ON VIEW

Becoming Earth, Becoming Cosmos

Works by Bel Falleiros, Koyoltzintli Miranda, Jessica Maffia, Hanae Utamura

BUILDING 35 MAIN GALLERY
September 12 - November 1

Gallery Hours:
Thursdays 4 - 8pm
Fridays 2 - 5pm
Saturdays & Sundays 1 - 5pm

Becoming Earth, Becoming Cosmos, an exhibition by Bel Falleiros, Jessica Maffia, Koyoltzintli, and Hanae Utamura opens to the public September 12th with an opening reception on September 19th, 7pm at GARNER Art Center.

Organized by Bel Falleiros, the exhibition brings together four artists that are both connected by geography (along the shores of the Hudson River, from Troy to Upper Manhattan) and by their relationship to landscape, ancestral knowledge, and the cycles of life.

Occupying the Main Gallery is a large collaborative site-specific installation: a constellation of works on the floor, found and made, threaded together by a collaborative sound piece composed from breath and voice. The installation holds the space between soil and sky, decay and growth, one body and many.

"Our practices draw from a lineage before words; the spiral, the circle, markings repeated across generations and across oceans, carrying knowledge no single person owns. We work from that lineage, letting the earth and the cosmos move through us. Earth is a ceremonial site and we are its temporary caretakers."

The group started their conversations over two years ago and this installation is their first art piece made together that is shared with the public.

You can find additional information about their collaboration and the exhibition process by clicking the button.

About the artists:

BEL FALLEIROS is a Brazilian artist whose practice focuses on place and belonging and to understand how contemporary constructed landscapes (mis)represent the diverse layers of presence that constitute a place, and how that affects those who inhabit them. She creates welcoming spaces to be in community with nature, with our own inner being and with the beings around us. She is a fellow artist from Sacatar Institute in Bahia, Brazil (2014), Pecos National Park, New Mexico (2016), Burnside Farm, Detroit (2017), Santa Fe Art Institute Equal

Justice Residency (2018), Socrates Sculpture Park (2020), More Art (2021), and Dia:Beacon artist-in-residence for the Dia Teens Program (2021-2) and Wave Hill (2023). She had a commissioned piece for the 37o Panorama of Brazilian Art at MAM, São Paulo (2022), a retrospective solo exhibition at KinoSaito Art Center (2024), and a solo project for Session Fellowship at Recess, Brooklyn (2026).. In addition to her studio practice, she participates in collaborative projects across the Americas, connecting art, community, education, and autonomous thinking.

JESSICA MAFFIA is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in New York City. In reverence and mourning, she honors the natural world of the city and its surroundings through repetitive, meditative processes. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and is currently in the Flat Files of Pierogi Gallery. Maffia is the recipient of numerous artist residency fellowships including at the Albee Foundation and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, as well as grants from the Puffin Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She created a permanent mural installation for the National Audubon Society’s Audubon Mural Project, installed a NYC Percent for Art permanent installation in a new public school, and exhibited her “Soil Beings” at Smack Mellon. She is currently a BeTheMuseum fellow and looks forward to her upcoming residency at Wave Hill.

KOYOLTZINTLI is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in Ulster County, NY. She was raised on the Pacific coast and in the Andean mountains of Ecuador. Her work revolves around sound, ancestral technologies, ritual, and storytelling, blending collaborative processes with personal narratives. Her work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the UN, the Parrish Art Museum, Princeton University, the Aperture Foundation in NYC, and Paris Photo. She has taught at CalArts, SVA, ICP, CUNY and received multiple awards and fellowships, including at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, NYFA, We Women, the Latinx Artist Fellowship by the US Latinx Art Forum (USLAF), and most recently, the Anonymous Was a Woman award. Her work was featured in Aperture Magazine and in the book Latinx Photography. She is part of Flow States – LA TRIENAL 2024, El Museo del Barrio’s survey of Latinx contemporary art. She performed at the Whitney Museum, Wave Hill, Socrates Park, Brooklyn Museum, Dia Chelsea and at Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY.

HANAE UTAMURA is a Japanese interdisciplinary artist and an educator based in New York, Berlin, and Tokyo. Her work engages with historical memory, ecology, and technology. By decentralizing the human perspective and using the body as a conduit, Utamura diversifies historical narratives and enters the imagination of nature. She received her MFA from Chelsea College of Art and Design and her BFA from Goldsmiths, and is currently a PhD candidate in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. She was awarded residencies and fellowships at ISCP (U.S.), Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Germany), PACT Zollverein (Germany), Art Omi (U.S.), Santa Fe Art Institute (U.S.), Aomori Contemporary Art Center (Japan), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Changdong Art Studio (South Korea), Seoul Art Space_GEUMCHEON (South Korea), Florence Trust (U.K.), More Art Engaging Artist, NYFA Immigrant Artist Program, Shiseido Art Egg Award, the Pola Art Foundation, UNESCO-Aschberg Bursary Award, and Axis/Florence Trust Award.

Both

Works by Julia Norton

Ned Harris Gallery
September 12 - November 1, 2026

Gallery Hours:
Thursdays 4 - 8pm
Fridays 2 - 5pm
Saturdays & Sundays 1 - 5pm

Verdigris often forms on surfaces with an unnatural abundance of copper - usually on human-made objects such as rooftops, pennies, plumbing pipes, and the Statue of Liberty. The growth of verdigris has parallels to the much slower formation of the gemstones malachite and azurite, which form through copper sulfate in groundwater in the presence of oxygen and limestone. The patina of verdigris, which is present in much of the work in this exhibition, performs as the “exorcism of copper.” It manifests as part of an expedited acidic corrosion of a material, leading to the formation of another component that appears as the complementary color of its original self (orange to blue/green). 

The work in Both acts as a metaphor for the evolution of human-made materials and the perceived binary of what is natural and what is manufactured. The work may lead us to question how we know materials we find in the world beyond the duality of “natural” vs otherwise. Can these seemingly separate categories overlap? Can they be both? Perhaps we redefine what “natural” might mean now that we have forever altered the course of what we would consider nature. This reexamination might help prompt a sense of care for the earth through understanding material and environmental manifestations and the undeniable consequences of our impact. The work in this exhibition addresses the effects of what we will leave behind on the planet and questions the assumptive distinction between the natural and the unnatural. The verdigris-covered copper sculptures, assemblage-style wall works, paintings created with verdigris, malachite, and azurite pigment, and other forms of documentation explore these themes through their materiality and context.

About the artist:

Julia Norton is a multimedia visual artist, educator, and researcher with a primary focus on natural materials. She works with imagery and materials that correlate with her interest in life cycles and regeneration. As an educator, she fosters creative exploration, self-determination, cultural connections, open inquiry, and a critical mindset with students of all ages and backgrounds. Besides being an artist-in-residence and showing her work in galleries, museums, and independent art spaces across North America, Mexico, and Europe, Julia teaches independent workshops and is a teaching artist at Dia Art Foundation, Swiss Institute, and The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum.

Installation

JOHN MORTON

Minisceongo Overlay

GARNER Arts Center proudly announces the official opening of Minisceongo Overlay, a semi-permanent outdoor sound installation by acclaimed composer and sound artist, John Morton. Situated on a pedestrian walkway and commercial bridge overlooking the Minisceongo Creek within the GARNER Historic District complex, this immersive work invites visitors to experience the creek as both a musical instrument and conduit to the voice of nature.

This project was 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.