Gallery Aferro is pleased to announce an unprecedented new large-scale installation from artists-in-residence Patricia Cazorla and Nancy Saleme. Starting the weekend of Newark Open Doors, storefronts will burst into bloom, growing over time into a powerful affirmation of imperishable beauty and lasting grace.

Patricia Cazorla & Nancy Saleme (aunt and niece duo) began working together in 2010, focusing on immigration issues; specifically undocumented farm workers, including children, in the US. Since then, they have been awarded major commissions in North Salem, NY, Berlin, Germany, New York, NY Philadelphia, PA, and Copenhagen, Denmark. Market Street Perennial builds on the duo’s long engagement with the city of Newark, honoring the people who pass by the block and creating an enormous, vivid garden that never dies, even as the seasons change. Evoking hope and the power of working people in two languages, the work is a gift of art that will last for a year.

Their summer 2017 project, Flying High for Equality, was a commission for Joyce Kilmer Park inspired by American novelist Richard Bach’s bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, using oversized, colorful sculptures of the city’s sparrows as a metaphor for the search for equality. Sparrows are creatures of resilience, audacity, intelligence, and beauty that mirror many of the qualities of New York City’s communities. An earlier installation for the Kaufman Arcade in NYC’s garment district, Across the Bridge, was a tribute to the Amtrak Dock Vertical Lift, a bridge built in 1937 that spans the Passaic River in Newark, NJ, and carries train traffic. This portrait symbolizes life’s challenges, the migrations that shape society, new horizons and confrontation with the unknown. Another earlier project, the Garden of Opportunities, visualizes the reality of migrant labor in the US: “every beautiful tomato we look at in the supermarket, and almost every fruit and vegetable we eat, is picked by a human hand.” Their work has been reviewed in Univision News, Remezcla, EFE Spanish international news agency, El Diario – La Prensa, Univision 41, Daily News- New York-Bronx, and Riverdale Press.

Patricia Cazorla & Nancy Saleme (aunt and niece duo) began working together in 2010, focusing on immigration issues; specifically undocumented farm workers, including children, in the US. Since then, they have been awarded major commissions in North Salem, NY, Berlin, Germany, New York, NY Philadelphia, PA, and Copenhagen, Denmark. Market Street Perennial builds on the duo’s long engagement with the city of Newark, honoring the people who pass by the block and creating an enormous, vivid garden that never dies, even as the seasons change. Evoking hope and the power of working people in two languages, the work is a gift of art that will last for a year.

Their summer 2017 project, Flying High for Equality, was a commission for Joyce Kilmer Park inspired by American novelist Richard Bach’s bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, using oversized, colorful sculptures of the city’s sparrows as a metaphor for the search for equality. Sparrows are creatures of resilience, audacity, intelligence, and beauty that mirror many of the qualities of New York City’s communities. An earlier installation for the Kaufman Arcade in NYC’s garment district, Across the Bridge, was a tribute to the Amtrak Dock Vertical Lift, a bridge built in 1937 that spans the Passaic River in Newark, NJ, and carries train traffic. This portrait symbolizes life’s challenges, the migrations that shape society, new horizons and confrontation with the unknown. Another earlier project, the Garden of Opportunities, visualizes the reality of migrant labor in the US: “every beautiful tomato we look at in the supermarket, and almost every fruit and vegetable we eat, is picked by a human hand.” Their work has been reviewed in Univision News, Remezcla, EFE Spanish international news agency, El Diario – La Prensa, Univision 41, Daily News- New York-Bronx, and Riverdale Press.
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