nature?
Studio 41 hosts the opening reception for Nancy Gesimondo’s Portals on Sunday, Dec. 3, at 3 pm. (It’ll be on display through Jan. 28, 2024.)
Gesimondo is a bicoastal, interdisciplinary, mixed-media artist based in Long Island City and Palm Springs, California. Portals contains eco-feminist, performative-based photographs of her in the Great Outdoors.
But she’s far from the Garden of Eden. The images were shot in two remote, inhospitable terrains on opposite ends of the United States: Gerritsen Inlet and Rockaway Inlet in Queens and Salton Sea, a landlocked, highly saline body of water in Southern California. Once lavish recreational playgrounds, both sites are now eerie dystopian landscapes, demonstrating man’s poor stewardship of the environment.
While photographs of oneself are often assumed to be self-portraits, Gesimondo’s point with these images is to embody a persona who reflects deep remorse for the devastating conditions before her. For example, visitors will see her in Dead Horse Bay, a small body of water off Barren Island in Jamaica Bay that’s now a leaking landfill with radioactive contamination. Locals call it “Glass Bottle Beach” because it’s littered with so much broken glass that waves hitting the shore create an eerie tinkling sound.
Portals includes a sound component and sculptural assemblages of found materials from the sites. The vintage ocular-shaped, convex-glass frames magnify the concept of a portal to focus on nature’s preciousness.
Admission is free.
Gesimondo is one of several Western Queens artists who founded Studio 41 to display and sell their original, diverse, and affordable works in September 2022. Other founders include Ann Cofta (textiles), Casey Concelmo (egg tempera painting), Tina Glavan (encaustics, mixed media), Nancy Macina (painting), Dianne Martin (printmaking), Joachim Marx (painting), and Sheila Ross (pottery, ceramics, paper).
Usually open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays from 1 pm to 5 pm, the space is on the ground floor at 27-15 41st Ave., about one block north of Queensboro Plaza. There’s limited metered street parking in the area, but the venue is near the 7, E, F, M, N, R, and W lines.
Portals received money from the Queens Art Fund, a re-grant program supported by NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by New York Foundation for the Arts.
Image: Nancy Gesimondo