A makeshift Wailing Wall on a chain link fence in an alley next to Waste Management.A U-Haul truck decorated with glittery foil strips with the words “Sparkle Motion” above it while girls in leotards sold cupcakes.A lute-playing Renaissance fairy named Steve.
A great Williamsburg party?Well yes, but more likely it was another Arts in Bushwick festival.
On November 8, dozens of curators and hundreds of Williamsburg-based artists opened their studios, living rooms, and sidewalks to curious art-goers during Arts in Bushwick’s third annual curator-driven festival, BETA Spaces.
With exhibitions names like “Fortress to Solitude Self-Absorbed: Portraiture These Days,” “Linking Language and Lexicons Literally and Laterally,” and “EatF—,” the festival included a wide range of artwork and media.Exhibitions that were deemed most successful were ones that a curator organized around a particular theme and stuck with it.
One of the more popular exhibitions, “Kotel-mART,” was an homage to the Wailing Wall complete with a box of messages participants could tie with wires or twine.
“We were trying to reference the Wailing Wall in Israel and we thought about New York City and people’s wishes,” said Christina Justiz of Ferravitreous Arts, who will be sending the scraps of paper to Jerusalem to be inserted into the real Wailing Wall.
Maybe someone included a wish for more arts festivals like this one in Williamsburg.
For more information about Arts in Bushwick, visit betaspaces.starkandnimo.com.
