Public Art Exhibit Celebrating Dreams Opens at 300 Ashland in Fort Greene

An art exhibition that celebrates dreams and gives the public a place to contemplate them through sculpture and interactive features has opened in The Plaza at 300 Ashland in Fort Greene.

Cosmologyscape, commissioned by Creative Time for its 50th anniversary, was created by artists Alisha B. Wormsley and Kite, who were chosen from more than 600 artists who responded to the art organization’s open call.

Through a series of sculptures, mosaic paneling, plants, and interactive features inspired by the dreams of hundreds of people, as well as by Black and indigenous art techniques, the show offers the public a place of rest and relaxation amidst the bustle of the busy area in a city where it is “a crime to rest,” the artists said.

“Being in a place that doesn’t allow public rest is a great platform for us to experiment, to try to support the resting and dreaming of people,” Wormsley said. To create the works, Kite and Wormsley held Black and Indigenous Dreaming Workshops and then set up an online dream journal where people could share their dreams that in turn influenced the art piece.

“Everyone [dreams], but not everyone does it in the same way or for the same reason, and so that is extremely interesting to us,” Wormsley said. “In our research, we found how so much of history, historical archives, and different historical narratives were inspired by dreams…there’ve been so many political leaders who have dreamt, people who have changed the world based on a dream like these things aren’t just mythology, they have a big influence on human beings.”

Kite and Wormsley have collaborated before on projects that use a Black and indigenous lens to explore art and technology, and have, over the past five years, focused on dreams and dreaming and encouraging other artists and the public to explore them, too.

“I was really surprised that so many people contributed their dreams, it’s obviously something that attracts folks to think about or evaluate their dreams. It was really nice to see how many submissions there were,” Wormsley said.

An algorithm categorized the dreams shared on the Cosmologyscape website and then, through another machine learning process, turned those into quilt squares complete with color, patterns, and flow inspired by traditions in Lakota visual language and Black quilting. Those quilt squares were then wrapped around benches and seating in the Fort Greene plaza for the public to appreciate and reflect on.

Kite, who works to ensure the development of AI is inclusive of indigenous peoples and their voices, said by merging the traditional art forms with the new technology, indigenous communities were able to recognize and see themselves in the work.

“The first step is to draw on the frameworks and methods that our ancestors so lovingly have provided, and our goal as artists is for communities to be able to see their dreams in the work,” she said.

The Lakota visual language used in the artworks includes 26 core symbols, which are all seen on one of the sculptures, she said. To her, an important one is the dragonfly symbol which “signifies spirits and ghosts, which can often come to you in dreams,” she said.

“I think what surprised me most about the dreams people shared is how long some people’s dreams were, like paragraph after paragraph,” Kite added.

The work is the latest public piece commissioned by Creative Time, which was also behind Kara Walker’s Domino installation and four month-long exhibits exploring black history, politics, and jazz at sites throughout Crown Heights and Bed Stuy.

In a press release, Creative Time Curator Diya Vij said that through “deep study of Lakota and Black knowledge systems, Kite and Alisha developed Cosmologyscape as a call to cultivate sleep and dreaming as a life-sustaining practice” sacred for personal and communal health and well-being.

“Despite the simplicity of Kite and Alisha B Wormsley’s call to dream, whether alone or together in public, it is an act that requires the time, space, and resources to rest. For many, it is not so simple, from the ‘rest gap’ found in racialized communities and those caught in the relentless mechanisms of capitalism, to the proliferation of hostile architecture in urban space that prevents even the act of reclining in public,” Vij said.

The public sculptures will be on view through November 3.

[Photos by Susan De Vries]

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