Press

“The Nasty Women Art Exhibition: Sparked by artists Roxanne Jackson and Jessamyn Fiore with a post-election Facebook post inviting female artists and curators to participate in a group show, the exhibition went up at New York City’s Knockdown Center on Jan. 12. Similar exhibitions have been organized in other U.S. cities, with proceeds from sales of the work going toward Planned Parenthood.

‘This show isn’t necessarily about highlighting individual artists,’ Jackson told the Huffington Post. ‘It’s about female-identifying artists coming together against the Trump regime.'”

–Mahita Gajanan, TIME Magazine

“Knockdown Center alone reports having raised $50,000 dollars for Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, Girls for Gender Equity, the New York Immigration Coalition, SisterSong, and Planned Parenthood. That number becomes all the more impressive when you consider the fact that most of the art was priced at under $100 or less and tickets to additional parties and events were no more than $20.

The conversations taking place during the day on Saturday “focused on community organizing, addressing the diverse needs of different communities, and identifying tools to empower ourselves as women and citizens in preparation for the years ahead” say organizers of the big three day festival.”

–Magdalena Waz, Bushwick Daily

“Organizers Jessamyn Fiore and Carolina Wheat, discuss the success of their ‘Nasty Women’ art show and how it is spreading across the US”

–FOX NEWS

“‘We live in the most progressive city in the United States. We are a Council that prides itself on its diversity,’ Mark-Viverito said. ‘Yet the underrepresentation of women in this City Council has been a longstanding problem.’

Speaking at the Knockdown Center in Maspeth last Friday, the officials announced their new “21 in ’21” initiative, which aims to find, cultivate and help elect “at minimum” 21 women to the Council by 2021.

Only 13 Council members are women, down from 18 in 2009.

And of the 13 female lawmakers, four of them — including Mark-Viverito — are term-limited out of office this year.

In 2021, that number grows to nine, including Crowley, Karen Koslowitz (D-Forest Hills) and Julissa Ferreras-Copeland (D-East Elmhurst) — the three female members of the Council from Queens.”

–Christopher Barca, Queens Chronicle

“Communication — cross-cultural, transnational, intergenerational; between lovers and friends; or mediated by technology — is at the heart of ‘You can tell I’m alive and well because I weep continuously.’ at Knockdown Center. The smart show, curated by Alison Burstein, takes its name from a section of a 2012 poem by Steven Zultanski, titled ‘Agony'”

–Taylor Dafoe, BLOUIN ARTINFO

“Last Saturday (February 18) afternoon, I walked into the Knockdown Center, a gloriously dilapidated former glass factory in Queens, to find Richard Kennedyand DonChristian burning sage and painting a sign that said “Very Black” on the wall. The two musicians, both regular figures in New York’s queer underground scene, were putting the finishing touches on their ambitious new project calledINDEX Festival: A Living Archive, which was set to open its doors later that afternoon.

Similar to festivals like Afropunk, INDEX was conceived a platform for and by people of color, with a focus on Black and Latinx artists. But while you might go to Afropunk to check out a blockbuster Grace Jones set or a sick new punk band, INDEX, with a staggering lineup drawing primarily from the electronic music sphere, was where you found your new favorite club music DJ. The festival was stacked with headliners like the shape-shifting experimentalist Yves Tumor, revered Philly club duo SCRAAATCH, ballroom queen La’Fem Ladosha, sculptor/poet Rin Johnson, and dozens of other performers spread across five stages and 10 hours. Our trusted photographer Erez Avissar was around to capture the scenes below.”

-Michelle Lhooq, THUMP

“The same is true at Guatemala City’s Proyectos Ultravioleta, where Radames “Juni” Figueroa’s large, cut-out paintings of the kinds of things you might wish to have with you on a deserted island — a pipe, a tropical drink, an ice cream sandwich, a slice of Hawaiian pizza — dominate periwinkle walls. Actually, there’s something of a fruit theme happening at the fair this year. At San Juan’s Galeria Agustina Ferreyra, Cristina Tufino’s ceramic sculptures turn melons and pineapples into minimalist faces that bear the same sense of existential dread as their human counterparts, but with much more visually pleasing color palettes. Nearby, the Knockdown Center, a Queens art venue, has lemons, limes, oranges, roses, and hotdogs affixed to the walls courtesy of Lazy Mom (aka Josie Keefe and Phyllis Ma).”

-Cait Munro, BULLETT Magazine

“Next month Parquet Courts will host and headline a multi-disciplinary evening of music and art at The Knockdown Center in Queens.

“Knock! Knock! Down! Down!” is part concert and part installation, featuring several of the bands that Parquet Courts is most excited about these days like Vanity,Flasher and Guerilla Toss. Comedian Joe Pera will perform a set. The band Eatershas a light and sound installation planned, and the Italian food-themed artist Joey Pizza Slice will screen some films. Revered, reunited proto-punks X_______X, who Parquet Courts get much of their sonic inspiration from, will share the bill alongside former Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Renaldo, who’s planning to suspend his guitar from the ceiling in a sound demonstration I once saw him perform at the late, great Other Music. Parquet Courts’ label, Dull Tools, will have a small record shop, and the band’s guitarist Andrew Savage will also have some artwork on display.”

-by Justin Joffe

It’s a constant droning, heavy and reverberant. Thick and all-consuming, it can be felt in your bones; your skin feels like it’s vibrating. Guilt, and the existential dread that can accompany it, can be agonizing, even when one isn’t conscious of what one is feeling, and Sabine Meier’s “Portrait of a Man” exhibition captures these emotions beautifully in a series of photos — as well as the descent into madness that precipitated the preceding events…

Organized by Dyani Douze and Ali Rosa-Salas, “MAMI,” an exhibition of work by five artists and one collective–all woman-identified artists of color–was an “offering” to the water deities known as Mami Wata. Often depicted as half-female, half-fish, Mami Wata were central to the precolonial matriarchal systems of West and Central Africa…

by Maya Harakawa