You are cordially invited to the SWALE Lab Open House on Saturday, May 16th from 12 noon to 3 pm at our new location of Building #6B, in the Nolan Park section of Governors Island.
Come help us kick off the season with ecoartspace and the Urban Soils Institute: the hosts of residencies, exhibitions, and programs centered around soils and the environment.
12 noon -1 pm: “People’s Eco-System” Meet & Greet
Meet the people and vision behind the “People’s Eco-System”; reviving edible and forageable native ecosystems across land and sea. Collaboratively hosted at the Institute for Public Architecture, Earth Matter, and on the Floating Garden SWALE barge. Supported in part by USDA-NRCS. Research component led by NYU Tandon School of Engineering and funded by Maxwell Henrahan Foundation.
1 pm - 2 pm: Meet USI Art Extension Service + ecoartspace @ SWALE Lab
Artists, curators and Exhibition Openings for Soil Shroud Room and “Heart of Matter”
Check out what’s to come through this season’s projects/installations that merge art and science through soil explorations that bridge connections to other disciplines, and develop unique relationships from common and uncommon ground.
Exhibitions:
Soil Shroud Room
The Soil Shroud Room, presented by ecoartspace, brings together textiles previously submerged in soils from around the world as a material expression of the minerals and microorganisms that connect us to ancestral lands. Since 2023, over thirty artists have participated in online Soil Dialogues, where the concept of burying and transforming textiles began. This summer visitors to Swale House are invited to contribute to this collaborative work, to bury, alter, and stitch together textiles into an ever-growing, collectively sewn “soil shroud.”
Heart of Matter
Heart of Matter brings together twelve eco-artists whose practices explore the relationship between feeling and the physical world. Together, their works resist the notion that emotion is immaterial, instead asking what it means to grieve, wonder, desire, and belong through the specific weight and materiality of the world. Featuring work by Curious Orange, Carlos Rigau, Jessica Bardsley, Sonja John, Samara Smith, Romilly Rinck, Noga Cohen, Lola Lefrancois, Jaleeca Yancy, Patrick Costello, Laura Grace Chipley, and Walker Tufts, who were all 2025 artists in residence at the Arts Center at Governors Island.
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