“Beyond the Bedrock”
Yasmeen Abdallah
Melinda Kiefer Santiago
Katrina Slavik
PS122 Gallery, 150 1st Ave, NYC
Opening: Friday, Oct 10th, 6-8pm
Dates: October 5 – 31, 2025
Additional programming to be announced.
“Beyond the Bedrock” explores our entangled relationship to urban soils. Through installation, assemblage, textiles, painting, and food, the exhibition considers our role in consumption and decomposition. The show developed from a conversation between NYC based mixed media artists, Yasmeen Abdallah, Melinda Kiefer Santiago, and Katrina Slavik about how art can act as a method for communion and regeneration in the city, literally and metaphorically unearthing layers of history.
Yasmeen Abdallah incorporates sociopolitical aspects and engagement as central points in her interdisciplinary practice. Her background in historical and collaborative archaeology made way for her experience in working on two field schools with tribal communities in New England, opening up a deep respect and connection to the earth. From excavating middens and conducting shovel test pits, to floating soil samples in the labs and returning it to the reservations where tribal members blessed it and returned it to the earth; Abdallah has grown a profound appreciation and understanding of the mysterious wonders that live amongst and embedded within it.
Melinda Kiefer Santiago digs into soil research, particularly around toxic legacies and perceptions of the Anthropocene, locating her work materially in Queens, the Bronx, Governors Island as well as Long Island and New Mexico. During her 2024 Urban Soils Residency at Swale House on Governors Island which inspired a great deal of her work for the show, she was fortunate to test her soil samples, a free service offered to the public. From testing, she found that the soil at the playground in her neighborhood in Astoria was safe, and the soil from an abandoned house nearby had higher levels of heavy metals but not as high as the soil on Governors Island, a former military site. By knowing more about the legacies in the earth we inhabit, the more steps we can take for healing. Materials and methods for her assemblages and paintings range from embroidery to boiling food bones, photographing views of samples through a microscope as well as directly collaging stones and painting with soil pigment she collects from Queens, the Bronx, and also the north shore of Long Island, which was not affected by glacial melt during the last epoch. She also considers the global in the local by using research from the Trinity nuclear bomb desert test site.
Using clothing and fabrics gifted from friends, Katrina Slavik cuts, paints, quilts, embroiders, and sews textiles together, visualising connections among family, communities, ecosystems, and industrial systems. Scale and perspective shifts from underground insects and plant roots, to global manufacturing supply chains, to backyard barbecue scenes. She draws inspiration from the urban gardening culture of her community in Astoria. The use of worn-out clothing and repurposed fabric continues American working-class quilting traditions of repurposing textiles rather than throwing them out. Layered fabric is used to depict soil layers that oscillate between material texture and unconscious subterranean dreamscapes. In addition to painted textiles, Katrina also presents an assemblage on a cork board using printed images sourced from the Internet and scans of drawings by Melinda Kiefer Santiago, created in response to her residency at Swale House.
About the artists:
Yasmeen Abdallah has been a visiting and teaching artist at institutions including BRIC, Columbia University Teaching College, Children’s Museum of NYC, El Barrio Artspace, Fairleigh Dickinson, New Museum, Parsons, Pratt Institute, Residency Unlimited, Sarah Lawrence, and University of Massachusetts. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in Anthropology and Studio Art with honors, with a Minor in Women’s & Gender Studies from University of Massachusetts; and received an MFA in Fine Arts, with distinction, from Pratt Institute. Exhibitions include ABC No Rio, Art in Odd Places, the Boiler, Bronx Art Space, Bullet Space, Chashama, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, Cornell University, Ed Varie, Elizabeth Foundation, Flux Factory, Kean University, Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, Nars Foundation, Open Source, Pratt Institute, PS122 Gallery, Spring Break Art Fair, Stephen Street Gallery, Tempest, Transborder Art, University of Massachusetts, Yonkers Public Library, and Westbeth. Her work is in public, private, and traveling collections in the U.S. and abroad.
Melinda Kiefer Santiago (b. Mt. Vernon, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator. She has exhibited her work in New York at Flux Factory, SEPTEMBER Gallery, ChaShaMa, Paradice Palace, The Wassaic Project, LABspace, A.I.R Gallery, College of Staten Island, and Flowers for All Occasions Gallery, among others. Select residencies include Wave Hill Winter Workspace, Swale House, Ox Bow, Byrdcliffe, and ChaNorth. Santiago earned her BS from Skidmore College and her MFA from SUNY Purchase College.
Katrina Slavik currently lives and works in Queens, NY. She graduated from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2014 with a BFA in Painting. Her most recent solo exhibition was on view at the historic John W. Rea House at Passaic County Arts Center, NJ, January 2025. Previous solo exhibitions include Tutu Gallery, Brooklyn (2021), and Wild Bird Fund Window Gallery, Manhattan (2020) which was connected to a wildlife rehabilitation center. Selected group exhibitions include: MAPSpace, BlancSpace, All Street Gallery, Bob’s Gallery, HEREarts Gallery, and Interchurch Center Galleries, among others. This year she presented a food art activation at MAPSpace and Tempest Gallery. Residencies include Bischoff Inn Residency and NYC Audubon Society (Governors Island).