Al río / To the River

By Zoe Leonard

SEPT 2022 | Critics Page

For the last six years, Zoe Leonard has been making photographs along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, particularly the many miles where the river is used to demarcate the border between the US and Mexico. The work is informed by the artist’s deep consideration of the river as a natural entity, and the human constructions engineered to control the movement of water, people, and commerce. The result of this durational engagement is a large-scale work, the first part of which is printed here: a series of eight close-ups of the river surface that expose and amplify the shifting tensions in the water's surface.

Art as Public Service

By Bayeté Ross Smith

MAY 2022 | Critics Page

I want to consider art as a public service. Wildness in art is about art being supported as a part of the fundamental way society functions. Especially considering its major role in honing our current perspectives and our sense of visual memory. For art to arise naturally in public and shared spaces, organically and practically it would simply require a philosophical shift encouraging us to find ways to support and engage with art through a variety of simple approaches.

Zoe Leonard’s Al río / To the River

By Jennie Waldow

MAY 2022 | Art Books

The publication’s release coincides with Leonard’s 2022 exhibition of the series at Mudam Luxembourg and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, but it stands alone as a unique, multi-voiced analysis of the US-Mexico border, thanks to its intelligent and thoughtful two-volume format. The images and texts are richly complementary, together forming a complex portrait of the river as both physical and symbolic terrain.

Stretching Time in River to River’s 20th Season

By Noa Weiss

JUL-AUG 2021 | Dance

Over three weekends in June, Movement Research collaborated with River to River to curate a series of processional performances in Battery Park City. I attended Okwui Okpokwasili and Emilý Æyer’s “Procession,” which proved to be both simple and challenging.