The Sixth Borough, Governors Island, New York

Title

The Sixth Borough, Governors Island, New York

Curation

Curated by NLE (No Longer Empty) curators Asher Remy Toledo, Manon Slome, Julian Navarro and Regine Basha

Year

2010

Works

The Island of Dr. Mastrovito

Notes

No Longer Empty invited visitors to The Sixth Borough, a series of site-specific art installations curated for the 2010 summer art festival on Governors Island. The theme for NLE’s exhibition on this former military base—evacuated by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1996—was developed from the Island’s apparent stasis and its marked contrast to the teeming growth of neighboring Manhattan. With its abandoned genteel homes, library, movie-theater, church, shops and fortifications, Governors Island seemed to have kept the enemy of time at bay.

The Sixth Borough explored this paradox and the parallel realities of the mainland and the island, which exist in spatial proximity but in different states of being. Visitors felt this sense of dislocation from the moment they stepped off of the ferry. Multiple artistic interventions and perspectives—including installation, painting, photography, film and performance—moved the visitor through the island's structures, exploring notions of memory, residual entities of the past and transitions between worlds.

Details

The Island of Dr. Mastrovito, installation view at Governors Island, 2010

The Island of Dr. Mastrovito, installation view at Governors Island, 2010, detail