Visit the Wallach Art Gallery to view the third edition of the Uptown Triennial presents work by artists from Upper Manhattan and beyond that is representative of the history, culture, and contemporary issues of Harlem and spans the visual arts, media, and sound. Plan your visit.
The 1980s and 2000s saw musicians and rappers pushing both the sonic landscape and the changing representation of Black urban society. A new visual aesthetic followed with its own language and the next generation of visual artists became interested in exploring the intersection and/or juxtaposition of sonic and visual traditions.
Harlem has long been a crossroads of cultures, and art's ability to serve and generate widespread healing across differences calls for, in our current age, new hybrid forms that engage the senses and reawaken a sense of possibility and even awe. Uptown Triennial 2023 includes a wide range of practices—painting, textiles, sculpture, gifs, hybrid sound/art projects, web projects, moving images, multimedia artworks, installations, and textural/compositional pieces—spanning a range of genres representative of Harlem’s diversity. Throughout, the exhibition explores the significance of the many sonic forms of expression in Harlem—from jazz to soundscapes to hip-hop—for the visual arts.
Our mission is to bring together studio, media, post-graffiti, interdisciplinary, and performing artists that resonate with Harlem's visual and sonic realities and imaginaries.
Through our research we have identified, generally speaking, five groupings that represent distinct approaches that together create a dynamic dialogue and exchange of ideas:
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Visual composition referencing formal aspects of music
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Textile and sculptural works representing performing musicians and their instruments
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Visual and sound installations based on academic historical research of specific
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Underrepresented musical communities
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Personal and biographical narratives with musical references
Among the artists in the exhibition are Michael Cummings, Sonia Louise Davis, Ivan Forde, Kathleen Granados, Carl Hancock Rux, Lucia Hierro, Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez, Beau McCall, Dindga McCannon, RaFia Santana.
