Open Call: Emerging Artist Fellowship 2025

Application Deadline: March 2, 2025
Details and instructions for applying HERE

The Destiny

...is to take root among the stars

March 15 - May 10, 2025
Free & Open to the public
Saturdays & Sundays 1:00 - 5:00 pm
& by appointment

Opening Reception
Saturday March 15, 6:00 - 8:00 pm

The exhibition is curated by guest curator Jaime Ransome and includes works by:

Destiny Arianna
Vernon Byron
Cy Hinojosa
Lala Montoya
Alisa Sikelianos-Carter
Tony Washington

Inspired by the prescient works of African American, feminist author, Octavia Butler, The Destiny is an exhibition of six BIPOC artists working in upstate New York. The exhibition examines concepts prevalent in Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which depicts imagined futures and recalls distant pasts through magical realism in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The novel reflects our fears about climate change, canonizes our futures as intelligent beings on a dying planet, and unearths the “essential human resources” that will be necessary for humans to inhabit - not colonize - a new world in space or on an unrecognizable Earth.

Artists Lala Montoya and Destiny Arianna illuminate stories of our Indigenous histories, imploring the audience to remember the parables of their families, for they have encrypted the codex for humanity’s success in their stories, rituals, and heirlooms. The works from artists Tony Washington and Vernon Byron resonate the tone of our present, warning about the correlation between rapid technological expansion and systematized dismantling of cultural collaboration. Alisa Sikelianos-Carter and Cy Hinojosa depict our paths to the future - our devolution if we seek no other home and our cosmic legacy if we return to the stars.

Contributing to an evolving vision of Afro-Futurism, these works of painting, ceramics, video, mixed media, and installation exercise Butler’s theory that small groups of similarly motivated people can create great change. The Destiny acts as a blueprint for how to build something new and sustainable, especially during eras of devastation, hopelessness and fire. Butler finds hope in the idea that Earth is just a womb - just the beginning - and that only by radically reinventing our relationship to it by venturing outside it can our species truly be born, grow, and change.

“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes You. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”
-Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

Programming at Ann Street Gallery:

March 29, April 12, April 26, 6:30 - 8:30pm — “Parable of the Sower” Book Club led by exhibition Curator Jaime Ransome

Date TBA — "Indigo Rising" Afrofuturistic Dance & Drumming by Rhythm of Water Productions featuring Psifire

Listen to The Destiny Curated Playlist on Spotify here.

Other Programming TBA
PROGRAMMING DETAILS CAN BE FOUND HERE SOON.

EXHIBITION MATERIALS:

Exhibition Checklist
(click to view/download soon)
^{(Price list available upon request)}

The Destiny Curated Playlist on Spotify.

Curated Reading List 008 by Jaime Ransome
(click to view/download soon)

PRESS:

Download Exhibition Guide Here (coming soon)

The exhibtion guide will include materials lists and dates, along with artist statements.

Guest Curator Jaime Ransome

@jransome.curator

Jaime Ransome (she/her) is a Poughkeepsie local who pursued her undergraduate degree in Film and her graduate degree in Museum Studies at Syracuse University. Ransome was the Gallery Manager and Curatorial Team Instructor at the Trolley Barn Gallery in Poughkeepsie until it closed in January 2025. In her time at the Trolley Barn Gallery, Ransome has trained countless local youth in the art of curation and museum education and is continuing to inspire young minds as she teaches introductory art history as an adjunct professor at Dutchess Community College. Ransome has curated over 30 exhibitions in her career: from member shows to international juried exhibitions to teen art showcases. Ransome is passionate about highlighting the work of living contemporary BIPOC and feminist artists and specializes in working with artists to develop site-specific, community-inspired installation work and embodying the principles of curatorial activism.

Artists

Website
@Instagram

Artwork Title

Statement

^{Safe Harbors' Ann Street Gallery programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and with funding from the Cowles Charitable Trust, Dominican Sisters of Hope, M&T Charitable Foundation, and TD Charitable Foundation.}

Ann Street Gallery

Ann Street Gallery

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