PROGRAMMING 2026
Rawya El Chab, The Immortals: Three stories. One unfinished history
Performance and Artist Talk co-presented by ArteEast
October 8, 7-8:30PM,
Brooklyn Art Haus, 24 Marcy Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211
In this 45-minute work-in-progress performance, The Immortals, set across pivotal moments in modern Lebanese history, are interrupted by two allegorical vignettes—one drawn from the past, the other imagined from the future—creating a dialogue between memory, myth, and political imagination. Through the experiences of one family, the performance traces the hopes, contradictions, and eventual collapse of the Lebanese left.
“While Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian people are being erased, I want to anchor their reality by telling their stories,” El Chab, Hyperallergic.
Opening Celebration x El Salón: Text as Territory
Feat. Lucía Reissig, Layqa Nuna Yawar, and National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC)
Presentation, Roundtable, and Potluck
Curated by Eva Mayhabal Davis, the Bailey Coleman co-curator
October 10, 5-8PM
Nguyen Wahed, 504 E 12th St, New York, NY 10009
Taking the form of a PechaKucha-style presentation—a Japanese format consisting of a set number of images shown for 20 seconds each—participants discuss how literary references and philosophy shape their artistic practices and how censorship has stifled their voices.
Marking the opening week of the biennial, guests are invited to bring food, and the talk will be followed by a moment to break bread together, extending the series’ emphasis on conversation as a form of collective knowledge-making and warm exchange.
Vodka Drinks by Matka! Food by Re:think! Partnering with The Amplification Project!
Bring food, it’s a potluck!
LuLu Meng: Pinch of Us with Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya and Rujuta Rao
Dumpling Making Workshop co-presented by Artists Alliance Inc.
Curated by Sofia Thiệu D’Amico, the Lesley Bodzy co-curator, and Anna Khimasia, the Cynthia Wu co-curator
October 22, 7-9PM.
Essex Kitchen, 88 Essex St (mezzanine), New York, NY 10002
Email RSVP info@theimmigrantartistbiennial.com
By combining each artist's dumpling-making traditions—Taiwanese, Indian, and Thai—with distinct folding techniques, flavors, and histories, this workshop creates space for participants to explore the idea of the multicultural self. The domestic ritual of dumpling-making transforms into a playful and communal artistic experience.
Anh Vo: Phoenix Forever
Performance
Curated by Sofia Thiệu D'Amico, the Lesley Bodzy co-curator
October 30, 5-6PM. West Side Highway
Meet at 5:45. Email for location info@theimmigrantartistbiennial.com
In this newly commissioned piece, Anh Vo references Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader’s piece Fall 2 (1970), in which he rides his bike into a [...] in Amsterdam. Vo, who named the piece after the historic Chinese Phoenix brand bicycle, foregrounds Western ideals of freedom, democracy, and individual expression—in their words: “values that once promised an escape from tightly surveilled social orders.”
Vo will cycle on the West Side Highway, sharing their gilded bicycle with a saxophone player riding rear until finally, in the culmination of the performance, they [...].
Partnering with The Here and There Co.!
Plant Ecologies and Migration
Feat.Bahar Behbahani, Rachelle Dang, and Sujin Lim
Panel Discussion with Artists’ Slides
Curated by Anna Khimasia, the Cynthia Wu co-curator
November 5, 2026. 6-8PM.
Residency Unlimited, 360 Court St #4, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Botanical taxonomic categories such as "native," "non-native," and "invasive" mirror the language and systems used to regulate the movement of people, determining who is perceived as belonging and who is marked as out of place. Botanical classification thus becomes part of a broader logic of indexing, surveillance, and control, exposing the ways scientific and political systems have long been intertwined.
This panel explores how immigrant and diasporic artists use plants and the garden both as a stand-in for place, as well as a framework and vocabulary.
Partnering with Asia Art Archive in America!
Memories of Disruption
Feat. Ivana Dama, Lita Vinueza, Andrew Yong Hoon Lee, Simon Liu & Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi, Maya Jeffereis
Performance and New Media
Curated by Sanna Almajedi, the Iana Safina co-curator, and Sofia Thiệu D'Amico, the Lesley Bodzy co-curator
November 7, 6-8PM. Doors 5PM.
BRIC, 47 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Email to buy tickets info@theimmigrantartistbiennial.com
Centering sonic, visual, and geopolitical disruptions—the aftershocks of contemporary life’s collision with colonial and imperial intervention—five new media and performance artists transform BRIC into a site of disturbance and rupture.
Memories of Disruption allows audiences to feel how histories reverberate sonically and visually through bodies, landscapes, and collective cultural memory while tracing how histories of violence not only persist but can be transformed by opening space for reconfiguration, refusal, and autonomy.
Vodka Drinks by Matka! Food by Re:Think! Partnering with IMPULSE!
What We Carry
Feat. Stephanie Comilang, Pearlyn Lii, and mandla
Screening and Performance
Curated by Anna Khimasia, the Cynthia Wu co-curator, and Sofia Thiệu D'Amico, the Lesley Bodzy co-curatorNov 11, 6-8PM.
Shiva Gallery, John Jay College, 11th Ave, New York, NY 10019
Email RSVP info@theimmigrantartistbiennial.com
In these three distinctly different videos ‘what we carry,’ is framed as an ongoing negotiation shaped by histories of power. Inheritance is understood as the processes through which culture, memory, trauma, and identity are transmitted across bodies, generations, and geographies through colonialism, migration, and extraction.
Vodka Drinks by Matka! Partnering with Kinoki!