Socrates Annual Summer Solstice Celebration

Bring your friends and family to the park to celebrate the longest day of the year! Come and see the works of Suchitra Matttai: We are nomads, we are dreamers and the first cohort of 2024 Socrates Artist Fellows. Watch performances and activations by the Artist Fellows, dance to the music of DJ Cisne, and enjoy food by Kinky Taco as the sun sets on the longest day of the year.

Each year Socrates presents an exhibition of new commissions made by artists selected through an Open Call. Featuring new works produced on-site by the Artist Fellows, The Socrates Annual 2024 exhibition addresses the theme of ‘Invasive Species,’ considering the legacies of species migration alongside sociopolitical themes and myths of invasion related to people, animals, and plants. These projects consider the politics of settlement, illuminate ancestral agricultural technologies, facilitate human – land interactions and propose symbiotic resonances for earth’s future inhabitants.

(she/her) is a writer, cultural worker, organizer, and community artist. Her work explores the connections between people, plants, land, and ancestral and cultural practices — those we inherit, those we choose or grow into, and those we cultivate together in community. Relationships are our greatest resource. Her projects, almost always conducted in collaboration, often take the form of public programs: workshops, walks, and collective altar building or ceremony. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY with deep roots in Detroit, MI and Taiwan. She can be found on instagram @kimberchou

DJ Cisne from cumbia to drum and bass, their sound is a vibrant mosaic of the city's energy. As part of Body Hack, they champion mutual aid across the US & Latin America. Let Cisne's beats take you on a journey of abundance and joy. Tune in on SoundCloud to catch their wave! @cisne.world

Daria Garina (he/him) (workshop co-facilitator) is an anti-disciplinary artist committed to ending intergenerational cycles of violence. At Accountability Mapping he teaches transformative Justice through the body. And at Red Rabbit he helps BIPOC chart the course of their destiny with Chinese Astrology. Learn more at redrabbitastrology.com

(she/her) is an artist, horticulturist, and independent researcher. Her interdisciplinary practice considers the reciprocal relationships between plants and people. Her work incorporates installation, site-specific works, and research to explore themes of permanence, historical distortion, care, and maintenance using living plants as materials and participants. She received a BA in history from Smith College and an MFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Frieze New York, local_30 with A.I.R. Gallery, Warsaw, Poland, WIENWOCHE, Vienna, Austria, CICA Museum, South Korea, EcoFutures: Deep Trash, London, and Open Engagement, Queens Museum, Queens, NY. Recent awards include an Emergency Artist Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and On Our Radar 2021 from Creative Capital. She has been an artist in residence at Denniston Hill, NY; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, VA; the Studios at MASS MoCA, MA; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY;and Marble House Project, Dorset, VT. Peer-reviewed publications include, you are here, The Journal of Creative Geography, University of Arizona (Fall, 2023) and Cultivate Journal, The Feminist Journal of the Center of Women’s Studies, University of York (2022). Her work has been discussed in Gagosian Quarterly, On Seeing, Substack by Roxane Gay, Artnet, and Hyperallergic. Landon works and gardens in Brooklyn, NY. @theabortionherbgarden

(he/him) is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary artist that guides living trees in temporal dances. Born on Long Island, Nukumanu’s work explores the semiotic entanglement of ecology, mind and body to create doorways to other worlds. Deeply passionate about ecological regeneration, he imagines the growth of symbiotic futures through the reforestation of the earth and the reestablishment of the ecology commons through the collective cultivation of living tree cities. Nukumanu graduated from NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2019 and proceeded to work at Terreform ONE in Brooklyn for five years on the design of a living tree house prototype. He plants his tree sculptures in convergence with the will of fate, with work currently growing across the world, including: New York, Amsterdam, Puerto Rico, and Portugal.

(they/them) currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Art Practice at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts and lives in New Haven, Connecticut. In 2022, Quezada was a Fellow at Yale’s Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. In 2021, they received the prestigious US Latinx Art Forum Fellowship co-sponsored by Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship and the Ford Foundation. In 2020 Quezada was hand selected from a “large-scale survey” of 40 emerging artists from the US and Puerto Rico to be featured in El Museo del Barrio’s groundbreaking, La Trienal. In 2019, Quezada was the artist-in-residence at New York University’s Latinx Project. Quezada was selected as the University Massachusetts at Amherst Contemporary Arts Curatorial Fellow in 2018 along with Fred Wilson, who curated the show “Five Takes on African Art”. Their work has been featured in Hyperallergic, BOMB Magazine, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Art News, Trans Studies Quarterly:Duke University Press, and Remezcla. Quezada received a Bachelors from University Texas at El Paso and their MFA from University Massachusetts at Amherst. @vickquezada

Socrates Sculpture Park is a community engaged New York City waterfront park dedicated to supporting artists in the production and presentation of public art. Socrates Sculpture Park is on the ancestral land of the the Lenape, Carnarsie, and Matinecock Peoples.

Socrates Sculpture Park was an abandoned riverside landfill and illegal dumpsite for decades leading up to 1986 when a coalition of artists and community members, under the leadership of artist Mark di Suvero, transformed it into an open studio and exhibition space for artists. Today, Socrates is an internationally renowned outdoor museum and a designated New York City public park.

Known for fostering ambitious and visionary artworks, Socrates has presented more than 1,200 artists on its five waterfront acres, providing them the financial support, materials, equipment, and space necessary to create large-scale works in the public realm. The Park is a center of cultural programming, a producer of contemporary exhibitions, a presenter of a multi-disciplinary performance series, and an arts educator. Socrates’ existence is based on the belief that reclamation, revitalization and creative expression are essential to the survival, humanity and improvement of our urban environment.

The Park is open 365 days a year from 9am — sundown and admission to our exhibitions, programs, and gardens is always free and all are welcome!

The free artistic, cultural, and social programming at Socrates Sculpture Park is made possible, in part, by support from Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Champlain Hudson Power Express, Charina Endowment Fund, City Parks Foundation, Con Edison, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Thomas and Jeanne Elmezzi Private Foundation, Equinor US, Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Agnes Gund, Lambent Foundation, Leon Levy Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, New York City Tourism Foundation, Spacetime C.C., The Socrates Sculpture Park Board of Directors, and our many generous individual donors. Socrates' programs are also supported, in part, by public funds from the Queens Borough President Donovan Richards; the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the New York City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the National Endowment for the Arts. Major support for The Socrates Annual Fellowship 2024 comes from the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by Charina Foundation, the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, Devra Freelander Artist Fund, Agnes Gund, and Lambent Foundation, with in-kind support provided by Spacetime C.C. Additional funding is provided in part, by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Event Venue

Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Boulevard, Queens, United States