Scott sold the NFT “White Male for Sale” for $26,000 at Christie’s “Post-War to Present” auction on Friday afternoon.  

But “White Male for Sale” is not actually a piece of tangible art work. It’s an NFT or Non-Fungible Token, which means it’s a digital asset that represents a piece of artwork – like photographs, music, and videos – that is impossible to duplicate. Unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, an NFT is typically one of a kind, which can make them extremely valuable. In the first half of 2021, NFT sales surged to $2.5 billion, up from $13.7 million in the first half of 2020, according to Reuters. 

Scott saw the resurgence of the word ‘fungible’ as an opportunity to address slavery and capitalism simultainiously. 

“I knew the term fungible because a lot of my art addresses questions of the African diaspora and specifically enslavement in the United States,” said Scott. “You can see slave traders’ documents where they’re seeking to sell or buy slave number one, slave number two, slave number three. There was an effort to both turn people into commodities and also make them fungible. But people are inherently unique.” 

Scott intended for his NFT to flip American history on its head. For “White Male for Sale,” he chose as generic a business-clad white man he could find and planted him on a street corner in one of New York City’s predominantly Black neighborhoods. His NFT is a complete inversion of the open air slave markets of history, like the one that existed for 51 years here in the city at the corner of Wall and Pearl St.  

“Art can talk about the world we live in, and the best art does that,” said Scott, who referenced “Guernica”, one of Picasso’s most famous paintings, Billie Holiday’s haunting ballad “Strange Fruit,” and Toni Morrison’s classic “Beloved” as prime examples across multiple forms of artistic expression. 

“NFT’s are no different. It’s just a question of what artists choose to use them for,” said Scott. “Do they (artists)

The visual artist and activist Dread Scott, who’s NFT White Male for Sale sold on Friday for $26,000. Photo courtesy of Christie’s.

reinforce the status quo, where a tiny handful of people control the wealth and knowledge that humanity as a whole has created, or do they work to undermine and change that?” 

Earlier this year in March at Christie’s, the digital artist Beeple broke the internet when his “Everyday – The First 5,000 Days” NFT sold for $69 million, the largest NFT sale to date. Many high grossing NFT’s feature stills and scenes from the sports world, while others immortalize internet culture, like the gif of Nyan Cat that sold in February of this year for $580,000. 

Iris Nevins, co-founder of creative agency Umba Daima and one of the panelists from Thursday’s event before the auction, said her organization serves as a bridge between Black creators and opportunities in the NFT space.  

“Black artists and Black people in general can sometimes self isolate, because we feel safe and comfortable with each other,” said Nevins. “Umba Daima allows us to engage Black art and promote equity.”

The NFT market has mirrored the explosive growth of cryptocurrency throughout the pandemic. Nevins believes historical inequities won’t be absent in the cryptocurrency revolution and asserts that Black artists and investors need to capitalize on the potential playing out in real time. 

“We cannot separate ourselves from the systems that we live within,” said Nevins, noting that the wealth gap between Black and white Americans has widened throughout the pandemic. “The government isn’t going to provide reparations or mechanisms to close the wealth gap. I think a big part of how we actually do that is by creating pathways for Black communities to participate in wealth generation.” 

Scott, 56, has spent his career using different mediums to ignite conversation. He first rose to prominence in 1989 while still a student at The Art Institute of Chicago ) with his exhibit, “What is The Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag?” 

The exhibit, in which an American Flag is neatly laid on the floor below an open notebook and poster, ignited a national controversy that drew the attention of then-president George H. W. Bush, who called it ‘disgraceful.’ 

Later that year, when Scott and other artists burned American flags at the foot of the U.S. Capitol, his activism became an integral component of United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990), the landmark Supreme Court case that invalidated the Flag Protection Act of 1989 and protected their actions under the First Amendment. 

Scott’s next project, for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, is called “Visions of Liberation.” He hopes to build on his resume of revolutionary artwork and continue pushing the boundaries of our national conversations. 

“Very powerful right wing and white supremacist forces are determined to wind the clock back to the 50s – 1950s or 1850s, take your choice,” said Scott. “I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know what side is going to win out. But I’m doing what I can with art and activism to make sure that the oppressors lose and the people win.”

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And passersby got to watch four artists create their work.

“It’s a weird thing to be a performance,” artist Staver Klitgaard said as she painted while glancing at the people watching her. “This is like a new adventure for me.”

Art shows have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Exhibitions have been cancelled, galleries closed down and artists unable to show their work. As much as artists have been limited, people who enjoy art have also been affected.

“I’ve missed seeing stuff like this,” Manhattan resident Kristen Kasmai said as she watched an artist carry his finished canvas inside the Airstream.

This mobile exhibition is part of The Armory Show’s Off-Site project, whose purpose is to introduce “international contemporary artists to a wider audience and [inspire] dialogues around art,” as well as bringing back art fairs in a safe manner during the pandemic.

“While it was inspiring to see artists adapt and share their art through social media or online, not all art is made for the digital forum,” Kasmai said. “In-person allows the incorporation of textures, and interaction, and things that digital media inherently can’t display.”

The Armory Show is one of the largest international art exhibitions in New York that helps showcase both prominent and up-and-coming artists’ work from around the world. Since March 2020, The Armory Show has been unable to host their in-person events and have moved to a mainly online platform to showcase and sell their art now.  

As a result, Armory Off-Site was created this year and hosted four outdoor, interactive exhibitions scattered around Manhattan sponsored by galleries and artists from New York, Los Angeles and London. When The Armory Show first began their selection process for their Off-Site exhibitions, the Guild of Adventure Painters was sought out.

“The way we got here was the 1969 Gallery asked us to submit a proposal for them to submit to the Armory Show,” artist and co-founder of the guild Johnny DeFeo said. “And then The Armory Show selected our project.”

As a result, artists painted inches away from passersby next to a large silver Airstream in Astor Place. An older woman, holding a cigarette and a Four Loko Gold, walked up to Klitgaard’s easel.

“Wow,” she said. “This looks AMAZING! Wow. Great work.” 

As studio painters, none of the artists at Astor Place were used to having anyone watch their process or speak to them while they worked on their art. But now, crowds gathered around each easel, with strangers complimenting them and discussing color theory.

“This has been really fun,” DeFeo said. “Just the ability to have so many people walking by to interact with, so many different kinds of people and different kinds of things to paint here.”

Co-founder of the Guild for Adventure Painters Aaron Zulpo paints a nearby building next to the Airstream exhibit alongside other “plein air” painters. Behind him, the Airstream with art on display from previous days of their outdoor exhibit is shown. The art is not for sale, but artists are available to talk to anyone who walks up to the display. Photo by Michelle Ng-Reyes

The Guild of Adventure Painters was created in 2018 by artists Aaron Zulpo and Johnny DeFeo with the goal of taking studio painters, who mainly work indoors alone, outside of their studio and into nature to paint “en plein air,” or the act of painting outdoors without traditional rules or structure of studio and indoor painting. It is an “exploratory art residency” that focuses on outdoor explorations while also helping artists get out of their comfort zones and relate more to the art they create.

“It’s funny because all my paintings take place in nature, but I don’t go out in nature to paint them,” guild artist Caleb Hahne said. “I just use a catalogue of nature pictures. So thinking outside of my studio and putting me into an actual environment was really nice, and it’s made me rethink how I paint.”

Many other artists also find a new sense of purpose and peace while travelling to different states and painting outdoors. Its founders also hope it helps promote self care and mental health during an artist’s career. 

“It’s just sort of supposed to also really be a mental break,” Zulpo said.

The Guild of Adventure Artists co-founder Johnny DeFeo (left) adds brushstrokes to artist Staver Klitgaard’s (right) “en plein air” painting, at her request for him to “make a move” and add something to her art. Photo by Michelle Ng-Reyes

With the Guild’s focus on nature and outdoor landscape painting, having their exhibit and painters placed in the middle of the city, in a plaza with only a few scraggly trees, made the art-filled Airstream seem even more out of place.

“The Armory Show chose this location for us,” DeFeo laughed. “We knew that we would be in a park in the city, we just imagined it would be more like Central Park.”

But the location has pushed its painters to look for nature and art in different places than they normally would.

“It’s forced me to look for the moments of optimism that I find in the architecture,” artist Hahne said. “I noticed flowers growing out of bizarre spots, or even just these trees planted here in front of a bank, you know? I think that being in a city like this, when you have those little glimmers of beauty or hope it’s really hard not to grasp onto them.”

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“To me it’s like a sandcastle, once I make it then the Parks Department can take it away,” said Manco. A mural painter, his exploration with cardboard blossomed from an influx of packages while staying at home during the pandemic. In December Manco released his first public installation “Mensch on a Bench,” a 12-foot tall figure made from holiday boxes. For April he created “Fool/Foil,” which encouraged observers to write the most foolish thing they have done on a post-it. With few people recognizing him as the artist, Manco observes the public’s unfiltered reaction to his art while sitting among them.

For those who haven’t yet seen these impermanent installations, Manco’s March sculpture has found a more permanent home at S’MAC, an East Village restaurant. If you’re hoping to see his next public installation, a new project is set to drop over Mother’s Day weekend. Make sure you head over to the park sooner rather than later because as Manco said, “on Monday they usually toss it.”

Supplies and instructions on how the public can engage with “Fool/Foil,” an interactive sculpture by Tom Manco. Tompkins Square Park, Manhattan, New York. April, 6 2021. Photo by Julia Eckley

Manco Studios latest cardboard public art display “Fool/Foil” is observed by park goers. Tompkins Square Park, Manhattan, New York. April, 6 2021. Photo by Julia Eckley

Post-it notes left by park goers that answer the prompt “What is the most foolish thing you have ever done?” Tompkins Square Park, Manhattan, New York. April, 6 2021. Photo by Julia Eckley

Tom Manco adjusting his almost 2 month old cardboard creations’ eye. Manhattan, New York. April, 18 2021. Photo by Julia Eckley

Tom Manco’s March sculpture from the sidewalk outside of S’MAC. Manhattan, New York. April, 18 2021. Photo by Julia Eckley

Tom Manco’s March installation sits between the ordering and pick up counters at S’MAC. Manhattan, New York. April, 18 2021. Photo by Julia Eckley

His installation turns pedestrians’ heads as Tom Manco observes the public’s unfiltered reactions from the street. Manhattan, New York. April, 18 2021. Photo by Julia Eckley

Artist Tom Manco sits outside of S’MAC where they have set up outdoor dining. Manhattan, New York. April, 18 2021. Photo by Julia Eckley

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Created both by amateurs and professionals, a vast collection of artworks rapidly spread on social media with hashtags such as #blacklivesmatter, #georgefloyd, #icantbreathe, #saytheirnames and #BLM.

Abby Zeciroski, 44, a Chicago based artist, combines traditional print images, digital scans and painting to present her views on segregation. 

Zeciroski has also been an activist in Chicago for LGBT rights, police brutality, the drug war, animal rights for more than 20 years.

“In my city, there are invisible walls,” Zeciroski said. “I want people to go beyond slogans. I want people to realize that all my art is interconnected.”

Emily, 20, painted a portrait of George Floyd’s face with his last words “I can’t breathe” and got almost four thousand likes on Instagram. She said that social media platforms enable young artists like her to deliver their messages to the world faster than ever.

“The fact that I posted a painting of George Floyd and someone knew him saw it and thanked me for it, It blew my mind,” Emily said. “I’m so happy that I am part of this movement now.”

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This past weekend, an unexpected visitor came to Times Square.

Times Square welcomed Kehinde Wiley’s “Rumors of War” a 27-foot bronze statue of a black man with dreads wearing  “urban wear” — a hoodie, ripped jeans, and Nikes, while sitting atop a horse in mid-gallop.

The statue, which sits in the bustling plaza closest to 46th Street, was created by the  Nigerian-American visual artist and native New Yorker, whose most recent claim to fame is the 2018 oil painting portrait of former President Barack Obama. 

The statue, which mimics the statue of Confederate General J.E.B Stuart, provides an impressive trifecta of accomplishments for Wiley. It is his first public work of art, his biggest in size, and unarguably his most awe-inspiring, even for a place such as New York. The statue has been a jaw-dropping sight for visitors who can be seen circling the statue, reading the inscription to the left, moving to the center, craning their necks in order to take it all in from top to bottom, and then walking to the other side to assure that they hadn’t missed anything. 

LaDarryl Blair, 22 a rapper from Dallas, Texas, came to New York City for a business meeting, and admitted he didn’t really pay much attention to the statue at first.  He was focused on taking photos with his friend. Once he took time to learn about the significance of the statue, he became intrigued.

“This is groundbreaking and controversial for a lot of reasons,” Blair said. “It’s going to push the envelope because a lot of people would have been scared to do this type of thing, especially in a place where the majority is white people.”

Blair, said the statue’s bold message encourages him to continue to be bold in his music career, too.

“I like to stray from the norm and push kids away from doing drugs.’ he said. “The hip hop industry influences black youth to do crazy things. I think they need to hear something different.” 

Blair also expressed frustration, drawing a parallel between how the sculpture celebrates  the black man and the September 2018 shooting death of Botham Jean, a 26 year old black man from Dallas, and the meager 10 year sentence his killer received earlier this week. 

“It’s frustrating and I can’t even put into words what would it would have been like if it was a black man who entered a white woman’s home,” he said. “I think it just goes to show why these sculptures are important because we aren’t heard enough. We have so far to go.”

Darian Jones, 24, a paralegal administrative assistant came to New York City for business and was pleasantly surprised to come across Kehinde Wiley’s “Rumor of War” an  art installation in Time Square. Photo by Sope Aluko

 Darian Jones, 24, a paralegal administrative assistant, from Dallas, Texas said the messaging was very powerful to her.

“In terms of the message, I can sum it up in a few words:  rise above,” she said.“I see the hoodie and it represents the Trayvon Martins of this time. The different pieces that he put on the statue are many items that African Americans wear everyday and are stereotyped for. You wear a hoodie, you’re a thug. You have dreads, you’re not well groomed. I have so many thoughts and just not enough time.” 

For Paul Ferrara, the monument has served as an opportunity to talk to the public about his passion for art education, as an Art Ambassador for Time Square Alliance, a group founded in 1992 that works in the plaza to promote major events.

“When I found out about this possibility [of the statue being unveiled here] I was very excited to engage with people about it,’ he said. “It’s a sculpture that’s really changing the dialogue. There’s so much going on with monuments, evaluating what significance they hold in society and the stories that they tell.  What Kehinde is doing with his work is changing the story and offering another story.”

The sculpture will be in Times Square until December, and then be moved to Richmond, Virginia It will be permanently installed in Virginia’s Museum of Fine Arts on Ashe Boulevard, less than a mile from the J.E.B Stuart monument.

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With memories flooding lower Manhattan in the form of annual ceremonies and commemorative architecture, Brooklyn residents found their own solace in remembering Sept. 11 from a new perspective.

In a somber room at the Brooklyn Historical Society, locals relived the story that shaped many of them forever. Filling nearly an entire wall was a screen playing live footage of the attacks that brought the Twin Towers down. The footage, which captured a seamless timeline of moments from the morning of 9/11 into several weeks after, was played in sync to Tuesday’s clock.

As people watched, many were overwhelmed with the memories of being within the smoke that overtook the screen in front of them. Some observed the piece for up to an hour, tearing up and sharing stories with strangers and loved ones.

One Brooklyn Heights resident, Pat Lucey, now in her 60s, recalled that she had just arrived to work on the 33rd floor of a building adjacent to the World Trade Center when the second tower was struck by a plane.

“It was a rumble like tumbleweed to where we were, and we all said there was no way we were going back up,” she explained of the view from her building’s lobby prior to her and the rest of her coworkers vacating the premises and crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. “There was black soot we all got covered in. Some people panicked and started running over the bridge.”

Despite her safe return home more than two miles away from the World Trade Center, Lucey described the scene from Brooklyn Heights as one flooded with smoke and despair as people watched what unfolded across the East River.

“Right across from the Brooklyn Bridge, people went to the promenade every day just to watch and all we saw was smoke for days,” she said. “This neighborhood was very impacted.”

That impact was spread throughout generations of long-time residents and newly welcomed New Yorkers.

Michael Barron, a Brooklyn resident who turned 31 Tuesday, was only an eighth-grader in Oklahoma at Fort Sill while Lucey was in the midst of smoke and debris.

“I didn’t know what the World Trade Center was,” he said explained of his own 9/11 experience, noting that now, after living in New York for a few months, seeing the Historical Society’s installation firsthand placed the events in a new perspective.

“I’m actually happy that it’s not just the same thing looped over,” he said of the footage not being a continuous loop of the strike against the towers. “It wasn’t just that moment. There was a 9/11 for everybody. The meaning touched everything.”

The installation, called “2001,” was created by German artist Wolfgang Staehle, who captured the time-lapse on a webcam atop his apartment building roof in Williamsburg while he was filming the skyline for a different project. His original intent was to capture the mundaneness of the city in comparison to Berlin and a countryside in Germany. The footage he caught instead turned out to be 12-second recordings that played from morning until night on Tuesday.  

Visitors were encouraged to leave handwritten notes with their experiences and feelings about seeing the events happen on such a large screen. The anonymous notes were left in a basket donning words of encouragement and appreciation for Staehle and a sense of mourning for the lives that were lost.

“Those who watched the live footage from 9/11 wrote their reflections about rewatching the historical moments before they left the exhibit on Tuesday. Photo by Li Cohen”

“You forget about the impact it had on different areas,” Lucey said, “whether that be Oklahoma or Brooklyn.”

Barron concurred, adding that the visuals presented did more than just show a series of events.

“I guess the important thing is that it shows that 9/11 wasn’t just planes crashing into buildings,” he said. “It was a wider event that changed so much.”  

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Miles Mims still remembers the day he was arrested in Virginia for stepping onto a beach marked “whites only.”

“On the black beach, everyone was huddled together, hundreds and hundreds of people on one side of this thin red line,” Mims said. He looked at the floor, drawing a line across his feet with his hands. “The ‘white’ beach — well, it had more space and it was cleaner.”

That was back in the late 1950s, when Mims was about 8 years old.

“I didn’t pay no attention to those things back then,” he said.

But 50 years later, Mims hasn’t been able to shake the memory. He’s now a full-time artist, photographing portraits of black Americans to raise awareness of civil rights issues.

“Social injustices — they’re in my fabric of being,” Mims said. “When I look at things now, I do it through that lens. I can’t help it.”

Mims — along with about a dozen other local artists — are currently displaying their work at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning in Queens.

It’s the second year that the Social Justice Art Show comes to the eastern borough, and features work from artists focusing on racial discrepancies in the criminal justice system.

Wanda Best is the show’s director and also has artwork featured in the exhibit.

She said the exhibit ran for one night last year, down the street at the King Manor Museum.

“We had over a hundred people show up that night,” Best said.

This year, the show will run for two weeks.

“There’s something powerful about combining art and social issues in this way,” Best said. “People look at these exhibitions and they won’t walk out of here thinking the same way about these things.”

Best worked with Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Hillcrest) to start the exhibit in 2016.

“These issues, these problems, they’re not talked about as much as they should be,” Best said. She pointed at one of her paintings. “This one is about mass incarceration — they’re locking up African Americans way more often than whites or Hispanics.”

“This is our chance to change the way people think about these issues,” Best said.

Pieces in the exhibition include all types of artistic mediums, like woodworking and interactive visual pieces.

Some installations focus on the role of African American women in society, while others call attention to the years of slavery.

Mims has two photos on display in the exhibit — a portrait of a woman and one of a man.

He pointed at the photo of the man.

“That was down in Manhattan, by Seaport,” he said.

Mims said he approached the man because he liked his “look” and asked him if he could take his photo.

“The guy was really upset because he couldn’t get a job and I said ‘having that afro and beard don’t help,’” Mims said. “But he had this look of determination on his face.”

Mims said the man was biracial and spoke to Mims about the struggles of not fitting into a society where a hard line is drawn between being black or white.

“After talking to him, I started to realize some things,” Mims said. “I used to automatically look at the way people treated me and asked myself, ‘is it because I’m black?’ I used to control my behavior to make sure I didn’t do nothing to offend anyone and I would still get hostility.”

“It was hurtful,” Mims said. “But I examined it and started to realize what prejudice was all about. All I can do with my art is express what I have inside me and try to make people who look at it a better person. That’s all I can hope.”

The show runs through September 29th.

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Alfred Steiner was inspired to create his politically-charged art curated exhibit, with the provocative title — “Why I Want to Fuck Donald Trump” — by the 1967 J.G. Ballard faux scientific abstract, “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan.”

“All of the connections to Donald Trump were kind of overwhelming,” explains Steiner, a former copyright lawyer turned artist. “Ronald Reagan was this actor who became a politician, so he came in it at the same angle as Donald Trump. … Reagan used the expression ‘Let’s Make American Great Again,’ and Trump is using the exact same motto for his campaign.”

Housed in the Chelsea-based Joshua Liner Gallery, the group show includes 27 works from 21 artists who capture the intersecting themes of politics, sexuality and celebrity through sexually explicit paintings and abstract sculptures.

Steiner’s two watercolor portraits, “Why I Want to Fuck Donald Trump” and “Why I Want to Fuck Hillary Clinton,” alluded to Ballard’s 1967 statement about “the probability of presidential figures being perceived primarily in genital terms.” Steiner depicted Clinton and Trump as a painted collage of phalluses and vaginas—a raw flesh-colored vulva replaced Trump’s signature hairdo while Clinton sported a knob-bob.

“My work is exceedingly vulgar,” Steiner said. “It is that way because I think there is this undercurrent that goes often largely ignored, and, maybe for the first time ever, has really bubbled to the surface in this campaign.”

His paintings often draw from pop culture icons, such as the Simpsons and SpongeBob, and have been exhibited in more than 20 international group shows since 2006. Throughout his body of work, he reconstructs cartoon characters using genitalia, food or household objects.

Steiner added a backdrop of election paraphernalia to his portraits of Trump and Clinton. Red and blue banners advertising past White House hopefuls, such as Mitt Romney, Ross Perot and John Kerry, clashed with the flesh tones of this year’s candidates.

Politically-themed portraits by artists Tom Sanford, Eric Yahnker and Jonathan Yeo are also on display in the exhibit. Yahnker’s “Hell Yeah!” portrays a lighter side of Hillary Clinton who sticks out a pierced tongue drawn with colored pencil on paper. In “BUSH,” Yeo captures a close-up of George W. Bush’s face composing a series of sexually charged scenes.

Daniel Cordani, an art teacher and artist, said he especially enjoyed Steiner’s portraits and Sanford’s “Trump Mao” and “Clinton Mao,” which refer to China’s former communist leader Mao Zedong. Cordani came to the show to support his friend Andrew Schoultz, who painted an American flag dripping with gold.

“These are violent representations of a violent political system,” Cordani said. “I wish more galleries were doing more representations of this ridiculous charade. … It’s a pretty sad state.”

After viewing the show, Jenny-Rebecca Lewis, a Wall Street lawyer, said that it had helped her gain a “deeper” understanding of the candidates. She was drawn to another Steiner piece: two prints of Trump and Clinton that swapped faces when exposed to the flash of a camera. Steiner embedded retro-reflective dots, a technology that reflects light to reveal a new image masked under the one visible to the naked eye.

“The switch of the candidates allowed me to remember compassion,” said Lewis. “That it’s not one or the other. We’re all interconnected in some way.”

Steiner stressed that he did not intend to curate a “facile anti-Trump show” although 12 of the 27 works in the show directly refer to Trump. He drew on Ballard’s work to address issues with the two-party system along with the conversation about sexuality and celebrity in politics Steiner, who has consistently voted as a Libertarian, said he plans to vote for Gary Johnson.

Unlike the art works containing overt references to unexciting candidates and corrupt politics, Damien Davis wanted to offer viewers a more open-ended, “cerebral” challenge. His abstract sculpture “2016” is meant to be an unapologetic critique of American society: 50 white teeth, 13 brown and black heads and eight vagina-like shapes “float” on a red-and-white Plexiglas plane held together with stainless steel screws.

“My work is really about taking this fixed set of iconography and seeing how much content, how much information or narrative I can generate by juxtaposing elements together,” said Davis, a faculty administrator for NYU’s art department.

The 31-year-old said he wanted “2016” to tell a loose history of the United States and its relationship to slavery and colonialism. His work often focuses on currency—emotional, intellectual and sexual. He explained that the 50 teeth represent slaves whose quality on the auction block was based on their dental health.

But Davis said he did not anticipate how the current political climate would inform his sculpture. “There are vaginas in the work. … Who would’ve known that a video was going to be released of Trump grabbing people by the pussy?” Davis said about sexual assault accusations against Trump. “The most interesting thing about this show is seeing its reading and interpretation play out in this extreme way over a short fixed amount of time.”

For more information and a complete list of artists, visit joshualinergallery.com. The exhibit will be on display until Nov. 12.

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Brittney Rodriguez is an 11-year-old ball of energy. She bounced from her spot, kneeling on the floor in her black dress, to the other side of the white-walled classroom, looking for a hot glue gun. She eagerly announced to anyone who would listen that she wants to go to NYU and be a heart surgeon when she grows up.

Meanwhile, a few inches from her, Pamela Flores and Brianna Gonzalez, both 11, sat cross-legged between a table and the wall, putting pieces of grey paper onto a large sheet and giggling, swapping stories about mutual friends from school. They were making a background for an “Angry Birds” project.

The girls were at a Friday afternoon session of NYC Sparx at St. Mary’s Recreation Center, in the South Bronx. The center is located off of a wide avenue and has an adjoining basketball court and playground, but these girls stayed inside, in their classroom on the second floor whose walls are littered with posters and messages declaring “Sparx Rocks” or “Girls Rule.” There they learned about technology and how to be creative within STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — fields.

NYC Sparx is an outreach of NYC Parks and Recreation’s Computer Resource Center (CRC) with the goal of helping young girls in the Bronx mine their interest in technology and combine that with the arts.

Laira Reid helps Kaylee Torres, 11, with a project at NYC Sparx in the South Bronx
Photo by Karis Rogerson

“The Bronx was chosen since most of the STEM programs available are located in Manhattan and other boroughs,” Sparx Technology Director Laira Reid said. “We wanted to give the Bronx girls the opportunity to have access to a free STEM program that did not require them to travel to another borough. Not all of the girls would be able to afford the transportation costs or would be able to travel the distances safely.”

According to City Data, in 2013 30.7 percent of Bronx residents lived below the poverty level, compared to 14.6 percent in the rest of New York State. For a family of four, this would mean having an income of $23,834 or less, according to the Census Bureau.

Most of the girls who attend NYC Sparx are of Hispanic or African American backgrounds, Reid said. This makes sense, considering each group made up more than 40 percent of total population in the Bronx in 2014.

But those demographics are underrepresented in STEM fields. Latinos make up only 9 percent of STEM jobs, and African Americans (even men) hold few jobs.

Reid said one of the main challenges for girls from minority communities who want to get into technology, including Latina or African-American girls, is economics.

Brittney Rodriguez, 11, is making stick figures out of popsicle sticks to add to her 3D demonstration of what her birthday party will look like. Photo by Karis Rogerson

“Being into technology requires you to be able to play with the technology, this can get expensive,” she said. “If your family does not have expendable income, you may not have access to the newest technology available.”

In addition, a young girl’s location has a lot to do with her potential future in STEM.

“Living in a community that in and of itself does not have the money to attract technology business also means that in order to see it hands on you would have to travel,” Reid said. “This could be a problem if your family doesn’t have money for the rising cost of transportation to and from.”

Co-Director of NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering Science and Technology Studies Christopher Leslie said whites and Asians make up the majority of students in STEM fields, while black, Latino, Pacific Islander and Native American numbers are much lower.

“It does seem that Asian and white men see a brighter future for STEM,” Leslie said. “When they encounter difficulties or have these experiences they know that it’s part of the education process of engineering. Students who don’t have a secure sense of the future won’t necessarily think that they should stick to it.”

Leslie also said that a person’s economic background has much to do with their success in STEM.

“Sometimes it seems like other people are having success because of their social class and not because of what they learn,” he said. “If you come from a less privileged background, you’re showing up at college needing to learn the content and how to study it, and that means that [you] don’t have the same advantage as other students. They might learn a lot, but at the end they’re going to be perceived as being less capable.”

NYC Sparx is for girls only, Reid said, because that allows the participants to open up and learn in a way they might not to if there were boys in the group.

“One of the conversations I had was, ‘How come there’s no boys here?’” she said. “I said, ‘Would you talk to me about the stuff we talk about if there were boys here? Would you even come?’ They say, ‘Oh, we would come, but we wouldn’t talk that much.’ And that’s why this is our group.”

Reid, 34, was recruited to help lead the program when it launched in July, she said, and works directly with young girls four days a week at two different locations. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she works at St. James Recreation Center and on Wednesdays and Fridays at St. Mary’s Recreation Center, both in the Bronx.

“I have to work on getting [the girls] to be proud of the fact that, yeah, you are a geek, you are a nerd, what’s wrong with that?” said Reid. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The people who are making the money, doing the innovative processes, are the geeks and the nerds.”

Pamela Flores, 11, uses a hot glue gun to put together a backdrop for an “Angry Birds” project at NYC Sparx.
Photo by Karis Rogerson.

Flores said that she enjoys coming to the class because she likes to create things.

“It’s really fun,” Flores said, “and it’s things that I like to do, like create things.”

She is especially fond of using the 3D printer, something Gonzalez also enjoys.

“I like to design things and since we have a 3D printer we can print [them],” Gonzalez said. “I would like to learn how to make people and from that learn how to do an animation.”

Reid said she feels like the impact they are having is greater than just teaching girls to embrace their love of technology.

“We have a lot of preteens,” she said. “People aren’t talking to them about some of the things they need to know as they’re getting older. And then it’s like, if you’re interested in technology, is anyone even telling you that it’s okay to do that as your profession? Having those discussions as a group helps them out a lot and those are one of my favorite times when we’re here.”

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