The West Harlem Art Fund (WHAF) will continue their exploration of migration and the various people that settled in the Americas with a two-part exhibition in a new venue on Governors Island in Nolan Park – Building 10B (NP/10). The first exhibition TRACES, in partnership with the Eli Klein Gallery located in the West Village and the Aicon Contemporary Gallery located in SoHo area will showcase the cultures that crossed the Bering Strait from Central Asia, South Asia and Far East Asia. The second exhibition CROSSING THE SANDS, will spotlight the people from the MENA Region (Middle East North Africa), Caribbean and Latin America with the Catinca Tabacaru Gallery from the Lower East Side and individual artists who have worked with the organization before.

The scientific communities all agree, that human migration moved east into Asia from Africa. The factors that further impacted migration across Central Asia included changing climate, landscape and inadequate food supplies.

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As people continued spreading across Eurasia, glacier ice melted and sea levels dropped causing the Bering Straits (which connects Siberia to Alaska) to be seen and then crossed. People blended and inter-married for thousands of years. The Native Americans that we know today come from that dynamic yet, many Americans are not familiar with the historic cultures of these Native people.

Through our exhibition and public programs, we wish to introduce to New Yorkers an immersive appreciation of this history but with a modern twist. Opening day is June 1st.

Artists presented in the first exhibition TRACES include: Zhong Biao, GR Iranna, Rajan Krishnan, Jamini Roy, Miao Xiaochun, Geng Xue and Ying Zhu.

About the Partners

Eli Klein Gallery has an international reputation as one of the foremost galleries specializing in contemporary Chinese art and continues to advance the careers of its represented artists and hundreds of other Chinese artists with whom it has collaborated. The Gallery has been instrumental in the loan of artwork by Chinese artists to over 100 museum exhibitions throughout the world, has published 40 books/catalogues, and has organized more than 75 exhibitions for Chinese art at our prestigious venues in New York City. Our artists have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Art Forum, Newsweek, ARTnews and have been on CNN and countless other international broadcasts, publications and online critical reviews. 

Aicon Gallery specializes in modern and contemporary non-Western art with a special focus on South Asia. The New York gallery provides a vital platform for Modern and Contemporary artists from South Asia as well as the Middle East and, finally, diasporic artists to realize their vision in a global and ever-shifting world.  Alongside in-depth, focused solo shows, the gallery presents a program of curated group exhibitions that are international in their scope and ambition.  Following recent debates in institutional curating, the program deliberately links together art produced recently with art made in the latter half of the 20th Century.  Through this, the gallery hopes to produce unexpected congruencies, shed light on multiple modernisms, make complex the designation “contemporary” and signal a shift away from simple survey exhibitions. 

The West Harlem Art Fund, Inc. is a twenty -one year old, public arts organization. WHAF offers exhibition opportunities for artists and creative professionals wishing to share their talent with NYC residents’ uptown and around the city. The West Harlem Art Fund, Inc. showcases art and culture in open, public spaces to add aesthetic interest to our part of the city; promote historical and cultural heritage; and support community involvement in local development. Our heritage symbol is the double crocodile from West Africa, which means unity in diversity.