A free community workshop organized by the Downtown Brooklyn Management Fellows (2017-2018)

Brooklyn community members gathered in BRIC’s Artist Studio on Saturday, May 19, 2018 for an afternoon of Freedom Dreaming. In exploration of distinguished U.S. History Professor Robin D.G. Kelley’s concept of Freedom Dreaming, the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Management Fellows programmed this event as a manifestation of our own Freedom Dreams as a cohort of women of color working towards equity in arts management. Freedom Dreaming encourages participants to create the world we dream of by first, visualizing the future we want to live in and second, determining the actions that will lead us there.

For the 40th season of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, BRIC commissioned artist Grimanesa Amorós to create a site-specific light sculpture, which will be on display at the Bandshell all summer long. We spoke with Ms. Amorós about this project, which is called HEDERA, and the inspiration behind her work at the Bandshell and her art exhibited around the world.

BRIC is pleased to have Macon Reed as a spring 2018 BRICworkspace visual artist-in-residence. Reed is an artist whose work is illustrated through sculpture, installation, video, radio documentary, painting, pedagogical and participatory projects. Motivated by political issues and human relationships in the queer and feminist community, her work is elaborated by life experiences, developing new relationships and finding ways to support the communities through her art or volunteering. We spoke with Reed to learn more about her practice, process, and recent work.

Aruni Dharmakirthi is an interdisapinlnary artist whose work is inspired by their Sir Lankan and western culture. As a BRICworkspace Artist-in-Residence fellow Dharmakirthi uses the mediums of digital animation and fibers, manipulating family photographs, sourced imagery, and fabric, to make digital and handmade collages. Their work has been featured internationally in exhibitions conveying  ideas of memory, place, and identity, centering around the effects of colonization on immigrants who choose to leave their native country.