The Speakeasy

Hello all! Sean Starowitz (a former UCP City Center Square resident) & I (Andrew Erdrich, a current UCP City Center Square Resident) are getting ready to kickoff our month+ long exhibit at La Esquina, April 7 at 6pm! The exhibit is called The Speakeasy & we would love to see your smiling faces there! Sean & I have curated the Speakeasy to be an exhibition that presents dialogue driven art practice through an evolving cultural corridor (a la La Esquina Gallery) following themes of mobility, art & labor, & cultural activism.

Proposal from Tori Abernathy

It isn’t a static exhibition of semi-permanently installed works, but a series of organized events where we provide the context & our gallery visitors, artists, contributors, & collaborators provide the content. Some of  our scheduled events include a Food Swap, a Reading Brouhaha, a concert series, a deli, & a dialogue based Exchange series. The Speakeasy is a place and moment for experimenting with and challenging how we understand the economic and social forms that art, our work, and our place take on in order to observe how & if these experiments affect our relationships. To close I’ll borrow from Social Practice artist Gregory Sholette, from his book Dark Matter, who offers a clear interpretation of the character of this form of art practice,“Here ‘politics’ must be understood as the imaginative exploration of ideas, the pleasure of communication, the exchange of education, and the construction of fantasy, all within a radically defined social-artist practice.”

-Andrew William Erdrich