I’m excited to announce that the Emotional Baggage Cart Parade will be part of Art in Odd Places (AiOP) 2024: CARE Festival, happening from October 18-20, 2024, along 14th Street in Manhattan! Curated by Patricia Miranda and Christopher Kaczmarek, this year’s festival brings together 76 incredible artists and collectives to explore and celebrate the concept of “CARE” in all its forms.

Art in Odd Places is a unique festival where art breaks out of traditional spaces and takes over the streets, and I am thrilled to be one of the participating artists this year. This year’s theme, CARE, invites us to pause and reflect on questions like: Who do we give care to? What is worthy of our care? When can care be too much? And can we extend our care beyond ourselves, our families, and even beyond our species?

For my piece, the Emotional Baggage Cart Parade, I’m inviting everyone to come together and confront the psychological burdens we carry daily. By transforming ordinary shopping carts into mobile art installations, this parade offers a powerful metaphor for the emotional baggage we all carry. The goal is to create a communal space where participants can symbolically release these burdens, fostering empathy, connection, and healing. I’m eager to share this experience with you all!

A Preview of the Festival

Let me give you a sneak peek at some of the other powerful works you’ll encounter at the AiOP 2024 CARE Festival:

• Fungal Entanglement by the Lichen Likers is a wearable fabric sculpture activated by performance, encouraging us to care for the non-human citizens of New York City. Join them for an embodied experience that opens up new ways to connect with the environment we all share.
• COAST/LINES by Earthworks, featuring Catherine Chen and Cristina Bartley Dominguez, is a moving performance that addresses the tensions and burdens of our changing landscapes by slowly transporting a boulder sculpture through the city.
• Coneheads by Giannina Gomez offers a playful yet poignant take on public health and safety in our chaotic urban environment, helping those in need and reminding everyone to stay alert.
• you are here by Deirdre Macleod presents an alternative way of navigating and knowing a city through a slow, careful act of drawing and mapping the fragments of 14th Street at a 1:1 scale. It’s a meditative experience that makes us think about what it means to truly see and understand a place.
• WASH!: rituals for healing at the laundry line by the WasherWoman Collective is a community installation and story-sharing experience that invites us to witness and honor the contributions of our foremothers, moving through grief towards a future reimagined.
• Urban Animist Intervention Ritual Hex by Creatures From The Hole Poetry & Film Collective//Autocracy will roam 14th Street, activating urban “inanimates” and engaging the public in their whimsical and revolutionary “puppet” interventions.

These are just a few of the fantastic works that will be featured at AiOP 2024 CARE. This festival will challenge, inspire, and move us as we think deeply about what it means to care for ourselves, each other, and our world. Full details of all projects, along with the locations and timing of performances, will be released in mid-September, so stay tuned!

Join Us!

Mark your calendars for October 18-20, 2024, and come experience the art, creativity, and deep reflections on care that AiOP 2024 CARE has to offer. I can’t wait to share the streets of Manhattan with all of you in this incredible festival of public art!

See you there, and let’s join together in a chorus of care!