“Freshkills Park: Field R/D” is an expansive art-research program organized by artist/curator Dylan Gauthier and Mariel Villeré. The goal of “Field R/D” is to work with artists to develop an approach for bringing an exhibition, discussion and event series to Freshkills Park on an annual basis. Invited participants create work in visual and performing arts, written word, architecture, pedagogy, and multimedia.
The group of artist/collaboratives meet several times over the course of the “residency” and are granted special access to the closed Freshkills Park site by appointment. The project involves independent and collaborative research, site visits and field trips, shared meals and conversations in a seminar-style format, culminating in exhibition, publication, and presentation of the proposals that they developed in this supportive environment. Pictured here are presentations made at NADA NY as a cultural partner in March 2018, Open Engagement: Sustainability at the Queens Museum/New York City Panorama in May 2018, and at the 8th Floor for a program titled Waste Time: Breakdown, Decay, and Regeneration at Freshkills Park in September 2018. Unless otherwise noted, all photographs by Natalie Conn, who also visited each participating artist in their workspace to document their individual process and environment.
Read a curatorial essay by Dylan Gauthier and Mariel Villére here.
Read an essay on the research process at Freshkills Park by Cait Field, Manager for Science and Research Development here.
All photos, unless otherwise noted, are by Natalie Conn.
A color broadsheet publication, designed by Seb Choe and released during an in-person exhibition of the project’s first cohort in 2018 is available as a PDF here.
Freshkills Park: Field R/D is supported by the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation.
A video, Confluence: Artists on Water and Change, was produced as part of a boat tour of New York Harbor and Staten Island, narrated by Mary Mattingly, Lize Mogel, Nancy Nowacek, Mariel Villère, and Dylan Gauthier.