Imagining De-Gentrified Futures
curated by Betty Yu
- Online Opening: Nov. 4, 6 - 6:45 pm
Online: November 5 - December 19, 2020
On view at
291 Church St: November 5 - December 19, 2020
Thurs - Sat, 1-6 pm
Reserved times available
- Artists:
Black Quantum Futurism
Imani Jacqueline Brown
Sandra de la Loza
Chinatown Art Brigade
Robin Holder
Betty Yu
Radical Housing Manifestos:
Thomas Angotti
Alicia Grullon
Hate Free Zone
Lynn Lewis,
The Picture the Homeless Oral
History Project
Antoinette Martinez,
Protect Sunset Park
Robert Robinson
Pati Rodriguez,
Mi Casa No Es Su Casa
Samuel Stein
Sunset Park Popular Assembly
- Resources:
print brochure
press release
checklist
Working class communities, immigrant communities, and communities of color across U.S. cities have been disproportionately impacted by hyper-gentrification and displacement over the last fifteen years.
Is it possible to disrupt dominant narratives that depict gentrification as "inevitable" and a "natural" part of urban evolution—monolithic assertions that often come from real estate speculators, developers, extractive industries and the 1%? Can we harness our collective resources and trace a new trajectory that allows communities to flourish without being priced out of our neighborhoods?
Imagining De-gentrified Futures is an interactive exhibition attempting to imagine socially-just futures for our cities and aiming to rethink the assumed trajectory of urban development. Drawing inspiration from antigentrification resistance across the U.S., decolonization movements, and Afrofuturism, this exhibition gives permission to imagine, to dream, to unleash and explore ways in which socially-just futures can exist for city communities.
Works on view take a variety of approaches to examine and suggest strategies for the challenges in cities like Hollywood, Philadelphia, New Orleans, New York City's Chinatown and Brooklyn's Sunset Park.
Is it possible to disrupt dominant narratives that depict gentrification as "inevitable" and a "natural" part of urban evolution—monolithic assertions that often come from real estate speculators, developers, extractive industries and the 1%? Can we harness our collective resources and trace a new trajectory that allows communities to flourish without being priced out of our neighborhoods?
Imagining De-gentrified Futures is an interactive exhibition attempting to imagine socially-just futures for our cities and aiming to rethink the assumed trajectory of urban development. Drawing inspiration from antigentrification resistance across the U.S., decolonization movements, and Afrofuturism, this exhibition gives permission to imagine, to dream, to unleash and explore ways in which socially-just futures can exist for city communities.
Works on view take a variety of approaches to examine and suggest strategies for the challenges in cities like Hollywood, Philadelphia, New Orleans, New York City's Chinatown and Brooklyn's Sunset Park.
Betty Yu is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, educator, and activist born and raised in NYC to Chinese immigrant parents. Ms. Yu integrates documentary film, new media platforms, and community-infused approaches into her practice, and she is a co-founder Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-gentrification organizing. Her work has been presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, Tribeca Film Festival's Interactive Showcase, The Eastman Kodak Museum, and the 2019 BRIC Biennial. She holds a BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a MFA from Hunter College, and currently teaches video, social practice, art and activism at Pratt Institute, John Jay College, and The New School, in addition to 20 her years of community, media justice, and labor organizing work.
Related Events
Curator Betty Yu and apexart Director of Operations Elizabeth Larison speak about Elongated Shadows.
Black Quantum Futurism
All Time Is Local, 2019, Installation with printed images, clocks, ephemera, Dimensions Variable; Community Futurisms: Time & Memory in North Philly 002 — Black Space Agency, 2019, Installation with ephemera, Dimensions Variable, Installation view.
Rasheedah Phillips of Black Quantum Futurism discusses their work in the exhibition.
“When we think about de-gentrified futures as a collective, we think about futures that are quantum, we think about futures that are non-binary, we think about futures that are full of paradoxes... So futures that are poly and multiple and polyrhythmic. Futures that are abundant and feminine and non-linear and whatever direction we want them to be. Futures that are communal.”
- Rasheedah Phillips of
Black Quantum Futurism
All Time is Local, 2019, Video, 5 min.
Black Space Agency, 2019, Video, 4:09 min.
Project Time Capsule, 2019, Video, 1:02 min.
Community Futurisms: Time & Memory in North Philly 002 — Black Space Agency, 2019, Installation with surveys, ephemera, Dimensions Variable.
Black Space Agency, 2019, Video, 4:09 min.
Project Time Capsule, 2019, Video, 1:02 min.
Community Futurisms: Time & Memory in North Philly 002 — Black Space Agency, 2019, Installation with surveys, ephemera, Dimensions Variable.
Imani Jacqueline Brown
Imani Jacqueline Brown discusses her work in the exhibition.
“Ultimately a de-gentrified future would be a future wherein we reject these colonial values….where peoples’ lives are reinfused with meaning, where people are reinfused with meaning and where the earth is reinfused with its inherent dignity and value.”
- Imani Jacqueline Brown
Sandra de la Loza
The Speculator's Eden, 2019, Shadow puppets, printed transparencies, colored gels, Dimensions variable.
Sandra de la Loza discusses her work in the exhibition.
“The de-gentrified future that I imagine is us returning to the land and acknowledging the land as ancestor, as teacher, as resource, and as inspiration for resiliency.”
- Sandra de la Loza
Archival Poem #1
Archival Poem #2 - Speculator's Eden
Archival Poem #2 - Storyboard
Archival Poem #3 - Sinkholes and undercurrents amidst the era of binge development
Archival Poems (To Oblivion: A Speculator's Eden), 2019, Recorded performance, 12:43 min.
Dear Eduardo, 2017, Digital Video, 7:38 min.
Dear Eduardo, 2017, Digital Video, 7:38 min.
Chinatown Art Brigade
Imagining a Future Chinatown, 2016, Digital reprints of brainstorming sessions, Dimensions variable.
Chinatown Art Brigade introduces their work in the exhibition.
Introduction - Imagining our Ideal Chinatown and Housing Justice
Chinatown Art Brigade, Here to Stay, 2016, Digital video, 18:27 min.
Robin Holder

Falling Figures, 2019, Colored pencil, acrylic paint, archival inkjet print drawing, Dimensions variable
Robin Holder discusses her work in the exhibition.
“I think my work addresses whatever futuristic urban society that we could have or might structure or build or expand. Really for us in the United States, and for us in New York City, we need to really think communally, which Americans are really not good at… I really think we need to listen and that is not also a natural American trait.” - Robin Holder
Radical Housing Manifestos
"Picture the Homeless Oral Histories: Nikita Price," 2017, Audio interview conducted by Lynn Lewis of the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project, 2 hr. 25 min.
"Picture the Homeless Oral History Shorts," 2017, Audio interviews conducted by Lynn Lewis of the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project, 40:14 min.
Betty Yu

Betty Yu, De-Gentrifying My Parents' Block, 2020, Digital photo print, 13 x 66 ¼ in
Betty Yu, A 2020 De-Gentrified Manifesto for 2050, 2020, Digital 360° video, 10:42 min.
Betty Yu discusses her work in the exhibition.
INSTALLATION IMAGES
BROCHURE IMAGES
apexart’s program supporters past and present include the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, the Buhl Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Spencer Brownstone, the Kenneth A. Cowin Foundation, Epstein Teicher Philanthropies, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., William Talbott Hillman Foundation/Affirmation Arts Fund, the Fifth Floor Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and administered by LMCC, funds from NYSCA Electronic Media/Film in Partnership with Wave Farm: Media Arts Assistance Fund, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.