Join us for an engaging conversation with New York City-based artists Tatiana Arocha and Sarah Cameron Sunde who will discuss their environmentally inspired projects presented at Brookfield Place. The discussion will be moderated by Kendal Henry, who has thirty years of experience curating exhibitions, specializing in public art projects across the globe, including Tatiana’s artwork at Brookfield Place. The panel will explore the ways each artist incorporates elements of earth and water in their practice to call attention to society’s complex relationship with and impact on the environment.
Arts Brookfield is proud to work with a diverse range of artists to create unique works of art that are responsive not only to the environment in which they are presented, but also to the world in which we live.
The evening culminates with the announcement of the recipient of the 2023 Brookfield Place New York Annual Arts Commission.
Tatiana Arocha, the recipient of the 2022 Brookfield Place New York Annual Arts Commission, has created her first large-scale public sculptural work, Bajo el manto de la selva / Under the Cover of the Jungle, for the Winter Garden. Her art practice explores intimacy between people and land, rooted in personal memory and her immigrant experience. Her work centers on community through public art interventions and transdisciplinary knowledge exchange. The current installation is representative of the artist’s layered relationship with the ecology of Colombia, her home-country.
Sarah Cameron Sunde is an interdisciplinary artist and director working at the intersection of performance, video and public art. Sunde creates site-specific live performance and video works that play with scale and duration, and engage the public directly in questions around deep time and our human place in the environment. On August 13 and September 14, Sunde will engage audiences with screenings of 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, on the Waterfront at Brookfield Place to draw awareness to water, time, and rising sea levels.
Click here to learn about the Community Day on August 13.
Kendal Henry is an artist and curator who lives in New York City, specializing in the field of public art for over 30 years. He illustrates that public art can be used as a tool for social engagement, civic pride and economic development through the projects and programs he’s initiated in the US and internationally.
He’s currently the Assistant Commissioner of Public Art at the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and an adjunct professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. A guest lecturer at various universities and educational institutions including Rhode Island School of Design Senior Studio; and Pratt Institute’s Arts and Cultural Management Program. Henry served as the Director of Culture and Economic Development for the City of Newburgh, NY where he created the region’s first Percent for Art Program. Prior to that post he was Manager of Arts Programs at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Art and Design for eleven years. During this time, he has overseen the commissioning, fabrication and installation of MTA’s permanent art projects, served as a member of the MTA’s in-house design team, and produced temporary exhibitions at Grand Central Terminal.
Henry was also elected to serve two 3-year terms on the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network Council.