View this email in your browser
After three eventful weeks, Not For Sale: Material Traces of Protest in Chinatown & LES, 2002–Present at Citygroup is finally coming to a close. Thank you to everyone who has spent time with the exhibit or joined us for the related programming — if you haven’t had a chance to see Not For Sale yet, it’s up for three more days! Stop by Citygroup (104b Forsyth Street) this Thursday through Saturday, 2–6pm for a final viewing of Not For Sale.Finally, we’re excited to share that documentation of the exhibit will be featured in a Chinatown-themed fanzine that 8-Ball Community will be launching at the East Village Zine Fair on Saturday, June 24th. Art Against Displacement will also be participating in the fair, with various ephemera by our members and friends on offer. Mark your calendars!About the exhibit:In solidarity with decades of community activism in Lower Manhattan, Art Against Displacement presents Not For Sale: Material Traces of Protest in Chinatown & LES, 2002–Present at Citygroup. The exhibition will be on view through Saturday, June 3rd.Not For Sale resurfaces protest signs and other ephemera associated with the organizing efforts of the Coalition to Protect Chinatown & LES, spanning from the immediate aftermath of 9/11 to the present day. As an active Coalition member, Art Against Displacement has participated in the production, dissemination, and deployment of protest ephemera since its inception in 2016. Not For Sale surveys the visual character and ingenuity of ad hoc, DIY signage in several defining campaigns of the past two decades: Beyond Ground Zero, the Chinatown Working Group Plan, and actions against luxury development in Two Bridges, the construction of a new jail on the site of the Manhattan Detention Complex (known as the Tombs), and the Museum of Chinese in America’s complicity in local displacement. As creative practitioners, Art Against Displacement recognizes the indispensability of mark-making to collective protest: accordingly, Not For Sale aims to lift up, assemble, and archive the material creations of anonymous artists, activists, and community members.Based in Manhattan’s Chinatown and Lower East Side on unceded Lenape land, Art Against Displacement (AAD) is a coalition of artists and art workers that seeks to amplify the demands of those whose livelihoods are threatened by predatory development, and to work in solidarity with grassroots organizations toward community-led rezoning. Gentrification is not an inevitable result of urban development; we reject the instrumentalization of cultural workers towards the displacement of long-term residents and businesses.
Many thanks to Citygroup, the Coalition to Protect Chinatown & LES, the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association (CSWA), National Mobilization Against Sweatshops (NMASS), Fugitive Materials, Youth Against Displacement, the Emily Harvey Foundation, and all New Yorkers who struggle for housing, labor, and land justice.