Picture Collection Fellow Saar Shemesh uses feminist ideas in abstract and unconventional ways to rethink how we understand bodies, space, and feelings.

The Library’s Picture Collection is composed of 1.5 million circulating images across 12,000 subjects, the largest of its kind in any public library system. Educator and artist Saar Shemesh reflects on their Picture Collection Fellowship and on how working with a physical archive can shape a conceptual practice—especially when the search is not literal or fixed, but becomes a kind of collaboration between visitor and archive. Their work explores how things constantly change at every scale, from the body to the landscape, drawing on visceral references like the glistening of mucosal membranes or the violent beauty of craters, using strong physical imagery to show that both materials and emotions resist containment.

To join | Please register for an In-Person Ticket. Doors will open around 1:30 PM. For free events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. All registered seats are released shortly before start time, and seats may become available at that time. A standby line will form 30 minutes before the program.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Saar Shemesh (b. New York) is an artist and educator whose creative practice uses the aesthetics of feminist abstraction and abjection to complicate bodily, spatial, and emotional binary logics through interdisciplinary means. Their work examines conditions of mutability on micro and macro scales, drawing on visceral references like the glistening of mucosal membranes and the violent beauty of craters, highlighting the way materials and emotions resist containment.

Shemesh has been an artist-in-residence at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, RAIR Philly, Franconia Sculpture Park, SOMA in Mexico City, and The New York Public Library’s Picture Collection, and has presented their work at Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA), Current Space (Baltimore, MD), Artlot (Brooklyn, NY), Virginia MoCA (Norfolk, VA), Hercules Project Space and ABC No Rio (New York, NY) among others. Shemesh holds an MFA in Sculpture and Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

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ACCESSIBILITY

In-Person | You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service at least two weeks in advance of the event: please submit your request via this form. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs.

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Courtesy Saar Shemesh