99 Canal
April 9, 7pm (doors open at 6:30 pm)
Address: 99 Canal Street, New York, NY 10002
"Works Abundancies" brings together four poetic voices and a proto-artwork for a brief duration. Positioned somewhere between the eventness of stages and exhibition displays, a microphone and a plinth, this is a temporary set-up for the reflections on documenting, capturing, and the re-intensification of overlooked actions that are present in the works of the participants.
Poet, artist and co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café Lois Elaine Griffith, writer and visual artist Coco Klockner, poet and experimental filmmaker Esther Kondo Heller and poet and visual artist Kaur Alia Ahmed will read in the company of a new work by André Magaña. Untitled (2025) couples two objects: a black stage light, and a desert-colored pan-tilt that assists the movement of surveillance cameras in the southern border and the US occupation projects of the Middle East. Their original functions are the production of utility, illusion and information. Magaña’s gesture of coupling puts together a columnar arrangement that critically echoes the form of plinths and any other support that elevates artifacts from the ground, inducing a new relation to the surroundings.
Curated by Juf, Works Abundancies is the first of a series of events that consider abundance and the margins in which to find it, poetry, work and works of art, as well as the staging and display elements that support, undermine and disseminate the latter.
ACCESS INFORMATION: 99 canal is located at 99 Canal street, floor 6, in Chinatown; between Forsyth St and Eldridge St. The closest trains are B/D (Grand St) and East Broadway (F); the closest wheelchair accessible stop is the 6 (Canal). The space, 6 floor, is wheelchair accesible via elevator. Service animals are welcome.
Lois Elaine Griffith is an artist/writer/teacher who is one of the founders of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. She was a 2024 Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Black Culture, where she began work on her multi-layered project - Come To Terms/Llegar A Un Acuerdo. Most recently Granary Books has published her picture-poems - You See What You See.
André Magaña is an artist living and working in New York City. He is interested in the technical, utilitarian, and operational aspects of production as corollaries for the relationships between people and labor, access, and movement. Andre Magaña’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Veronica, Seattle, WA; Gallery Kendra Jayne Patrick, Bern, Switzerland; King’s Leap, New York. Recent group exhibitions at guadalajara90210, Mexico City, MX; foreign & domestic, New York, NY; PUBLIC Gallery, London, UK; in lieu, Los Angeles, CA; Magenta Plains, New York, NY; SculptureCenter, Queens, NY; His work has been featured and reviewed in Art In America, ArtForum, New York Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and CULTURED Magazine. He is represented by Gallery Kendra Jayne Patrick, Bern, Switzerland.
Esther K. Heller is a poet, literary critic, and experimental sound- and filmmaker. They are a Barbican Young Poet, an Obsidian Foundation Fellow, a Ledbury Critic, and an Image Text Ithaca Junior Fellow. Kondo is the author of Ar:range:ments (Fonograf Editions, 2025), her writing has appeared in the Georgia Review, BOMB , Modern Poetry in Translation, and, the Guardian. Their films and performances have been screened and performed amongst other places at the Berlinale Expanded Forum, Alchemy Moving Image Festival, ICA London and Ballhaus Naunynstrasse (Berlin).
Coco Klockner is an artist and writer living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of K-Y (Genderfail Press, 2019), and her writing has appeared in Texte Zur Kunst, Spike Art Magazine, The Whitney Review, Real Life Mag, and elsewhere. Klockner has had solo exhibitions at Silke Lindner, New York; Bad Water, Knoxville, TN; stop-gap projects, Columbia, MO; The Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA; Vent Space, Baltimore, MD; and her work has been included in group exhibitions at Skol Arts Actuels, Montreal, QC, CA; White Columns, New York; Lubov, New York; Gaudalajara 90210, CDMX, MX; Bass & Reiner, San Francisco, CA; MoMA PS1, New York; International Center of Photography, New York; Stove Works, Chattanooga, TN; and Musik Installationen Nürnberg, DE. Klockner is director of the project space hatred 2 in Brooklyn, and her upcoming solo exhibition at SculptureCenter, New York, opens October 2025.
Kaur Alia Ahmed is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn. They make glass, video, poems, plays, and tattoos, and are a recent graduate of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Their work has been presented at Entrance Gallery, LTK Enterprises, Alyssa Davis Gallery, Interstate Projects, and Rhizome. You can find their poems published in Baest Journal, the Poetry Project Newsletter, and BOMB Magazine. Cursive Paradise, their forthcoming book of poetry, will be published by Wendy's Subway in 2025).