Program

SP1
Celeste
Cosmos, 2025
Pigment and acrylic base on dyed cotton canvas.
Presented by JO-HS (C7)

The Cosmos flower, native to central Mexico (Cosmos bipinnatus), transforms the landscape with its pink hues during every rainy season. Its resilience has allowed it to migrate naturally, following the cycles of water. It is likely that this very flower once bloomed in the legendary gardens of the philosopher and warrior Nezahualcóyotl, or "fasting coyote" and was the name of a wise and influential ruler of the ancient city-state of Texcoco, sustained by the intricate network of canals and aqueducts he designed to keep the land perpetually fertile. There, water was organized in three levels: above, the streams descending from the mountains; at the center, the pool that received and distributed them; and below, the stairways through which water flowed, giving life at the foot of the mountain. The piece is conceived as a vessel for water, a space that gathers and guides it with the sole purpose of making life flourish and greenery return. Within it, two flows—one ascending and one descending—meet and intertwine in a spiral.


SP2
Cristina Molina
Entre Agua Salada y Agua Dulce (Between Salty and Sweet Water), 2024-2025
Video installation, clay, glaze, and pigment prints on aluminum
Presented by Other Plans Gallery (New Orleans, LA)

Entre Agua Salada y Agua Dulce (Between Salty and Sweet Water) is imagined as a portrait of prominent waterways that link artist Cristina Molina’s two home territories, Miami and New Orleans. In this work, The Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean are personified via dance and movement as untamed dual-spirits who hold the endless memory of the most important waterways in the American South. Prompted by these water bodies' histories of extraction and containment, gestures informed by rhythmic movements (carrying, holding, diverting, flooding, draining) are choreographed and performed for the camera along the Mississippi River in New Orleans and the Ocean-side in Miami Beach.

Presented as five-channel video installation and accompanying sculptures made from wild Mississippi River clay and glaze containing still photographs of the water and dancers, Entre Agua Salada y Agua Dulce (Between Salty and Sweet Water) draws parallels between water bodies, spiritual bodies, and physical bodies, and the corporeal water dances serve to symbolically incarnate the contested and celebratory aspects of the River and Ocean’s history and memory.


SP3
Cameron Harvey
Gathering by the shore, 2025
Acrylic on canvas
Presented by Official Welcome (Los Angeles, CA)

In Gathering by the shore, Cameron Harvey presents a suite of new paintings inspired by objects she found in nature while walking along the beach in California, including seaweed, leaves and shells. Grounded in the ritual habits of everyday life, Harvey’s process based painting practice begins with daily walks. Walking is where and when Harvey gathers her thoughts and inspiration. Plant matter collected while perambulating is the starting point for color and shape in Harvey’s compositions. Her large paintings resemble soft sculptures and are made of two pieces of canvas separated by a central midline from which they extend in bilateral, and sometimes imperfect symmetry. The consistent use of this formal strategy reveals both the diversity and variability that exists within repetition, exploring the idea of a midline as a unifying element. Simultaneously abstract and referential to things in the real world, each painting is shaped with careful cuts and draping, saturated in luminous color, and made on the floor with fluid color, using the artist's entire body.


SP4
iris yirei hu
Dream as Mirror, 2025
Acrylic, natural pigments, pastel, and colored pencil on linen
Presented by Official Welcome (Los Angeles, CA)

Official Welcome Los Angeles presents new paintings and ceramics by iris yirei hu. hu roots her art practice in processes of material and spiritual transformation, as evidenced in labor intensive pieces and installations that explore the subterranean realms of grief and loss, cycles of life and death, the earthly and the otherworldly, and the infinitely evolving self. Her new paintings feature flowers, pollen, seeds, and organs suspended in rich indigo colored backgrounds. Alongside the paintings, hu presents bones made from porcelain at the Kohler residency. Referencing symbols from her dreams and motifs that occur in the natural world, hu’s works reflect the subconscious emergence of intuition and wisdom that connect human beings across cultures and time.


SP5
Hugo Blomley
A Free Way, 2025
Bronze, fiberglass, polyurethane, polyester casting resin, and stainless steel
Presented by Neon Parc (A27)

Hugo Blomley’s creative process is both rigorous and ambitious, shaped by an ongoing engagement with materiality as a mode of problem-solving. His sculptures evolve through continual iterations of making, shifting between states as they move from initial conception to final form. A Free Way is a body of new sculptures, in which Hugo has turned his meticulous attention towards the surfaces of the works. He has used patina and pigments to create objects that resist interpretation - they oscillate between familiar and unknown in the way that the colour and marks have been applied. Polished surfaces evoke mechanical and industrial forms while mottled pigments take on an organic appearance. They are at once sensuous and enigmatic. The resolute formality of the works remind us that surface is not decoration but instead a condition to be endured - not a veil hiding the truth but truth itself


SP6
Leonel Vásquez
Caudales, 2024
Wood, copper, steel, recycled aluminum, stones, wooden needles, and brass
Presented by Casa Hoffmann (Bogota, CO)

Vásquez’s work explores relational listening and dialogue with the living world, paying tribute to water as a vital and sentient presence. Through his sound sculptures, he amplifies the voices of water landscapes degraded by impacts of climate change, industrialization, and armed conflict—especially rivers that once resonated with life but now lie in silence. Yet within their stillness, these waters retain ancient, quieted memories. Vásquez understands listening as a political, aesthetic, and reparative act, a way to restore bonds within damaged social and ecological contexts.

His works include analog amphibious instruments such as singing bowls, sitars, and gramophones crafted from wood, glass, and copper. Through experimental lutherie, he translates the voices of rivers into immersive soundscapes that recall a once-harmonious relationship between humans and nature. These resonant vibrations invite the body into magnetic states of equilibrium and well-being, reconnecting us with our essence and with the river’s offering: the healing of body and territory.



SP7
Edra Soto
los 4 vientos / in all directions, 2025
Mixed media
Presented by Morgan Lehman Gallery (C29)

At the core Soto’s practice lies her relationship with Puerto Rico’s contemporary cultural identity, which has been fundamentally shaped by its historical association with Spanish colonial military architecture, notwithstanding the fact that this alliance concluded over a century ago. With each journey back to the island, her curiosity deepens regarding the prominence of this architectural reference and the building identity within our archipelago. Soto’s work analyzes the underlying relationships between these structures and concepts of self-worth. In examining the cultural and historical significance of residential architecture throughout working-class Puerto Rico, Soto highlights the decorative motives that endow these homes with an often overlooked personal and cultural value, which merits preservation and elevation. Despite internalized colonial practices that influence our self-perception, evoke a desire for greater aspirations, and compel us to pursue idealized notions of how life ‘should’ be, Soto’s work offers alternative perspectives that are both attainable and sustainable, fostering a sense of community.

SP8
Scott Hocking
Water Works, 2025
Found objects and mixed media
Presented by Library Street Collective (A35)

Hocking’s Water Works and Relics, both series created in and sourced from a former WWII-era marina in Detroit, form a layered response to water’s roles in shaping the physical landscapes and histories of labor, industry, and ecological transformation. Through sculptural installations made entirely of maritime and industrial remnants collected onsite, Hocking maps the shifting relationship between humans and water, tracing a line between regional specificity and globally resonant concerns: extraction and repair, industrial decline, environmental stewardship, and the quiet choreography of nonhuman collaboration.

The Water Works are sculptures made during Hocking’s ongoing studio residency in a decommissioned marina along the Detroit River—part of the Great Loop, a continuous waterway connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Hocking has approached the marina as a kind of archaeological site, sourcing his materials directly from its grounds—rusted industrial offcuts, pigment-stained buckets, driftwood shaped by beavers. These castoff elements are reassembled into abstract forms that echo nautical infrastructure and ritual objects alike, whose materials hold the memory of water and the labor it once demanded.

SP9
Tiff Massey
Belle Island, 2025
Brass and stainless steel
Presented by Tiff Massey Studios (Detroit MI)

In Belle Island, Massey reimagines Detroit’s historic island park as a sculptural sanctuary—one that honors the emotional and ancestral gravity of water. Made of brass and stainless steel, the work transforms the booth into a sacred, reflective space. Belle Isle becomes more than a park—it’s cast as a confidant, a healer, a family member. It’s a place to reflect, to unwind, to fish and grill, to flex and stunt. To show up fresh, loud, and loved.

The piece also draws on the power of Oshun, the Yoruba Orisha of sweet waters, sensuality, and healing. Massey invokes her through shine, surface, and flow—paying homage to the divine feminine and to water’s generational role in Black healing and transformation. From family reunions to first dates, Massey captures how Belle Isle operates as both backdrop and center stage: a space where beauty, power, and presence are never mutually exclusive.

SP10
Nicole Cherubini
The Secrets of the Flowers of Refinement, or the Vulgarity of Loneliness, 2025
Terracotta, earthenware, glaze, soil, and plants
Presented by SEPTEMBER (Kinderhook, NY)

The title of Cherubini’s project, taken from a short story by Leonora Carrington, is in reference to the beauty of art and creativity and then, also, the deep struggles existing currently in our culture. They are each the antidote for the other. Reimagining the conversation of use, function, and value she invites visitors to sit, pause, and reflect. Cherubini hopes that providing moments of rest, community and conversation, the viewers can contemplate and restore. Beauty holds purpose, and here this is being offered not only visually but physically to the viewer.

This is a conglomerative installation of Cherubini’s geometric, clay-cast and glazed benches from the past four years. By pulling together these fragments and pieces of diverse ideas and conceptual materials, she is opening up the idea of time and history, not only of her own making but of the work. Since the pieces have held bodies over time, each one inherently holds the experience of the viewer. There is a reciprocity here between art and humanity.

SP11
Annie Briard
Staring at the Sun, 2025
Mixed media
Presented by MKG127 (C43)

Staring at the Sun calls up the old adage, inviting viewers to risk blindness by prolonging their gaze. In a darkened room, an enigmatic projection appears on a wall. As the dome-shaped projection moves through the chromatic spectrum of visible light, the device triggers an unexpectedly complex psycho-emotional phenomenon. The installation is supported by low-frequency ambient audio, which Briard has specifically designed to arouse somatic responses, using a frequency discovered by NASA that is often associated with paranormal apparitions as it causes the iris to vibrate, potentially provoking visual hallucinations. Contributing to the immersive experience is a theta rhythm, which is used in neurological research to activate organic visual functions. The installation produces lingering images, illusions of movement and chimeric colours in the spectators’ minds. Briard blurs the line between the tangible and the imaginary, drawing our attention to the conjectural instability of perceptions.

SP12
Marco DaSilva, Leah Dixon, Jack Henry, Heidi Norton, Carlos Rosales-Silva, Carlo Cittadini, Anders Lindseth, and Alexandra Hammond
BEVERLY’S
Mixed media
Presented by BEVERLY’S (New York, NY)

This year BEVERLY’S addresses the 2025 Special Project theme of water. Their presentation will be a staged set of a Venetian Palazzo during high tide. A water line will be present along the entire bottom of the booth, lapping up against the painted archways of the palazzo. This presentation pays homage to the cultural relationship between three influential port cities - Venice, Italy – ancient site of converging cultures, Miami Beach – the home of Untitled Art, and New York City – the home of BEVERLY’S and the center of the contemporary art world. The iconic BEVERLY’S neon sign will adorn the central arch – representing their own place in this history, and their shared vulnerability as a site under threat of rising tides.

SP13
Shaina Kasztelan, Evan Mazellan, Sara Nickleson, Cyrah Dardas, Jessica Wildman Katz, and Halima Afi Cassells
Reflections of the Tangible World, 2025
Mixed Media
Presented by Buffalo Prescott (Detroit, MI)

Named after the river that runs along the city’s south side, ‘Detroit’ comes from the French ‘détroit’, meaning 'strait'. Its passage connects Lake Huron and Lake Erie, two of the Great Lakes that surround Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas. It is the only state that borders four of the five Great Lakes; as such, water—life-sustaining, transient, and fragile—makes its way into the work of many Detroit artists. Buffalo Prescott's Resident Artists present Reflections of the Tangible World in a presentation of works considering water through ritual, reflection, and reverberation.

SP14
Kite (Oglála Lakȟóta)
Wakpá Iyóžaŋžaŋ (River of Light), 2025
Mixed Media
Presented by Tulsa Artist Fellowship and Central Standard (Tulsa, OK)

Emerging from Kite’s ongoing exploration of the Lakota understanding of the Milky Way as a Wakpá Iyóžaŋžaŋ—a river of light that carries loved ones across the sky—this presentation expands Kite’s inquiry into Indigenous cosmologies, sound, and dreaming. Kite approaches the Milky Way not as a literal body of water but as a process: a method of remembering, relating, and transmitting knowledge. Her work centers on scores—compositions that translate dreaming and memory into tactile, visual, and sonic form. Rather than focusing on water as substance, Wakpá Iyóžaŋžaŋ (River of Light) treats it as conduit—of memory, of light, of intergenerational movement. “These works are not metaphors for dreaming; they are the dream itself, metabolized into form,” explains the artist.

Across these works, Kite continues her practice of creating scores meant to be felt, sung, and held—articulating a language of connection between body, land, and cosmos, and demonstrating how Indigenous knowledge systems can shape contemporary art and technology.



SP15
Bex McCharen
Queer Aquatics, 2025
Quilting, cyanotype printmaking, photography, and watercolor painting on paper
Presented by Oolite Arts + Dot Fiftyone Gallery (Miami, FL)

Rooted in Miami’s oceanic landscapes, the installation celebrates the sea as a sanctuary where queer and trans communities gather to feel accepted, held, and whole. McCharen reimagines the ocean as both a physical and spiritual refuge—an ever-shifting archive of belonging and resilience. Each quilt functions as an embrace, evoking the warmth and protection of chosen family while drawing upon McCharen’s ancestral lineage of quilters from Virginia. Layering textiles, sun-printed cyanotypes, photographic imagery, and fluid washes of pigment, the artist constructs visual narratives that counter erasure, honoring moments of joy, intimacy, and renewal experienced in local waters. Queer Aquatics embodies McCharen’s ongoing practice of mutual dreaming and collective reimagining—inviting viewers to immerse themselves in a world where care flows freely and water becomes a metaphor for love without boundaries.



SP16
Kenny Nguyen
Interwoven Series No 1, 2025
Silk, acrylic paint, and canvas
Presented by Sundaram Tagore Gallery (A55)

For Untitled Art’s 2025 Special Projects Sector, Sundaram Tagore Gallery presents an expansive, richly colorful installation composed of strips of silk by Kenny Nguyen (b. 1990, Bến Tre Province, Vietnam). On view for the first time, Interwoven Series No 1 is part of a dynamic new series of sculptural paintings recently introduced by the artist.

Raised on a remote coconut farm in southern Vietnam, Nguyen moved to Ho Chi Minh City at 17 to study fashion design. He began working as a designer but decided to leave his career behind to relocate to the United States with his family in 2010. Unfamiliar with the English language, he began creating art, employing painting as a form of communication.

Nguyen was naturally drawn to experimenting with silk, a highly revered fabric in Vietnam, which he had previously used to create garments. “Silk may appear delicate, but it’s the strongest natural fiber on earth, so it reflects resilience,” he says. Over time, he developed a distinctive technique using the fabric to create abstract three-dimensional paintings. He begins by hand cutting silk into strips. He then mixes and pours various colors of acrylic paint onto a palette, creating a multicolored surface. After soaking strips of silk in this paint mixture, he affixes them to a raw canvas with the wet paint serving as an adhesive. The result is a structured but malleable medium that the artist sculpts into fluid, rippling forms. Nguyen’s shifting gradients of color flow across the canvas in soft, rolling waves, imbuing the composition with a sense of the rhythm and movement.




SP17
Carlos Rolón
Esta Cabrón, 2025
Embroidered tarp
Presented by Hexton Gallery (C33)

Esta Cabrón belongs to Rolón’s ongoing series of embroidered tarpaulins made in collaboration with Pro-Techos, a non-profit organization that rebuilds roofs across Puerto Rico. Using salvaged tarps once employed for post-hurricane shelter, the artist transforms materials of survival into monumental works of resilience and cultural pride. The phrase Esta Cabrón—an untranslatable expression that can mean “this is tough,” “this is wild,” or “this is incredible”—embodies both hardship and admiration. Through this duality, the work becomes a portrait of endurance and celebration within Puerto Rican identity.

Known for a multidisciplinary practice that merges craft, ritual, and social engagement, Rolón explores beauty, spirituality, and cultural hybridity through sculpture, painting, and installation. Born to a Puerto Rican family, his work often reflects on domestic spaces and the ways immigrant households adapt to new environments while preserving memory and belonging. By merging the visual language of the everyday with art historical references, Rolón bridges public and private experience. His practice transforms nostalgia and material fragility into power, love, and collective resilience.




SP18
Karla Kantorovich
Transient Nature, 2019-2025
Mesh, textiles, yarn, bark, leaves, gesso, pigments, and found objects.
Presented Dimensions Variable (A91)

Transient Nature is a sculptural installation that explores the fluid boundary between permanence and change — a poetic drift that lingers between presence and transformation. Conceived by Kantorovich, the work transforms material presence into quiet reflection, tracing the movement of water through cycles of erosion, renewal, and becoming.

Composed of handmade paper, natural fibers, pigments, recycled fishing mesh, and found organic materials, the sculpture evokes geological layers and eroded sediments — surfaces shaped by time and marked by memory. Suspended high above the viewer, it captures a moment of transformation where what was once fluid becomes still.

Anchored in a reflection on humanity’s relationship with nature, Transient Nature contemplates the fragility of ecosystems and our disconnection from the very element that sustains life. It invites us to perceive nature not merely as a resource, but as a living presence — a quiet call to return, to listen, and to restore harmony with the living world that sustains us.