Essex Flowers is pleased to announce the lineup for Flower Festival 2024 - an incredibly talented group of performers! Get your tickets through Eventbrite: your purchase supports all performing artists and the festival. $5 for selected days and $18 for a Festival Pass (good for all dates!) Please purchase your tickets in advance or in person at the gallery.

Fri, August 16 - Dino Takashi, Rachel Hillery, James Chrzan
Sat, August 17 - Jesse Greenberg, Alison Kuo + Williamson Brasfield
Sun, August 18 - Ye'ela Wilschanski, Kevin Quiles Bonilla, Elina Kulikova
Thu, August 22 - Dahlia Bloomstone, Alina Tenser
Fri, August 23 - Double Lotus + Walnut Falcons
Sat, August 24 - The Lizard Dialogues featuring Zoë Argires, Zuriel Waters and Jaeeun
Sun, August 25 - The Hot Seat with Andrew Lampert + Lindsey Taylor Toons, Tim Leonido

"Savage" live in NYC: Dino Takashi’s performance, inspired by the 1904 World's Fair, addresses stereotypes of Filipinos with dehumanizing acts, indigenous attire, sound, and audience involvement.

On the Table: Rachel Hillery reads from an artist book about 1990s Texas suburbia, featuring text and watercolor drawings.

Two Landscapes Operetta: James Chrzan and Rachel Hillery use voice, field recordings, and sine wave oscillators in this operetta exploring the body's relationship with landscapes

The Performers:

Dino Takashi, born in 1986 and raised in Manila, Philippines is an interdisciplinary artist living in New York City. his mixed-media work and paintings use humor and satire as a critical tool to confront and dispel perceptions, misconceptions, and misrepresentations of Filipinos. Being immigrant and queer, Takashi uses the microaggressions that he receives from friends, strangers and acquaintances as the foundation for his body of work. Takashi keeps a list of backhanded compliments and turns them into social discourse.

Rachel Hillery is a Brooklyn-based artist who works across photography, bookmaking, writing, and performance. Her writing—which takes many forms including essays and prose poems—serves as the starting point for her projects. Hillery earned degrees in photography, psychology, architecture, and most recently- a MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College. She is a graduate of HSPVA in Houston, TX, and has held residencies at Hercules Art Studio Program and the Center for Book Arts.

Working from their combined backgrounds in art, architecture, music, and writing, James Chrzan and Rachel Hillery create open-ended productions in the form of spoken word operas. James, the composer, is an artist and musician, whose work engages in the long history of the dematerialized art object. Rachel, the librettist, has a solo practice that spans photography, bookmaking, writing, and performance. Both are involved in the production’s staging and printed ephemera. In 2021, their opera Narcissus pseudonarcissus was self-produced in Prospect Park’s Rose Garden, an encore performance was possible via support through NYC’s City Artist Corps grant.

JAG Sings: Jesse Greenberg sings original a cappella vocal crooner ballads about women he loves and jobs he hates.

If Vibration is Harmony: Alison Kuo & Williamson Brasfield use gentle movements and an original electronic score to create a serene, harmonious atmosphere in this gallery performance. 

The Performers:

JAG aka Jesse Aran Greenberg, is an artist and curator based in NYC and the Hudson Valley

Alison Kuo is a second generation immigrant who pursues intersectional relationships across communities through artistic engagement. She is the co-founder of the group Sisters in Self-Defense. Find her in the streets of Chinatown where she might be shopping, working, eating, romping with friends, gossiping (aka political organizing), sourcing materials for her sculptures, and/or some combination of all these things.

Williamson Brasfield works in painting, photography, and sound art to reevaluate relationships between technologies of perception and notions of time, recuperation, and safety. His research-based practice draws upon references spanning histories of science, philosophy, music, and art, to consider the roles that perceptual experience plays in regulating bodies and environments

it smells like the end: Elina Kulikova presents a sensory experience about exile, immigration, and memory, featuring text and scent elements

Inner Inner Inner: Ye'ela Wilschanski's garments transform into various shapes within a PVC pipe frame in this time-based performance exploring form and space

Rumble Beneath the Tarp: Kevin Quiles Bonilla uses lip-syncing and the symbolic blue tarp to represent post-hurricane trauma in this performance set to Caribbean dance and salsa music.

Elina Kulikova (born in St. Petersburg, based in Geneva) explores the boundaries of contemporary performative practices and creates multidisciplinary projects: performances for one viewer, performances lasting weeks and months, poetry and digital performances. She usually works in the field of participatory art, creating interactive projects and inviting the audience to activate different forms of perception and sensuality.

After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Elina left the Russian Federation, her home country, and today continues her work in the field of political and documentary theatre in a new context. Through a mixture of testimony, poetry, and historical and sociological analysis, Elina works with the theme of state repression and how exactly it affects intergenerational memory, corporeality and identity.

Ye’ela Wilschanski is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in New York City. She has had solo performances and exhibitions at Parent Company Gallery, The Border Gallery, mhPROJECTnyc, Das Schaufenster, A.I.R. Gallery, and Movement Research at The Judson Church. Residencies include Monira Foundation Performance Residency, Ponderosa Artist Residency and Lake Studio Dance Residency. Awards include NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, LABA Fellowship, ILYSM Artist Grant, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. Wilschanski holds an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, including student exchange at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Kevin Quiles Bonilla (b. 1992) is an interdisciplinary artist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Through photography, performance and installation, his works explores ideas around power, colonialism, and history with his identity as context. He received a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Puerto Rico (2015) and an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons The New School for Design (2018). He has presented his work at Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Lincoln Center and Ford Foundation. He lives and works between New York and Puerto Rico.

A Woman Yet-to-be: Using a rolling ladder and various objects, Alina Tenser explores spatial dimensions and movement along the x, y, and z axes.

Untitled (Little Darlings, sick?): Dahlia Bloomstone uses the same logic as a bachelor party banner that reads, "SHE SAID NO STRIPPERS." STRIPPER = NOT WIFE, WIFE = NOT STRIPPER, BUT STRIPPER = POSSIBILITY OF WIFE

Alina Tenser is a Ukrainian born artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Working across sculpture, performance, and video, she makes propositions that elicit physical activation, play, and transference. Utilizing industrial and domestic materials and processes she reimagines taken-for-granted social and material relations; mining the entanglements of her experience as an immigrant and parent.

Tenser is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Lehigh University.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with recent solo exhibitions at KinoSaito Art Center, Verplanck, NY; Hesse Flatow, New York, NY; 17Essex, New York, NY, Konstepidemin, Gothenburg, SE; and Soloway Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been widely reviewed and written about in publications such as New York Times, The New Yorker Magazine, Artforum, BOMB Magazine, Cultured Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Third Rail. She has participated in multiple artist residencies, most notably The Queens Museum Studio Program and Recess Activities. Her first public art installation is currently on view at Memorial Sloan Kettering Chemotherapy Treatment Facility in Brooklyn, NY.

Dahlia Bloomstone (b.1995) is a Puerto Rican/American artist with an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from Bard College. She has exhibited with Hauser & Wirth, Vector Festival, CICA Museum, and Hyacinth Gallery, among others. Her work is affiliated with White Columns Gallery. She has received a Mellon grant, Hunter Thesis grant, Ox-Bow scholarship, and a Skowhegan fellowship. Dahlia was a TA at Hunter and a Visiting Artist at UT Austin. Currently, she is an LMCC resident and a Fellow at Theater Mitu, and will start the Whitney Museum ISP in September. Dahlia also co-organizes New Uncanny Gallery.

Music from Double Lotus and Walnut Falcons

Double Lotus: Guitar duo from NYC, Michael O’Neill and Shaun Krupa, perform a blend of classical opera and experimental rock in a 30-minute set.

Walnut Falcons: Zephyr F. Sosin and Ashton Brock-French of Walnut Falcons Walnut are a freak-folk band hailing from the beautiful city of New York that blend folk, and indie-rock-post-punk.

August 24 7:00pm-9:00pm

The Lizard Dialogues: Evening of eclectic readings, live music, and captivating art, hosted by The Lizard, including Zoë Agires, Zuriel Waters, and Jaeeun.

Zuriel Waters was born in 1984 in Philadelphia, PA, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Received an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2010 and a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies (Painting and Electronic Music) from San Diego State University in 2007. Has shown work in group exhibitions throughout New York City at galleries such as Underdonk, Bob's, Regina Rex, CANADA, Tappeto Volante as well as recent solo shows at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts and My Pet Ram in NYC and Leftfield Gallery in Los Osos, CA.

 
Zoë Argires is a painter based in Brooklyn and Lancaster, PA

 
Jaeeun was born and raised in Seoul, Korea, and lives in New York, NY. Drawing from both the violence of the patriarchal Korean society of her youth and her life as an immigrant in America, Jaeeun crafts space of exile that unfolds intimate distortions and psychic unrest. She has participated in exhibitions at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, NY; Torrance Art Museum, CA; Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; Essex Flowers, NY, among others. She was a resident artist at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME in 2011. Her work has been mentioned in NYTimes, Artnet and Bomb Magazine. Jaeeun received an MFA in combined media from Hunter College, NY and a BFA in sculpture from Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, Korea. She is also the host of House Party, a bimonthly salon that gathers artists across disciplines to present new works and works-in-progress.

 
The Lizard is a Lizard

  

August 25 5:00pm-7:00pm

The Hot Seat: Andrew Lampert pits two contestants against each other with personal questions. Three rounds of intense competition and audience participation.

Lindsey Taylor Toons: Lindsey Taylor presents a whimsical collection of short animations, perfect for all ages.

Records and Recollections Hudson: Tim Leonido reads from a manuscript about growing up in the Hudson Valley, offering a light parody of Edmund Wilson's "Upstate."

Andrew Lampert is an artist, archivist, writer, and book editor. Further Readings, a new publishing imprint that he is launching with Christine Burgin, will debut with six titles in spring 2025. Lampert and Howie Chen co-write the art advice column Hard Truths and satirical quiz Hard Choices for Art in America. His performances and films have been widely exhibited, and many of his videos are distributed by EAI. Etc.


Lindsey Taylor is an animator, choreographer and performer residing in Brooklyn. Her formative training in dance set her on a winding path through many technical modes of expression, evolving into award winning dance company Little Stolen Moments, and a career in animation for tv and film. She aspires to continue making films that showcase her unique perspective.


Tim Leonido is a writer, musician, and teacher living in New York.