CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing)

Guided Meditation with Christopher Pelham in English (on Zoom)
2024-12-23 18:30 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | online
Please join me in the sharing of miracles. Here, your mind can come to rest and you can remember true peace. No experience with meditation is required, and everyone is welcome. I ask only that you make it your intention to sit still, quiet in body and mind, and to listen to, receive, and follow my instruction to the best of your ability. You will learn to meditate as you practice.
While the principles are based on A Course in Miracles (ACIM), it does not matter if you are unfamiliar with ACIM or are not prepared to study it outside of this meditation. You can still take from this practice some very practical, effective lessons, tools, and experiences that can enable you to lead a more peaceful, purposeful, fulfilling and loving life.
Zoom Meeting Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81541160040
Call-in info:
Meeting ID: 815 4116 0040
One tap mobile: 1-929-436-2866

In-Person Guided Meditation & Spiritual Healing Clinic
2025-01-26 14:30 - 16:00, 2025-03-02 14:30 - 16:00 | CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing), 41 E 11th St 11th Fl, New York, NY, 10003, United States
We are happy to invite you back for our first in-person meditation and spiritual healing clinic of the new year. Let’s witness the light in one another and share stillness and peace of mind. We’ll begin with a short talk and guided meditation by Yasuko and then share our one-on-one spiritual healing with you. After we can enjoy some social time together.
Suggested Donation $20 cash. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.
RSVP REQUIRED to etsuko@crsny.org (Space is limited!)
Please arrive 5–10 minutes early as late comers may have trouble entering the building.
Bring any issue you are facing right now — physically, emotionally, mentally, and/or spiritually. With eyes closed (you will be seated and a healer will stand nearby; no touching is involved), a CRS healer, trained in A Course in Miracles and spiritual reading/healing, will observe you with her inner sight, free of any judgments, a perfect shining spirit. Together, we will ask the Holy Spirit (or Inner Guide if you prefer) to bring us directly to whatever seed thought is causing your current issues and ask for guidance about how your spirit really wants to make use of your present situation for its growth and sharing of love. After about 10 minutes of meditation, we will share the inspirational guidance that we receive.
We share healing quietly and provide you with an opportunity to come to rest, reflect, and remember who you truly are, in a supportive, non-judgmental, meditative environment. We’d like to offer you an opportunity to experience stillness of mind and peace so that you can return to harmony with your true nature and purpose. Then you will find that rather than needing “solutions” to “problems” you will realize that you have no problems except those that you project.

Guided Meditation with Yasuko Kasaki in English (on Zoom)
2025-01-27 18:30 - 19:00, 2025-09-08 18:30 - 19:00, 2025-12-15 18:30 - 19:00 | Zoom
from 6:30 – 7 pm
Followed by ACIM Class from 7 – 8 pm (same Zoom link)
Zoom Meeting Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81541160040
Call-in info:
Meeting ID: 815 4116 0040
One tap mobile: 1-929-436-2866
Suggested class donation $20 via PayPal to https://www.paypal.me/crsny
(no one turned away due to lack of funds)
Please join me in the sharing of miracles. Here, your mind can come to rest and you can remember true peace. No experience with meditation is required, and everyone is welcome. I ask only that you make it your intention to sit still, quiet in body and mind, and to listen to, receive, and follow my instruction to the best of your ability. You will learn to meditate as you practice.
Each week I will share with you a different inspirational message from Holy Spirit. This may take the form of creative visualization exercises, or instruction about the nature and purpose of meditation, or about our true nature and relationship to ourselves, to one another, and to the world. In a sense, this is both a meditation practice and a meditation class. At the end of the meditation you will have a chance to respond briefly if you like.
Some students have been practicing regularly for a number of years. Others drop in and out as they have time or need. Some come to learn and grow, others more so simply to calm down, to take time out from the frenetic pace of their busy lives. If you are new and feeling uncertain or shaky, do not hesitate to introduce yourself to some of the other students, to ask questions before or after. Try to observe and emulate the stillness and concentration of others around you whom you sense are most grounded. Soon, you, in turn, may provide inspiration and guidance for others.
While the principles are based on A Course in Miracles (ACIM), it does not matter if you are unfamiliar with ACIM or are not prepared to study it outside of this meditation. You can still take from this practice some very practical, effective lessons, tools, and experiences that can enable you to lead a more peaceful, purposeful, fulfilling and loving life.
ABOUT YASUKO KASAKI
Yasuko Kasaki is an internationally beloved spiritual writer, counselor, healer, lecturer and translator from Tokyo. She is widely recognized as the person most responsible for the spread of A Course in Miraclesthroughout Japan. In 2004 she founded CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing), the first and only spiritual center devoted to the teaching and practice of A Course in Miracles in New York City. She has taught and worked with thousands of people from around the world to help resolve their mental and physical issues and witness miracles. She presents at the CMC’s annual ACIM Conferences in the U.S., and several times a year she gives large seminars throughout Japan. She has also been presented internationally at ACIM conferences and workshops in the U.K., Spain, Germany, and Israel.
Yasuko is the author of The Scales Fell from My Eyes: An Illustrated Course in Miracles and 17 books in Japanese about the Course, as well as numerous novels, short stories, essays and collections of photographs. Her translations of the ACIM Workbook and of books by Course teachers Jon Mundy, Gabrielle Bernstein and David Hoffmeister have also been published in Japan. Yasuko’s spiritual writing and lectures are celebrated for their clearly stated explanations of complex concepts illustrated by captivating personal stories of struggle and triumph, drawn from her long career as a writer, motorcyclist, and spiritual counselor. Meditation and communication with Holy Spirit form the foundation of her practice.

A Course in Miracles Class with Yasuko Kasaki (on Zoom)
2025-01-27 19:00 - 20:00, 2026-01-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
from 7 – 8 pm
Preceded by Guided Meditation from 6:30 – 7 pm (same Zoom link)
Together, let’s come to rest and remember true peace. Each class usually contains some lecture on concepts from A Course in Miracles, some discussion and Q&A, and a meditation, creative visualization and/or spiritual reading practice in order to experience mind change.
Our primary goal in these classes is for each student to learn to listen to the guidance of Holy Spirit and live his/her life with certainty and peace. Slowly, you will re-train your eyes to see the world around you without judgment. You will learn to communicate with your holy spirit. Students of all experience levels and backgrounds are welcome!
Zoom Meeting Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81541160040
Call-in info:
Meeting ID: 815 4116 0040
One tap mobile: 1-929-436-2866
Suggested donation $20 via PayPal to https://www.paypal.me/crsny
(no one turned away due to lack of funds)
You can find the text of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) online here (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Course_in_Miracles), among other places.
Yasuko Kasaki is an internationally beloved spiritual writer, counselor, healer, lecturer and translator from Tokyo. She is widely recognized as the person most responsible for the spread of A Course in Miraclesthroughout Japan. In 2004 she founded CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing), the first and only spiritual center devoted to the teaching and practice of A Course in Miracles in New York City. She has taught and worked with thousands of people from around the world to help resolve their mental and physical issues and witness miracles. She presents at the CMC’s annual ACIM Conferences in the U.S., and several times a year she gives large seminars throughout Japan. She has also been presented internationally at ACIM conferences and workshops in the U.K., Spain, Germany, and Israel.
Yasuko is the author of The Scales Fell from My Eyes: An Illustrated Course in Miracles and 17 books in Japanese about the Course, as well as numerous novels, short stories, essays and collections of photographs. Her translations of the ACIM Workbook and of books by Course teachers Jon Mundy, Gabrielle Bernstein and David Hoffmeister have also been published in Japan. Yasuko’s spiritual writing and lectures are celebrated for their clearly stated explanations of complex concepts illustrated by captivating personal stories of struggle and triumph, drawn from her long career as a writer, motorcyclist, and spiritual counselor. Meditation and communication with Holy Spirit form the foundation of her practice.
You can listen to a sampling of Yasuko’s recent guided meditations here:
http://crsny.podbean.com

Kotohogi: The Embodiment of Time
2025-03-09 12:00 - 13:00
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) is continuing its support for the KOTOHOGI arts and healing project as it moves to Düsseldorf, Germany for The Embodiment of Time​, A Performative Evening and artist talk in collaboration with Thomas Klein (musician, Düsseldorf) on March 9 presented by TAIFUN Project, International art platform for cultural initiative. This presentation of Kotohogi: The Embodiment of Time is made possible, in part, by a travel grant from the Center.
LOCATION:
Flurstraße 11, 40235 Düsseldorf, Germany
In Japanese philosophy, water embodies both “linear time” (flow, decay) and “cyclical time” (purification, renewal). Aging and mortality are not resisted but accepted as part of a cosmic rhythm. This worldview fosters a serene acceptance of life’s impermanence, shaping Japan’s unique perspective on existence, time, and the beauty of transience.
Since PLUS – a project for an aging world (2021-2024), as a further development on the theme of “aging” and a further exchange of cultural comparisons with Germany and Japan on this topic, TAIFUN Project is pleased to invite Yuko Kaseki (Butoh dancer, Berlin-Japan), Kanako Sehara (Logogram & Calligraphy artist, Zen monk, Osaka), and Miho Tsujii (Performance artist, trained in Noh dance&vocals, Osaka) of performance team Kotohogi to come to Düsseldorf in March 2025. With the warm support by Kabawil e. V., artists from Japan and Germany will collaborate again, to create a special performative evening in the early spring of this year. By integrating the modalities of Butoh dance, Noh performance, sound/vocalisation, visual art and poetic storytelling, this event “The Embodiment of Time” is to present a special interpretation of Japanese philosophy on aging, life and the concept of time.
“Kotohogi” are words in Japan that have the functions of spell, blessing, and celebration. Words (koto) can invoke the action of “shu” (curse/prayer/magic) through sounds and letters. The word and sound purify the body through the body. This is the origin of Kotohogi, which is to celebrate (hogu) with words.
“KOTOHOGI” is a series of performances by three artists from different genres, based on Butoh, calligraphy, Noh, singing and storytelling, that is developed through engagements with site and people in local communities.

¿Qué tal si aclaramos la Confusión de niveles?🌟Yasuko Kasaki
2025-03-12 20:00 - 21:00

Earth Day Initiative’s Earth Day 2025 Festival in Union Square
2025-04-17 12:00 - 18:00 | Union Square, Union Square, New York, NY, United States
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) is delighted to support Kaeshi Chai, Han Luckybee, Patricia Gonzalez, and Hila the Earth’s dance theater action at Earth Day Initiative’s Earth Day 2025 Festival in Union Square on Thursday, April 17, 2025, from 1 – 2 pm and again from 4 – 5 pm.
We’re coming together to tune in, go green, and call for climate action. Join the climate conversation at a pivotal time! Let’s be present together in solidarity, standing up for sustainability, cooperation, mindfulness, connection, and peace.
Mindfulness, creativity, and nature have a synergistic relationship. As long as we regard ourselves as separate beings struggling to survive, we cannot be what we are born to be. When we allow ourselves to be present in nature, we automatically quiet our minds and connect to the endlessly creative Oneness of what is. We remember who we are. When we embrace our spiritual limitlessness, we can let go of the temptation to destructively exploit our world to try to survive.
The Festival will run from 12 – 6 pm in the north end of Union Square in Manhattan and will feature

Exhibits by dozens of environmental non-profits, climate campaigns, green living experts, and sustainable businesses (see line-up below)
A special Clean Energy Exhibition, in partnership with Con Edison, featuring great green groups creating a clean energy future (see details below)
Interactive workshops
Live performances from Hila the Earth and APO HAHA CALYPSE (see schedule below)
Climate art
Kids’ activities
Sustainable foods

Check below for details!
https://www.earthdayinitiative.org/earth-day-2025-festival
Kaeshi Chai is an educator, dancer, choreographer, designer, producer, and director whose life mission is to serve our precious planet and empower others through the vehicle of art. She co-founded PURE Globe, an international community focused on healing and social change, the Bellyqueen company and school, as well as Djam NYC shows featuring live music and dance. She has taught / performed in 48 states and 39 countries and is an alumni member of the Bellydance Superstars, Bellydance Evolution, Bella Gaia (Beautiful Earth) and Spector Dance. As a producer, Kaeshi has organized over 600 events (shows, tours, conferences). Kaeshi holds multiple certifications in movement (dance, fitness, pilates, yoga), created the Bellyqueen Teacher Training program and graduated with honors in a degree in Design from the University of Technology, Sydney. She meditates daily and practices NVC (Non Violent Communication).
Current projects include “Ocean Stories” integrating art and science for environmental awareness, and “Becoming – Exploring Identity”. Kaeshi contributes dance and movement meditations for events organized by Unity Earth, Purpose Earth, and the Global Peace Tribe. Kaeshi performed in “Wildfires” by Spector Dance, at the opening night of “Plantasticas” by the Exploratorium Museum, and was commissioned to create a dance piece about the root systems of forests for the Exploratorium on May 4th. She is a proud member of Evolutionary Leaders, a circle of innovative thinkers (including Deepak Chopra) who have dedicated their lives and work to human, social and planetary transformation.
https://linktr.ee/kaeshichai
Hila the Earth is an Eco-Rapper, Comedian, and Content Creator.
She performs as Planet Earth and writes songs and makes videos about ecological topics such as; trees, vegetables, compost, soil health, water, mushrooms, reducing plastic waste, and the list keeps growing. Her hope is that by making Earth science accessible, musical and super fun, more people will take action to protect their environments and help life thrive on Earth.
https://hilatheearth.com
Graduating from The National Ballet School of Cuba in 2012, Patricia de la Caridad Gonzalez Vega had the opportunity to dance professionally with renowned companies such as The National Ballet of Cuba, the Contemporary Dance Company of Cuba, and AcostaDanza among others, where she had the opportunity to perform choreographies from classical and contemporary repertory.
At the University of the Arts in Cuba she received a deeper approach to ballet pedagogy that later developed in imparting the Cuban Ballet Method at the Cuban National Ballet School Fernando Alonso, where she worked for over four years, training future generations of ballet professionals.
She is currently a faculty member of Brooklyn Ballet School. She has also created a fusion that mixes ballet with other styles of dance as belly dance as an alternative dance training.
Han Luckybee is a New York based performer and dance instructor that is fluent in Chinese, Spanish and English. She is passionate about culture, movement and expression. Her dance journey first began when she fell in love with belly dance while training at the Bellyqueen School of Dance. Han completed the 40 hour Bellyqueen Teacher Training course in 2017 and 200 hr yoga teacher training in 2019 in India. She continues to grow her passion for dance by exploring different styles such as Traditional Chinese dance, West African, Contemporary Indian, Ballet, Street Jazz and Reggaeton.
She is featured regularly at “Casa La Femme”, an Egyptian restaurant in the west village. Other notable performances include dancing in Bellyqueen’s “Journey along the Silk Road’ in Milan, Italy, Brooklyn Ballet’s “Nutcracker”, with the band “Beats Antique” at Brooklyn Steel, and “Ravens Night” at the Birchmere in Washington DC.
She believes in the power of dance and music to connect with oneself, nature, and with others. She loves sharing the joy that dance brings her by guiding her students in her classes.

Guided Meditation with Christopher Pelham in English (on Zoom)
2025-04-21 18:30 - 19:00 | Zoom
from 6:30 – 7 pm
Followed by ACIM Class from 7 – 8 pm (same Zoom link)
Zoom Meeting Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81541160040
Call-in info:
Meeting ID: 815 4116 0040
One tap mobile: 1-929-436-2866
Please join me in the sharing of miracles. Here, your mind can come to rest, and you can remember true peace. No experience with meditation is required, and everyone is welcome. I ask only that you make it your intention to sit still, quiet in body and mind, and to listen to, receive, and follow my instruction to the best of your ability. You will learn to meditate as you practice.

CRS at La Mama Moves! Dance Festival: Please Cry by Megumi Eda
2025-04-25 19:30 - 21:00 | La Mama Etc., 74 East 4th Street, 2nd floor, New York, NY, 10003, United States
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) is honored to participate once again in the La Mama Moves! Dance Festival. This year we co-present the US premiere of Please Cry, a solo dance/theatre work created and performed by Berlin-based artist Megumi Eda with original music by Reiko Yamada and lighting by Clifton Taylor. Performances take place at The Club at La Mama on April 25 and 26 at 7:30 pm and on April 27 at 3 pm on a shared program with Alexis Chartrand & Nic Gareiss.
“One day, I discovered a photograph revealing that my grandmother had been a military nurse for Japan during World War II. Later, I watched a documentary about a woman who, like her, had served in the war, sharing long-buried trauma. Had my grandmother endured something similar? I don’t really know…” — Megumi Eda
Please Cry is a deeply personal solo performance blending dance, live video, and music to explore intergenerational trauma, resilience, and the lingering impact of war. Inspired by the silence surrounding Megumi’s grandmother’s past, the piece expresses how unspoken histories echo across generations. Through movement, Megumi seeks to embody these inherited emotions, giving form to what words cannot express. War’s trauma is never just history—it lingers, passed down like an unbroken chain.
The 80th anniversary of the end of WWII is fast approaching. The number of people who experienced the war personally is dwindling. Their memories are passing into history. We at CRS choose to share this powerful meditation on the multigenerational traumas of war so that those who have not known war can better relate and, hopefully, choose to stand for peace.
The Club
74 East 4th Street, 2nd floor
New York, NY 10003
Tickets:
Adults: $30
Students/Seniors: $25
First 10 tickets are $10 (limit 2 per person)
Ticket link: https://www.lamama.org/chartrand-gareiss-megumi-eda/
The premiere of Please Cry in 2022 was co-produced by Megumi Eda and DOCK ART, funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, and supported by Tir Danza. https://www.tirdanza.it/megumi-eda/ The NY production is made possible by a travel grant from CRS.
“Beautiful ballerinas are often caught in their own beauty. They definitely don’t know how to mug. But Megumi can morph in a flash from small boy to impossibly regal diva to a small squirrel chewing on a nut.” — Laurie Anderson
Megumi Eda is a dancer and filmmaker creating multimedia works at the intersection of theater, dance, and film. She began her career at 17 with the Hamburg Ballet, later joining the Dutch National Ballet and Rambert Dance Company. In 2004, she moved to New York as a founding member of Armitage Gone! Dance, collaborating on over a dozen new works and winning the Bessie Award that year. Her long-term collaboration with Yoshiko Chuma has led to innovative performance projects. Now based in Berlin, she focuses on exploring Multi-Generational War Trauma, Women’s Rights, and Institutional Abuse in the Dance World through works like fish άɪ lens (2025), Please Cry (2022), and DIVINE (2023) with Yuko Kaseki.
https://megumieda.com
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival continues to support La MaMa’s commitment to presenting diverse performance styles that challenge audience’s perception of dance by featuring performance/installations, experimental film screenings & public symposiums which address dance artists’ engagement with the current political climate, as well as honoring diasporic histories and legacy, ancestral inspirations and inter-generational dialogue.
https://www.lamama.org/la-mama-moves-2025/

LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART Exhibition
2025-07-21 - 2025-07-26 | Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A W 13th St, New York, 10011
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) presents LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART, an exhibition of five artists who are mothers — Daniela Kostova (Bulgaria), Aline Müller (Brazil), Quynh “Alex” Nguyễn (Vietnam), Katie Heller Saltoun (USA), and Satomi Shirai (Japan). Curated by CRS co-founder Christopher Pelham, the exhibition will be on view at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York from July 21 – 26, 2025.
This exhibition explores the profound interconnection between motherhood and art. These photographs and 2D works depict experiences and challenges—limited time, institutional exclusion, competing responsibilities, societal expectations—that mother artists face every day, ultimately reframing motherhood as an experience that requires constant creativity and is a radical, generative force within artistic life.
Art making and mothering are both rooted in nonjudgmental attention, intuitive responsiveness, and unconditional love. Both require the practitioner to notice what others may overlook and respond creatively with care. This exhibition, along with the series of Mother Artist Salons being held in conjunction, celebrates the creative labor of mothers and mother artists, envisioning a culture that embraces caregiving, inspiration, and interdependence as central to both life and art.
EXHIBITION HOURS
Monday, July 21 – July 26, 2025 (closed July 25)
Mon – Thu 12 – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 3 pm
TENRI GALLERY LOCATION
Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, 43A W 13th St, New York, NY 10011
In addition to the above gallery hours, the exhibition will be on view during several receptions and salons being held in conjunction with the exhibition. These are all free events and no RSVP is required.
July 21 7 pm
Opening Reception & Artist Salon featuring live music by mother artist Eunbi Kim + Q&A
July 23 7pm
This Is a Movement Artist Salon featuring live music by mother artists Goussy Celestin and Amma Whatt + Q+A with artists and Niama Safia Sandy, co-founder, This Is a Movement
July 24 7 pm
Artist Salon featuring live music by mother artists Layale Chaker (violin) and Maeve Gilchrist (harp) + Q&A
July 26 3 pm doors / 3:30 pm program starts
Closing Reception & Artist Salon featuring live music by Sita Chay (violin) and Rema Hasumi (keyboard) + Q&A with the exhibition artists + talk by mother artist and author / peacemaker / philanthropist Le Ly Hayslip on Lessons Not Learned from the American War in Vietnam
“Being an artist is to experience a vigorous, experimental life of the mind and of the senses. Parenthood is another enriching experience: primal, haptic and life-affirming. Why are the two still seen as incompatible?” — Jeffrey Boloten and Juliet Hacking, Forward to How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)
How often do we ask a man how he balances work and parenting responsibilities? How frequently do we assume that a mother has no time for making art or that motherhood and child-raising are not only not creative but less worthy subjects for art? Of course, it’s hardly shocking to announce that pregnancy and childcare require time and energy and that women supply the bulk of it. But this alone does not explain the relative paucity of mothers and women in general represented in galleries and museums. You might be surprised to learn that more women than men graduate from art schools today. We hope you will also be excited to learn that many obstacles facing female-identifying artists can be remedied.
While the asymmetry between parenthood and the world of work is an issue for parents in any profession, the art world – with its informal, often temporary forms of relations – can be a particularly precarious environment in which to make one’s living. Artists rarely receive contracts of employment nor benefits such as maternity leave, pay rises and pensions. Opportunities such as exhibitions and artist residencies come rarely, and even once in a lifetime. Does one have to choose between creativity and family?
— Jeffrey Boloten and Juliet Hacking, Forward to How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)
Despite societal demands, stigmas, and limitations that restrict a mother’s creative expression in the public realm, mothers nevertheless exercise their creative faculties constantly. Just as creating a compelling work of art starts with seeing without judgment what others have overlooked and channeling one’s creative response into form, nurturing a child requires seeing the child as he/she/they are and responding authentically and imaginatively. Both are intuitive processes of receiving and giving. Both are creative exercises of unconditional love.
“…Motherhood and artistic practice have to be mutually enriching…. …Little does society know that these things actually can work really well together.” — Catherine Rickets, from Artist/Mother Podcast: 160: The World Needs Art that Only Mothers Can Make with Catherine Ricketts, Nov 4, 2024
We aim to bring greater visibility to their inspiring art and life-making work, as well as to the creative and life-affirming contributions of mothers who are not professional artists. The exhibition will next be on view at Gallery Maronie in Kyoto, Japan, during Kyotographie from April 13 to May 10, 2026, and then at Le Deco Gallery in Tokyo, Japan from May 18 – 24, 2026.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Stuck by Daniela Kostova
Daniela Kostova is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans photography, installation, video, and performance. She explores themes of geography, cultural identity, and the complexities of translation and communication across borders. Her projects have been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Queens Museum of Art, Kunsthalle Wien, Centre d’Art Contemporain (Geneva), and Kunsthalle Fridericianum (Kassel), among others. In 2019, she created one of Europe’s largest public art installations, Future Dreaming, covering Vienna’s Ringturm building.
Kostova has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Unlimited Award for Contemporary Bulgarian Art and residencies at A.I.R. Gallery (NYC), ZK/U Berlin, and ArtsLink at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She has also contributed as a curator, notably leading the BioArt Initiative at RPI, where she taught digital imaging. Her work has been featured in major publications such as The New York Times, Brooklyn Rail, and Art in America. Now based in New York City, she has served as Director of Curatorial Projects at Radiator Gallery, Artist Mentor at NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Program and Board Member of CEC Artslink.
https://danielakostova.com
Photo by Aline Müller
Photographer Aline Müller, born in the Brazilian Amazon and now working between Rio and New York, brings an elemental understanding of nature’s power to her intimate portraits of women. In her series curated for Life is Art Motherhood is Art, she captures mothers at different stages of their journey through evocative, almost surreal photographs that reveal the mystical within the everyday of a mother.
Müller’s mothers emerge water-soaked from rivers, beaches, and showers with goddess-like splendor. They inhabit moments of joyous presence captured in delicate close-ups that refuse to hide or pose, but rather document dreamlike moments of maternal reality.
With her generous and almost metaphysical gaze, Aline has the uncanny ability to depict what photography often editorializes out of women’s lives: fluids, curves, small gestures, and all that seems small and menial in life, yet speaks volumes to the internal world of women.
https://www.alinemuller.com

Photo by Alex Nguyễn
Quỳnh “Alex” Nguyễn is a writer, photographer, and independent cultural practitioner based in Central Vietnam. Her interdisciplinary approach, spanning journalism, interviews, photography, artistic programs, and nurturing of daily life itself, stems from a desire to explore alternative narratives rather than accepting the mainstream, deemed self-evident. She believes that the interpretations we hear profoundly shape our beliefs and responses to life’s issues. Furthermore, the challenges faced by modern society are inherently interconnected as consequences of the many problems layered atop one another. Through flexible artistic forms, she seeks to expand the possibilities of alternative narratives, guiding those around her and her readers to explore new dimensions of contemporary issues.
https://alexnguyen.contently.com

Studio Interruptions by Katie Heller Saltoun
Katie Heller Saltoun is a visual artist based in DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York. Her work primarily utilizes oil paint, ink, photographic collages, and woodcut printing to explore the multifaceted experiences of motherhood and caregiving. Saltoun captures the humor, frustration, monotony, and profound love inherent in caregiving, drawing inspiration from her own life and the diverse narratives of mothers and caretakers she encounters. Her compositions often depict dynamic scenes of energy and chaos, as well as repetitive imagery such as refrigerator shelves, spice racks, and rows of snacks, reflecting the repetitive yet vital tasks of domestic life.
Saltoun holds a BFA from the University of Michigan, an MA from Columbia University, and an MFA from Pratt Institute. Her recent exhibition, “Bifocal: Motherhood and Creativity,” was held at the Elza Kayal Gallery in Tribeca, New York. This multidisciplinary show explored the intricate interplay between creativity and motherhood, highlighting the often-overlooked experiences of artists who navigate both roles. Additionally, her work was featured in The American Scholar magazine in an article titled “Tenderness and Grit.”
Saltoun continues to create and exhibit work that resonates with audiences, offering a profound and authentic portrayal of the complexities inherent in caregiving and domestic life. For more information and to view her portfolio, please visit her website at www.katiehellersaltoun.com.
https://www.katiehellersaltoun.com/
Photo by Satomi Shirai
Satomi Shirai playfully explores themes of cultural identity, feminism, motherhood, and the evolving meaning of home, both in the context of migration and as a universal psycho-spiritual experience. Her photographs, often set in domestic spaces, reveal the quiet tensions between order and chaos, belonging and estrangement, the visible and the unseen.
Shirai’s work has been exhibited widely, including at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Her photographs are held in the collections of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (K’MoPA).
After earning a Full-Time Certificate from the International Center of Photography in 2007 and an MFA from Hunter College (CUNY) in 2010, Shirai lived and worked in New York City for over a decade. In 2015, she returned to Japan to raise her daughter and now lives and works in Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture. Though she has exhibited less frequently since her return, she continues to create new work, often in collaboration with her daughter.
https://satomishirai.com

LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART: Opening Reception & Mother Artist Salon with pianist Eunbi Kim
2025-07-21 19:00 - 21:00 | Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A W 13th St, New York, 10011
Photo: a still from ‘Saturn Years’ video by new media artist Xuan
Please join us on July 21, 2025, from 7 – 9 pm for the Opening Reception for the exhibition LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART. At the reception, mother artist Eunbi Kim will give a solo piano performance and share musings on the transformative connections between motherhood, music, and identity. Kim and her husband just welcomed their second child.
The event will take place at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York. Admission is free and no RSVP is required. Families with children are welcome!
The event is the first of a series of Mother Artist Salons being held in conjunction with the exhibition LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART. Check the exhibition announcement or CRS calendar for details.
ABOUT THE ARTIST AND PROGRAM
Pianist Eunbi Kim explores childhood, family, and identity through multimedia programs that combine music, visual projections, and spoken text. She creates sonic memoirs that invite audiences to meditate on their past, present, and future selves and how they all coexist. In “it feels like a dream,” created shortly after becoming a new mother, she asks the audience, “What are the dreams we carry? What are the dreams we pass on?” Working in close collaboration with cutting-edge composers and artists of different mediums, she creates projects that offer audiences the opportunity to tap into their unconscious pool of memories, dreams, and desires.
https://www.eunbikimmusic.com
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART is an exhibition of five artists who are mothers of different generations — Daniela Kostova (Bulgaria), Aline Müller (Brazil), Quynh “Alex” Nguyễn (Vietnam), Katie Heller Saltoun (USA), and Satomi Shirai (Japan). Curated by CRS co-founder Christopher Pelham, the exhibition will be on view at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York from July 21 – 26, 2025.
“Being an artist is to experience a vigorous, experimental life of the mind and of the senses. Parenthood is another enriching experience: primal, haptic and life-affirming. Why are the two still seen as incompatible?” — Jeffrey Boloten and Juliet Hacking, Forward to How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)
This exhibition highlights the inspiring works being created worldwide by mother artists and examines the multifaceted relationship between motherhood and art-making. Through their diverse photography and 2D works, we invite you to consider the challenges that working mother artists face and reflect on motherhood and child-rearing as fundamentally creative acts, inseparably intertwined with art-making, deserving of our loving attention, respect, and support. Learn more…
EXHIBITION HOURS
Monday, July 21 – July 26, 2025 (closed July 25)
Mon – Thu 12 – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 3 pm
TENRI GALLERY LOCATION
Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, 43A W 13th St, New York, NY 10011
212.645.2800

LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART: Mother Artist Salon with THIS IS A MOVEMENT
2025-07-23 19:00 - 21:00 | Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A W 13th St, New York, 10011
Please join us on July 23, 2025, from 7 to 8:30 pm for an Artist Salon with THIS IS A MOVEMENT (TIAM) featuring live music by mother artists Goussy Celestin and Amma Whatt, and conversation with the artists and Niama Safia Sandy, co-founder of TIAM. TIAM is an initiative launched in 2022 seeking to create a more equitable music industry through an intersectional Black feminist lens, centered upon non-hierarchical, collaborative and imaginative modes of creation and organization.
This event is one of a series of Mother Artist Salons being held in conjunction with the exhibition LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART. Check the exhibition announcement or CRS calendar for details.
The event will take place at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York. Admission is free and no RSVP is required. Families with children are welcome!
ABOUT THE MISSION OF THIS IS A MOVEMENT
THIS IS A MOVEMENT (TIAM) was conceived in 2021 by a set of musicians, scholars, and leaders who often crossed paths and noticed a fragmentation in the field. The #MeToo movement had activated conversations and actions around gender justice, but the efforts were more disparate – artists were organizing, gathering, and taking action on the bandstand, educators were creating curriculum and writings within the academic space, and producers and presenters were raising standards and focusing on diversity. TIAM was launched with the hope that it could be a centralized place for this community to discuss different perspectives, share resources, and advance conversations around equitable representation. The name – This Is A Movement – was chosen to signal that a larger movement is happening in the field and to hold the organizers accountable to the mentality and long-term commitment that movement-building requires.
This Is A Movement asks what transformation looks like, with the goal of creating a robust community network that will work to cultivate a liberated music industry, placing equity at the forefront.
Women, those of underrepresented gender identities, and their allies are claiming a space that challenges the status quo of the jazz and creative music scene. This movement is changing ways of thinking, ways of working, and ways of living while confronting structural inequities based on gender, age, race, and culture. It is asking the essential question: What does a freer, fairer, and more representative music industry look like? To reimagine and remake our ecosystem, we invite numerous organizations, institutions, and individuals, bringing together artists, activists, organizers, and creatives to share their experience, their dreams, and their plans.
This Is A Movement offers historical context, academic data studies, relevant dialogues, and special guest speakers to an engaged and diverse audience of industry professionals, educators, students, performers, and the general public. This Is A Movement invites those leading change in the field, as well as those for whom these conversations are difficult. It aims to create an incubator for new ideas that will bring about the future change we need in our cultural spaces.
https://www.thisisamovement.com/
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART is an exhibition of five artists who are mothers of different generations — Daniela Kostova (Bulgaria), Aline Müller (Brazil), Quynh “Alex” Nguyễn (Vietnam), Katie Heller Saltoun (USA), and Satomi Shirai (Japan). Curated by CRS co-founder Christopher Pelham, the exhibition will be on view at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York from July 21 – 26, 2025.
“Being an artist is to experience a vigorous, experimental life of the mind and of the senses. Parenthood is another enriching experience: primal, haptic and life-affirming. Why are the two still seen as incompatible?” — Jeffrey Boloten and Juliet Hacking, Forward to How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)
This exhibition highlights the inspiring works being created worldwide by mother artists and examines the multifaceted relationship between motherhood and art-making. Through their diverse photography and 2D works, we invite you to consider the challenges that working mother artists face and reflect on motherhood and child-rearing as fundamentally creative acts, inseparably intertwined with art-making, deserving of our loving attention, respect, and support. Learn more…
EXHIBITION HOURS
Monday, July 21 – July 26, 2025 (closed July 25)
Mon – Thu 12 – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 3 pm
TENRI GALLERY LOCATION
Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, 43A W 13th St, New York, NY 10011
212.645.2800
ABOUT THE MUSICAL ARTISTS
Brooklyn-born Haitian-American artist GOUSSY CÉLESTIN interchanges the roles of pianist, composer, vocalist, dancer, educator, and arranger with ease.
While managing WeBop, an early childhood music program, Goussy is raising two sons, her “greatest creative compositions,” leading workshops, composing for her ensemble, in addition to holding a faculty position at BerkleeNYC.
Goussy’s awards include, Laundromat Project: Create Change Fellow, Queens Council on the Arts, Gardarev Residency, Field Leadership Fund, Space @ Ryder Farm Residency, NYC Women’s Fund, and received a commissioning grant from Mutual Mentorship for Musicians.
She’s recently been awarded the Jazz Leadership Fellow by the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and a New York State Council on the Arts’ Support For Artists Award, for her KongoNola project.
https://www.goussycelestin.com/
https://www.instagram.com/goussycelestin_ayitibrass/

Vocalist, performer, and activist AMMA WHATT is a dynamic force in music. Praised by the New York Times for her ‘silk-infused vocals,’ she effortlessly captivates audiences. Her musical story began with learning African chants and West-African dance from her performing parents, and blossomed into her writing and performing with acclaimed bands like Grammy-nominated Nate Smith and Kinfolk, empowering children through self-expression and rhythm, and gracing stages across Europe and the US!
Amma was recognized by Pop Matters magazine as “a distinctive soul singer who absolutely seduces your ear,” and her latest music represents a fusion of modern pop with Soul, Afro-Caribbean styles, House, and Jazz, featuring evocative storytelling on themes of love, pain, and hope. Her viral a cappella videos dedicated to the religious music of Orisha worshippers worldwide exemplify her dedication to incorporating 29 years of faith as a Yoruba-Lukumi priest into her artistic expression.
While she balances music and her family life in New York, Amma is deeply engaged in global social justice causes and serves as vice president of the executive board of the Egbe Iwa Rites of Passage program. Through her volunteer work and musical activism, Amma seeks to leverage her voice as a powerful tool for advocacy and allyship.
https://ammawhatt.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/ammawhatt/

NIAMA SAFIA SANDY is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist, curator, and change agent.
Sandy’s work across disciplines delves into the human story through the application and critical lenses of culture, healing, history, migration, music, race, and ritual. Her creative practice often is an examination of the ways history, economics, migration, and other social forces and constructs have shaped modern realities. Her aim is to use the visual, written, and performing arts to tell stories we know in ways we have not yet thought to tell them and to lift us all to a higher state of ontological and spiritual wholeness in the process.
She is a co-founder of THIS IS A MOVEMENT. She currently teaches graduate and undergraduate students at Columbia University, School of the Arts, and Pratt Institute, School of Art.
https://www.instagram.com/___niama___/
https://www.thisisamovement.com/
https://www.instagram.com/this.is.a.movement/

LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART: Mother Artist Salon with Layale Chaker and Maeve Gilchrist
2025-07-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A W 13th St, New York, 10011
Please join us on July 24, 2025, from 7 to 9 pm for an Artist Salon featuring live music and conversation with Layale Chaker (violin) and Maeve Gilchrist (harp), two artists who balance active tour schedules with the demands of caring for their young children. The event will take place at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York. Admission is free and no RSVP is required. Families with children are welcome!
The event is one of a series of Mother Artist Salons being held in conjunction with the exhibition LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART. Check the exhibition announcement or CRS calendar for details.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Chaker and Gilchrist come together in an exploration of the threads that stitch our inherited worlds—the whispers of old tales passed down by grandmothers, the shadowed weight of mythologies, superstitions, and lullabies, scattered across time and distance.
Drawing from the musical vocabularies of their respective lineages—Celtic and Levantine—this new duo traces melodic and rhythmical contours shaped by centuries of oral memory. They search for the places where their stories overlap: fields of exile, haunted lands, and songs that carry coded truths.
This is not a reimagining of the past, but an exploration of a shared present—an exploration of what flows through us unseen, like smoke through veins. This suite of music invites the audience to step into a newly formed world, rooted in the past but written for the present day—a brand new mythology.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART is an exhibition of five artists who are mothers of different generations — Daniela Kostova (Bulgaria), Aline Müller (Brazil), Quynh “Alex” Nguyễn (Vietnam), Katie Heller Saltoun (USA), and Satomi Shirai (Japan). Curated by CRS co-founder Christopher Pelham, the exhibition will be on view at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York from July 21 – 26, 2025.
“Being an artist is to experience a vigorous, experimental life of the mind and of the senses. Parenthood is another enriching experience: primal, haptic and life-affirming. Why are the two still seen as incompatible?” — Jeffrey Boloten and Juliet Hacking, Forward to How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)
This exhibition highlights the inspiring works being created worldwide by mother artists and examines the multifaceted relationship between motherhood and art-making. Through their diverse photography and 2D works, we invite you to consider the challenges that working mother artists face and reflect on motherhood and child-rearing as fundamentally creative acts, inseparably intertwined with art-making, deserving of our loving attention, respect, and support. Learn more…
EXHIBITION HOURS
Monday, July 21 – July 26, 2025 (closed July 25)
Mon – Thu 12 – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 3 pm
TENRI GALLERY LOCATION
Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, 43A W 13th St, New York, NY 10011
212.645.2800
ABOUT THE MUSICAL ARTISTS
LAYALE CHAKER, violinist, singer and composer
Composer and violinist Layale Chaker was raised on the verge of multiple musical streams in her native Lebanon. Her complex sound universe, described by NPR as “beguiling” with “bright and beautiful strands… gorgeous, wine-dark swirls,” lies at the intersection of classical contemporary music, jazz, Arabic music, and improvisation. Her practice is committed to art as both sanctuary and crossroads—a place where ancestral narratives meet contemporary voices in a continuous reimagination of the world we inherit, live in, and bequeath. A 2020-2022 Jerome Hill Fellow, Chaker is also the recipient of the 2022 Opera America Discovery 2022 Award, among many other accolades.
In 2024, her work Qarar/Jawab premiered at the Venice Biennale, and Dawning, a double concerto, premiered with the New York Philharmonic. Her debut chamber opera, Ruinous Gods, premiered at the 2024 Spoleto Festival before its European debut at Wuppertal Opera. She also recently released a double portrait album on In a Circle Records, featuring both her classical works and chamber jazz quintet, Sarafand.
“Haunting yet quietly rigorous…” — The New York Times
https://layalechaker.com
MAEVE GILCHRIST, harpist, singer, composer and producer
Edinburgh-born harpist and composer Maeve Gilchrist has been credited as an innovator on her native instrument and taken the Celtic (lever) Harp to new levels of performance and visibility. Currently based in Kingston, NY, Maeve tours internationally as a solo artist and composer. She is a member of the Grammy-winning Silkroad ensemble and of Arooj Aftab’s Grammy-winning Vulture Prince Ensemble. She has performed and recorded with such luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma, Frankie Gavin, Esperanza Spalding, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Solas.
As a composer, Maeve straddles the worlds of folk and classical music with pieces that include two original concertos for symphony Orchestra and Celtic Harp, along with various works for harp and string quartet that have been played by such acclaimed groups as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and the Aizuri String Quartet. She is a regular visiting artist at Berklee College of Music and has had several instructional books published by Hal Leonard and 80 Days Publishing. Maeve has released a number of albums under her name and is a featured soloist on the Dreamworks blockbuster movie soundtrack, “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.” Her most recent album, “The Harpweaver,” has garnered international acclaim, including a five-star review from the Irish Times, which described it as “buoyant, sprightly and utterly beguiling….a snapshot of a musician at the top of her game.” Maeve is the Artistic Director of the Rockport Celtic Festival, an innovative new festival focused on cross-curation and the outer fringes of Celtic music.
“Both Fascinating and Absorbing in equal measure, an Original Voice” — Scotsman
https://www.maevegilchristmusic.com

LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART: Closing Reception & Mother Artist Salon
2025-07-26 15:00 - 17:30 | Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A W 13th St, New York, 10011
Please join us on July 26, 2025, from 3 – 5:30 pm (doors open 3 pm, program starts 3:30 pm) for the Closing Reception for the exhibition LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART. At the reception, mother artists Sita Chay (violin) and Rema Hasumi (keyboards) will perform and join a conversation with the exhibition artists on the exhibition’s themes. The event will take place at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York. Admission is free and no RSVP is required. Families with children are welcome!
Following the conversation, Vietnamese mother artist and author / peacemaker / philanthropist Le Ly Hayslip will share her thoughts and weave them into a larger conversation about the lessons not learned from the American War in Vietnam — this year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the war as well as the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII — and the need to envision a society where the value of inspiration, creation, mutual care, and unconditional love is recognized and integrated into every aspect of life, without discrimination.
The event is the last of a series of Mother Artist Salons being held in conjunction with the exhibition LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART. Check the exhibition announcement or CRS calendar for details.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS

SITA CHAY is a violinist, composer, and performance artist who won a 2017 Latin Grammy Award for Best Mariachi Album, as violinist of the Flor de Toloache. She is an awardee of New York Foundation for the Arts Women’s Fund, NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, New Music USA’s Creator Development Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Creative Engagement Grant, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and was invited for residencies at the Stone, Joe’s Pub, and the Cell Theatre for various projects she is envisioning. Her collaborators include Satoshi Takeishi, Shoko Nagai, Sidra Bell, and Leo Genovese and with them she performed in numerous festivals such as Progressive Chamber Music Festival 2023, Outfest 2024, and Multicultural Music Festival 2024.

Her most recent project, “Multidimensionally Human,” is an interdisciplinary series that she collaborates on with Dr. Nikolai Chapochnikov, a neuroscientist and psychotherapist. Through this project, she weaves the psychotherapy modality Internal Family Systems using narrative, dance, visual art, and music as a performance artist.

In 2023, she released a music narrative film “Ritual of Le Sac” which tells a story of a fish-like life of a baby swimming inside the womb. This project was inspired by her recent journey of becoming a mom and experiencing the kindness and gentle curiosity from various strangers on the street for carrying a life inside. She intended this film to reflect and rediscover the innate human capacity and desire to care and honor life.

Ms. Chay is the director and a founder of the Korean Shaman Music Ritual, SaaWee, which international critics have called as a “delicate powerhouse.” For SaaWee, she has interwoven her theatrical experiences from Broadway shows, folkloric spirituality from Korean shaman rituals, and contemporary music flair from New York jazz scenes. SaaWee’s Return of Songbirds debuted at Lincoln Center as part of #Restartstage project in 2021 and was invited to Ars Electronica Festival 2021. SaaWee won the California Music Video Awards 2022 in Best World Music category.

https://www.sitachay.com
REMA HASUMI is a New York-based sound designer and improviser, whose eclectic background spans classical, jazz, and experimental music. The foundation of her music is grounded in a wide range of pianistic expressions that are at times contemplative and at others assertive. Her recent work involves compositions and improvisations with analog synthesizers, electronics, and vocals. Hasumi’s music has been described as one that “is able to capture those elusive moments when silence becomes music and music becomes silence” (Jakob Baekgaard, All About Jazz) and that “begins with a delicate piano rumination, wandering, searching, finding a state of gentle deliberation that suddenly fades” (Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz). Her musical influences span across various musicians, including Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Masabumi Kikuchi, Paul Bley, Terry Riley, Arthur Russel, and many more.
Hasumi’s “Mothers,” a seven-track album dedicated to the collective experience of motherhood, will be released digitally on July 1, 2025. The music represents the journey of mothers striving to protect their creative paths while navigating the deep emotions that come with parenting and the process of redefining their identities. Each track explores a different emotional landscape, yet all share excerpts of piano improvisation from a single recording session, which serves as an undercurrent throughout the album. This undercurrent reflects the ongoing, profound, and dynamic experience of motherhood. The album features a series of collaged soundscapes, consisting of synthesizers, piano, and vocals performed by Hasumi, with contributions from Austin White on electric bass and synthesizers on three tracks. Each track’s sound elements are improvised separately and then combined using a collage approach rather than traditional composition. The final mix is designed to offer a three-dimensional, holistic, and stimulating listening experience. The album will be available for digital download and streaming, with a beautiful cover photograph by Aline Müller. Her works, including the album cover photo, are part of the Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art exhibition. The development of “Mothers” was made possible, in part, by a grant provided by CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing).
https://rema-hasumi.com/
LE LY HAYSLIP is an internationally known Vietnamese-American author, philanthropist, peace activist, speaker, and mother. She grew up in Ky La (now known as Xa Hoa Quy), Vietnam during the American-Vietnam War. She wrote two best-selling memoirs—When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace, based on her painful and ultimately triumphant journey from a traumatizing childhood in war-ravaged Vietnam to her new life in America. Having grown up in Central Vietnam as a woman, Le Ly shares a perspective that is unique when it comes to the Vietnam War. She received raving reviews for both books, including from The New York Times and The Washington Post. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places was included in the 1990 edition of Reader’s Digest’s Today’s Best Nonfiction. Her memoirs, having been published in 17 different languages throughout the world, are now used in several universities as course material to study women in history, the American/Vietnam War, and other topics. In 1993, the books were adapted into the film “Heaven & Earth,” directed by the award-winning director Oliver Stone and starring Hiep Thi Le and Tommy Lee Jones.
Le Ly’s life as a humanitarian began after she arrived in the US in 1970 and became a US citizen, but she returned to her native Vietnam in 1986. Her shock from the devastation, poverty, and illness left by the war became the impetus for her two philanthropic organizations, East Meets West Foundation and Global Village Foundation. Both organizations dedicate their efforts to humanitarian relief, education, and development to help rebuild Vietnam through providing basic needs (shelter, clean water, medical facilities, education), establishing revolving loan programs, and finding homes for several hundred orphaned children. Hayslip continues to lead groups and delegations in cultural and anthropological studies in her home village.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART is an exhibition of five artists who are mothers of different generations — Daniela Kostova (Bulgaria), Aline Müller (Brazil), Quynh “Alex” Nguyễn (Vietnam), Katie Heller Saltoun (USA), and Satomi Shirai (Japan). Curated by CRS co-founder Christopher Pelham, the exhibition will be on view at Tenri Cultural Institute of New York from July 21 – 26, 2025.
“Being an artist is to experience a vigorous, experimental life of the mind and of the senses. Parenthood is another enriching experience: primal, haptic and life-affirming. Why are the two still seen as incompatible?” — Jeffrey Boloten and Juliet Hacking, Forward to How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)
This exhibition highlights the inspiring works being created worldwide by mother artists and examines the multifaceted relationship between motherhood and art-making. Through their diverse photography and 2D works, we invite you to consider the challenges that working mother artists face and reflect on motherhood and child-rearing as fundamentally creative acts, inseparably intertwined with art-making, deserving of our loving attention, respect, and support. Learn more…
EXHIBITION HOURS
Monday, July 21 – July 26, 2025 (closed July 25)
Mon – Thu 12 – 6 pm, Sat 12 – 3 pm
TENRI GALLERY LOCATION
Tenri Cultural Institute of New York, 43A W 13th St, New York, NY 10011
212.645.2800

@CPR | PLANTING SEEDS OF PEACE IN AMERICA
2025-09-21 19:00 - 20:30 | CPR – Center for Performance Research, 361 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn, 11211, United States
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) presents @CPR | PLANTING SEEDS OF PEACE IN AMERICA, a dance and film event marking the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This commemorative performance will take place on September 21, 2025, at 7 pm at CPR – Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn, NY, supported by the @CPR Performance Series as part of CPR – Center for Performance Research’s Subsidized Space Rental Program. Tickets are $20 and are available via Eventbrite.
This powerful program features rare U.S. performances by Japanese choreographer and dancer Chizuko Kotani, a second-generation atomic bomb survivor, her Kansai, Japan-based ensemble P Company, and butoh master Nobuo Harada, known for bridging humor and gravity in his striking solo work. NYC-based butoh artist Azumi Oe will improvise with musicians Shoko Nagai (Moog) and Satoshi Takeishi (prepared hammer dulcimer). The evening also includes a screening of Chris Fiore’s short film “A Few Laughed.”
This year, as Hiroshima marks 80 years since the bombing and the Hibakusha organization is honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, we invite you to join in a deep reflection on peace and the horrors of war through the power of movement and memory. The artists’ decades-long commitment to cross-cultural healing through art takes on new urgency in today’s global climate. This program is made possible, in part, by a production grant from CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing).
TICKETS:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cpr-p-company-friends-planting-seeds-of-peace-in-america-tickets-1563121150439
VENUE:
CPR – Center for Performance Research
361 Manhattan Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Highlights from the program include:
”I Will Become a Dove” (Chizuko Kotani solo)
With skin that has peeled off and hung down as wings, I overcome suffering and anger, and I become a dove, soaring into the sky.
“Life” (P Company group dance)
An evocation of people fleeing in fear, seeking help, this dance embodies the horror and anger of the atomic bomb.
“The Red River of Ether” (Nobuho Harada solo)
One of Nobuho Harada’s signature pieces, this work, connecting life and death, encapsulates the greatest intensity within the smallest movement.
Trio Impromptu (Azumi Oe with Shoko Nagai and Satoshi Takeishi)
“A Few Laughed” (Chris Fiore, 2019, running time 05:37)
This short film is an experimental short film that honors the 23 Japanese sailors and fishermen irradiated by the unannounced 1954 Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test. The film was created for the Lucky Dragon 5 event at Tokyo’s Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall, honoring the Japanese sailors and fishermen, and features an improvised dance performance by Takemi Kitamura, with costume by Nobuko Tsuruta.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Chizuko Kotani is a Japanese choreographer, dancer, and founder of P Company. As the daughter of atomic bomb survivors, she has long carried the emotional legacy of war. Her activism with the “Chernobyl Hibakusha Support Kansai” group helped transform her trauma into purpose. Now, she shares stories of survival and hope through contemporary dance works that call for peace and remembrance.
Chizuko Kotani began her dance training in the 1970s under Miyoko Fujiwara, whose powerful final performances while hospitalized left a lasting impression on her. At just 21, Chizuko took over the studio following Fujiwara’s passing and went on to found her own company, Dance Core Possible, in 1981. She also studied Martha Graham technique with the late Akiko Kanda, a trailblazer who brought Graham’s radical physical language back to Japan after dancing as one of Graham’s principal performers in New York. Chizuko’s work carries forward this lineage, grounded in the Graham technique but transformed through her own cultural and political experiences.
A native of Hiroshima, Chizuko weaves personal and historical memory into her choreography, often tackling themes such as war, nuclear energy, and the fragility of life. Like her mentor Kanda, who incorporated Japanese forms such as Noh and questioned gender roles through dance, Chizuko uses the stage as a space for social reflection. Her works fuse bodily precision with emotional depth and existential inquiry, reflecting her belief that dance is not just performance but a way of knowing, resisting, and ultimately remembering.
Nobuo Harada is a Fukuoka-based butoh master and founder of Seiryusha (1980). A successor in the lineage of Kazuo Ohno and Akira Kasai, Harada’s performances blend profound physicality with philosophical playfulness, navigating the border between art and anti-art. He has toured widely in Japan and abroad, bringing butoh’s quiet power to audiences across cultures. Born in Fukuoka in 1949, he studied martial arts until seeing Akira Kasai and Kazuo Ohno perform “The Bottom of the Hill” in 1972, which led him to study under Kasaki for seven years.
Founded in 2004 by Chizuko Kotani, Kansai-based P Company features a diverse group of dancers drawn from Dance Core Possible and trained in styles ranging from ballet to improvisation. The company plays a key role in the WiSP Project, using performance as a vehicle for peace education and intercultural exchange. Last year, P Company and WiSP presented Chizuko’s “The Dropping of the Atomic Bomb” at Art Complex Hiroshima.
Azumi Oe is a New York-based butoh dancer and choreographer known for her mesmerizing, provocative, and meticulous performances. A former member of Vangeline Theater and principal dancer under butoh master Katsura Kan, she now develops experimental solo and collaborative projects worldwide. She was a 2023 artist-in-residence at Johns Hopkins PEABODY Institute and a 2024 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Choreography. www.azumioe.com
Shoko Nagai is a pianist, accordionist, and composer whose work spans jazz, experimental, and global traditions. Trained in Japan on Yamaha’s electronic organ before studying at Berklee College of Music, she has developed a distinctive voice on prepared piano, accordion, and keyboards, often influenced by the minimalist sound of Toru Takemitsu. She performs Klezmer, Balkan, and improvised music with equal command, and also composes scores for film and performance. Whether collaborating with renowned musicians or leading her own projects, Nagai is known for her intense focus and virtuosity, creating performances that mesmerize audiences. shokonagai.net
Satoshi Takeishi is a drummer, percussionist, and arranger whose career bridges jazz, classical, world, and experimental music. A Berklee College of Music graduate, he lived in Colombia for four years, performing with the Bogotá Symphony and exploring Latin traditions before moving to New York in 1991. His collaborations include work with Ray Barretto, Eliane Elias, Anthony Braxton, and Toshiko Akiyoshi, among many others. Blending South American, Middle Eastern, and contemporary influences, Takeishi brings a deep sensitivity to rhythm and texture. He continues to expand his artistry through improvisation and cross-cultural collaborations with musicians and composers worldwide.
Chris Fiore is a filmmaker and artist whose documentary work has earned awards, including the 2024 Culver City Film Festival Audience Award and the 2025 Berlin Indie Film Festival Award for Best Artist Film. His short A Few Laughed honors the 23 Japanese fishermen exposed to fallout from the 1954 Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test near the Bikini Islands. www.chrisfiore.com
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) is a healing and cultural arts organization dedicated to exploring the intersection of spirituality, creativity, and community. CRS has presented peace-focused performances, exhibitions, and workshops for over 20 years in New York City and internationally.
CPR – Center for Performance Research is dedicated to supporting artists in the development of new work in contemporary dance and performance. CPR focuses its activities in three key areas: creative and professional development support; providing affordable space for artists; and public programming. Curated and open-call programs focus on providing artists with rehearsal, residency, and performance support, which generates time and space for research and dialogue, and creates opportunities to share work in a variety of contexts. CPR’s subsidized space rental program helps to ensure that artists can access CPR’s flexible studios and performance space at affordable rates to create and share their work. By presenting work to the public through performances, work-in-progress showings, salon-style discussions, exhibitions, and festivals, CPR exposes local audiences and its community to contemporary artistic practice and process.

In-Person Guided Meditation & Spiritual Healing Clinic
2025-09-28 14:30 - 16:00, 2026-03-15 14:30 - 16:00 | CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing), 41 E 11th St 11th Fl, New York, NY, 10003, United States
We are happy to invite you back to CRS in person for an afternoon of meditation, healing, and spiritual community! Let’s witness the light in one another and share stillness and peace of mind. We’ll begin with a short talk and guided meditation by Yasuko and then share our one-on-one spiritual healing with you. After we can enjoy some social time together.
Suggested Donation $20 cash. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.
RSVP REQUIRED to etsuko@crsny.org (Space is limited!)
Please arrive 5–10 minutes early as late comers may have trouble entering the building.
Bring any issue you are facing right now — physically, emotionally, mentally, and/or spiritually. With eyes closed (you will be seated and a healer will stand nearby; no touching is involved), a CRS healer, trained in A Course in Miracles and spiritual reading/healing, will observe you with her inner sight, free of any judgments, a perfect shining spirit. Together, we will ask the Holy Spirit (or Inner Guide if you prefer) to bring us directly to whatever seed thought is causing your current issues and ask for guidance about how your spirit really wants to make use of your present situation for its growth and sharing of love. After about 10 minutes of meditation, we will share the inspirational guidance that we receive.
We share healing quietly and provide you with an opportunity to come to rest, reflect, and remember who you truly are, in a supportive, non-judgmental, meditative environment. We’d like to offer you an opportunity to experience stillness of mind and peace so that you can return to harmony with your true nature and purpose. Then you will find that rather than needing “solutions” to “problems” you will realize that you have no problems except those that you project.

Guided Meditation with Chris in English (on Zoom)
2025-10-20 18:30 - 19:00 | Zoom
from 6:30 – 7 pm
Followed by ACIM Class from 7 – 8 pm (same Zoom link)
Zoom Meeting Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81541160040
Call-in info:
Meeting ID: 815 4116 0040
One tap mobile: 1-929-436-2866
Suggested class donation $20 via PayPal to https://www.paypal.me/crsny
(no one turned away due to lack of funds)
Please join me in the sharing of miracles. Here, your mind can come to rest and you can remember true peace. No experience with meditation is required, and everyone is welcome. I ask only that you make it your intention to sit still, quiet in body and mind, and to listen to, receive, and follow my instruction to the best of your ability. You will learn to meditate as you practice.
Each week I will share with you a different inspirational message from Holy Spirit. This may take the form of creative visualization exercises, or instruction about the nature and purpose of meditation, or about our true nature and relationship to ourselves, to one another, and to the world. In a sense, this is both a meditation practice and a meditation class. At the end of the meditation you will have a chance to respond briefly if you like.
Some students have been practicing regularly for a number of years. Others drop in and out as they have time or need. Some come to learn and grow, others more so simply to calm down, to take time out from the frenetic pace of their busy lives. If you are new and feeling uncertain or shaky, do not hesitate to introduce yourself to some of the other students, to ask questions before or after. Try to observe and emulate the stillness and concentration of others around you whom you sense are most grounded. Soon, you, in turn, may provide inspiration and guidance for others.
While the principles are based on A Course in Miracles (ACIM), it does not matter if you are unfamiliar with ACIM or are not prepared to study it outside of this meditation. You can still take from this practice some very practical, effective lessons, tools, and experiences that can enable you to lead a more peaceful, purposeful, fulfilling and loving life.

A Course in Miracles Class with Chris (on Zoom)
2025-10-20 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom
from 7 – 8 pm
Preceded by Guided Meditation from 6:30 – 7 pm (same Zoom link)
Together, let’s come to rest and remember true peace. Each class usually contains some lecture on concepts from A Course in Miracles, some discussion and Q&A, and a meditation, creative visualization and/or spiritual reading practice in order to experience mind change.
Our primary goal in these classes is for each student to learn to listen to the guidance of Holy Spirit and live his/her life with certainty and peace. Slowly, you will re-train your eyes to see the world around you without judgment. You will learn to communicate with your holy spirit. Students of all experience levels and backgrounds are welcome!
Zoom Meeting Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81541160040
Call-in info:
Meeting ID: 815 4116 0040
One tap mobile: 1-929-436-2866
Suggested donation $20 via PayPal to https://www.paypal.me/crsny
(no one turned away due to lack of funds)
You can find the text of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) online here (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Course_in_Miracles), among other places.

CRS & Fridman Gallery Present Crossing Boundaries 24: Between Breaths: A Sonic Memoir with gamin
2025-12-01 19:00 - 20:30 | Fridman Gallery, 169 Bowery, New York, NY, 10002, United States
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing), Fridman Gallery, and New Ear, Inc. present Crossing Boundaries 24: Between Breaths: A Sonic Memoir with gamin, an intimate multimedia performance by Korean-born, U.S.-based musician gamin, a multi-instrumentalist and designated Yisuja (official holder of Korea’s Important Intangible Cultural Asset No. 46). In this work, gamin invites audiences into a sonic memoir woven from breath, memory, and ancestral voice.
“Her music is unlike anything else in the world.” — New York Music Daily
Elizabeth Hoffman (sound design & electronics), Christine Yerie Lee (visual art), Jacqueline Kerrod (harp), Kai-Luen Liang (sound design), and Satoshi Takeishi (percussion) round out the creative team.
The concert will take place on December 1, 2025 at 7 pm at Fridman Gallery. Tickets are $27.74 and are available online.
Created by gamin, Between Breaths is a meditation on lineage, transformation, and transcendence—where tradition is reimagined through feminist and intercultural lenses, and breath becomes memory, ritual, resistance, and future. Drawing on her monograph of family history and cultural heritage, she brings to life the stories of her foremothers through the sounds of traditional Korean wind instruments—the piri, saenghwang, and taepyeongso—blurring the lines between ritual and recital. Through improvisation and Korean modes, each breath becomes a vessel of resilience, migration, and belonging.
TICKETS:
https://withfriends.events/event/gnMixNT7/between-breaths-by-gamin/
VENUE LOCATION:
Fridman Gallery
169 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
DIRECTIONS:
The Fridman Gallery is located on the east side of The Bowery just south of Delancey St.
NEAREST SUBWAY STATIONS:
Spring Street 6
Canal Street N/Q
Canal Street J
ABOUT CROSSING BOUNDARIES CONCERT SERIES
CROSSING BOUNDARIES is a concert series devoted to dissolving boundaries between performers and audiences, the traditional and contemporary, classical and experimental, and the culturally specific and the global. Series curators are given the opportunity to create unique performance events in collaboration with musical, visual, and/or movement artists of their choosing. The series was conceived in 2018 by the Korean traditional wind player and composer gamin, who has continued to help curate the series each year. https://crsny.org/crossing-boundaries-concert-series/
Crossing Boundaries is made possible in part with funds from Creative Engagement, a regrant program administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) and supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. LMCC empowers artists by providing them with networks, resources, and support, to create vibrant, sustainable communities in Manhattan and beyond.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
gamin is a renowned Korean musician and multi-instrumentalist, celebrated for her mastery of traditional wind instruments, particularly the piri (double-reed bamboo oboe), taepyeongso (conical oboe), and saenghwang (mouth organ). She is a designated master for Intangible Cultural Asset No. 46. Trained under the mentorship of living national treasure Jeong Jae-guk, gamin has reinterpreted Korean classical music while exploring contemporary and experimental sounds. Her performances have captivated audiences worldwide, blending the rich heritage of Korean music with innovative improvisation. As a former principal player of the National Gugak Orchestra, gamin continues to expand the boundaries of Korean music through her solo projects and collaborations with global artists. gamin was awarded a Jerome (Hill) Foundation Artist Fellowship 2021–2023. Since 2022, gamin has taught graduate and undergraduate ethnomusicology as Adjunct Faculty at the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA. In 2023, gamin was awarded an artist fellowship by the Howard Foundation. Since 2018, gamin has curated performances for the Crossing Boundaries Concert Series, which she conceived. gaminmusic.com
Christine Yerie Lee is a multidisciplinary artist working in video, performance, and drawing. Raised in the American South, Lee’s practice explores performativity, embodiment, and spectatorship as a way to reexamine ideas of authenticity, nationhood, and desire in relation to self-construction. Drawing from Korean and American folklore, global histories, and pop culture, she builds interconnected worlds where fantasy and reality collide, creating a new place for cultural, psychological, and socio-political discovery. Her recent projects include BUL (2023), an experimental rock opera inspired by the Korean monster Bulgasari, and its sequel, SWAN SONG (2025). She lives and works in Los Angeles with her dog, Belly.
Lee holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been shown in solo and two-person exhibitions at Human Resources LA, GOBI, Y2K Group (NYC), and Centre Culturel Jean Cocteau (France), and in group shows at UCLA New Wight Gallery, Helen J. Gallery, ICA LA, Museum of Impossible Forms (Finland), REDCAT, and Metro Art Los Angeles. She has been an artist-in-residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Centre Culturel Jean Cocteau, Heart of Los Angeles, and Crosstown Arts, and is a recipient of the College Art Association’s Visual Arts Fellowship. Lee has taught video art at CalArts, CSU Long Beach, Pomona College, and Pitzer College. https://www.christineyerielee.com/
Elizabeth Hoffman, composer (NYC), works in acoustic, electroacoustic, and computer media, and has created collaborative projects with performers including Ivan Goff, Jane Rigler, Margaret Lancaster, gamin, Marianne Gythfeldt, Elena Demyanenko, String Noise, Azalea Twining, Andy Kozar, and HYPERCUBE, and a recent work for Glass Farm Ensemble’s Nieuw Amsterdam – New York album on Innova. Elizabeth teaches in NYU’s Arts and Science Music Department. Her electroacoustic music is published by Empreintes DIGITALes. She has received Bourges, Prix Ars, Pierre Schaeffer, and Sonic Circuits prizes; and MacDowell, NEA, Seattle Arts Commission, and Jerome Foundation grants, and an International Computer Music Association commission. Her interactive music connects computer processes to acoustic instruments through textural, tuning, and spatial explorations, or algorithmic applications, as seen in a permanent installation in the Bobst Library Atrium. Her interest in feminist re-tellings, the imprint of society on subjectivity, and dialogue and intervention through music is a long-standing focus. She is also a pianist. https://wp.nyu.edu/elizabeth_hoffman/
South African harpist Jacqueline Kerrod is celebrated for her “exceptionally virtuosic and sensitive” musicianship and her adventurous approach to the harp. Equally at home in classical, contemporary, and experimental genres, she performs throughout the United States and Europe. A frequent collaborator with composer and multi-reedist Anthony Braxton, she tours internationally both in duo and with his ZIM music ensemble. A founding member of the award-winning pop duo Addi & Jacq, Kerrod has also toured her multimedia project Harps Uncovered and is currently developing a solo project that fuses improvisation, songwriting, and live electronics.
A passionate advocate for contemporary and South African music, Kerrod has premiered numerous new works and performed with leading ensembles such as the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Alarm Will Sound, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Her diverse collaborations span artists from Rufus Wainwright to Kanye West, and her recordings appear on labels including dischi di angelica, New Amsterdam, and American Modern Recordings. A graduate of the Yale School of Music, she continues to redefine the expressive possibilities of the harp with her eclectic artistry and boundary-crossing style. https://jacquelinekerrod.com/
Kai-Luen Liang is a sound and video artist, musician, and music producer based in Los Angeles. His sound is a mixture of field recordings, improvisation, home made software systems, and electronic elements. He is currently adjunct teaching faculty at California Institute of the Arts where he teaches Music Technology and Integrated Media, as well as a visiting professor of Music at Occidental College teaching Music and AI. https://kailuenliang.com
Satoshi Takeishi, drummer, percussionist, and arranger, is a native of Mito, Japan. He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. While at Berklee, he developed an interest in the music of South America and moved to Colombia at the invitation of a friend. He spent four years there and forged many musical and personal relationships. One of the projects he worked on while in Colombia was ‘Macumbia’ with composer/arranger Francisco Zumaque, in which traditional, jazz, and classical music were combined. With this group, he performed with the Bogota symphony orchestra in a series of concerts honoring the music of Colombia’s most popular composer, Lucho Bermudes. In 1986, he returned to Miami, U.S., where he began working as an arranger/producer as well as a performer.
In 1987, he produced ‘Morning Ride’ for jazz flutist Nestor Torres on Polygram Records. His interest expanded to the rhythms and melodies of the Middle East where he studied and performed with Armenian-American oud master Joe Zeytoonian. Since moving to New York in 1991, he has performed and recorded in vast variety of genre, from world music, jazz, contemporary classical music to experimental electronic music with musicians such as Ray Barretto, Carlos ‘Patato’ Valdes, Eliane Elias, Marc Johnson, Eddie Gomez, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Anthony Braxton, Mark Murphy, Herbie Mann, Paul Winter Consort, Rabih Abu Khalil, Erik Friedlander, Ned Rothenberg, MIchael Attias, Shoko Nagai, Paul Giger, Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band, Ying String Quartet, Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, Dhafer Youssef, Lalo Schifrin and Pablo Ziegler, to name a few. He continues to explore multi-cultural, electronic, and improvisational music with local musicians and composers in New York.
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
CRS (CENTER FOR REMEMBERING & SHARING) is a Manhattan- and Tokyo-based arts and spiritual center founded in 2004 by Yasuko Kasaki and Christopher Pelham. Rooted in the non-dualistic teachings of A Course in Miracles (ACIM), CRS offers spiritual counseling, healing, and mind-training courses to practitioners around the world. The Center uses the arts as a vehicle for achieving awakening, unity, and peace. By producing exhibitions, performances, and an online arts magazine (onlylove.ART), and providing support for third-party initiatives like Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M³) and Kotohogi, CRS empowers a diverse, international community of artists to experiment, collaborate, and share their visions. https://crsny.org
Founded in 2013, and located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, FRIDMAN GALLERY champions a diverse roster of international contemporary artists working across various media. The gallery takes risks and organizes critically acclaimed exhibitions, such as the first solo shows in New York by Nate Lewis, Nina Katchadourian, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, and Summer Wheat, and first-ever solo exhibitions of Dindga McCannon and Milford Graves, whose works have now earned a place in the art-historical canon after decades of neglect by the mainstream art world. Our 2022 exhibition Women at War, featuring 12 women artists from Ukraine responding to the current war, has been touring university museums across the U.S. and Canada. In 2025 we will present solo exhibitions by both emerging talents – Azuki Furuya and Will Maxen, and established artists – Remy Jungerman and Athena LaTocha. Additionally, the gallery actively participates in leading international art fairs, such as Art Basel Miami Beach, the Armory Show, Art Cologne, and Paris Photo.
Fridman Gallery is consistently recognized for its ambitious performance program, featuring a full schedule of experimental performance art. This includes the annual New Ear Festival, a comprehensive music festival with a curatorial emphasis on contrast to foster cross-pollination among audiences. In September of 2016, the gallery hosted 9e + 50, a dedication to the seminal 9 Evenings of Theater and Engineering, featuring performances by Alvin Lucier, Pauline Olivieros, Simon Forti, and others. The physical space also serves as the home for choreographer Abigail Levine’s “Restagings” (2017–2024), a durational, multi-part series that reinterprets canonical minimalist and conceptual artworks as performances. With a commitment to pushing artistic boundaries, Fridman Gallery contributes significantly to New York City’s vibrant art scene, fostering dialogue, culture, and exploration within the ever-evolving landscape of contemporary art. https://fridmangallery.com/
NEW EAR, INC. is a presenting organization dedicated to fostering experimentation in time-based media and interdisciplinary collaboration within a visual art context. Carrying on the spirit of risk-taking experimentation in downtown NYC, New Ear supports artists across artistic and cultural backgrounds, and at all stages of their careers with commissions and opportunities to present their work, residencies and workshops, mentorship, access to specialized equipment, and engineering support.
New Ear :: programming is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature as well as individual donors — via WithFriends — who provide essential monthly support. Additionally, New Ear :: was supported by NewMusic USA’s Organization Fund, with support in part from Fifth House Ensemble and legacy contributions to the New MusicUSA endowment. Support for organizations based in New York State is provided in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor. Support for organizations based in New York City is provided in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and with support from the Howard Gilman Foundation. https://new-ear.org

CRS Presents Crossing Boundaries 25: When the Ancestors Speak by Jen Shyu, Sumi Tonooka, and Val Jeanty
2025-12-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Greenwich House Music Hall, 46 Barrow Street, New York, 10014
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) presents Crossing Boundaries 25: When the Ancestors Speak on Sunday, December 14, 2025, at 7 pm at Greenwich House Music Hall. Curated by Jen Shyu, this work by Jen Shyu (vocals, Taiwanese moon lute, Japanese biwa, Korean gayageum), Sumi Tonooka (piano), and Val Jeanty (SoundChemist) explores the theme of immigration, growing out of their own rich multi-ethnic family and musical histories, from Africa, Japan, Timor, Taiwan, Haiti, and beyond. This concert mixes music with movement and text, further developing material which was first introduced during Jen Shyu’s 2023 residency at The Stone and expanded upon that fall in Crossing Boundaries 20. (Trio photo by Mariana Meraz)
TICKET LINK:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/when-the-ancestors-speak-by-jen-shyu-sumi-tonooka-and-val-jeanty-tickets-1860031316739

VENUE LOCATION:
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow Street
New York, NY 10014
DIRECTIONS:
Greenwich House Music School is located in the West Village just west of Seventh Avenue. The Music Hall is located on the second floor, and there is no elevator or wheelchair access.
NEAREST SUBWAY STATIONS:
The nearest MTA station is the 1/9 station at Christopher Street – Sheridan Square.
ABOUT CROSSING BOUNDARIES CONCERT SERIES
CROSSING BOUNDARIES is a concert series devoted to dissolving boundaries between performers and audiences, the traditional and contemporary, classical and experimental, and the culturally specific and the global. Series curators are empowered to create unique performance events in collaboration with musical, visual, and/or movement artists of their choosing. The series was conceived in 2018 by the Korean traditional wind player and composer gamin, who has continued to help curate the series each year. https://crsny.org/crossing-boundaries-concert-series/
Crossing Boundaries is made possible in part with funds from Creative Engagement, a regrant program administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) and supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. LMCC empowers artists by providing them with networks, resources, and support to create vibrant, sustainable communities in Manhattan and beyond.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jen Shyu photo by Daniel Reichert
Rome Prize, Guggenheim, and USA Fellow, Doris Duke Artist, multilingual multidisciplinary artist Jen Shyu was born in Peoria, Illinois to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrants. She has produced eight albums and a single available on her record label Autumn Geese Records. She’s performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Theater of Korea, Rubin Museum, was named Downbeat’s 2017 Rising Star Female Vocalist, and is a Fulbright scholar speaking 10 languages. She’s worked with such musical innovators as Sumi Tonooka, Terri Lyne Carrington, Nicole Mitchell, Val Jeanty, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Linda May Han Oh, Kris Davis, Wadada Leo Smith, Mark Dresser, Francis Wong, Jon Jang, Vijay Iyer, Kenny Barron, Reggie Workman, Bill Frisell, and Immanuel Wilkins. Her “Song of Silver Geese” was among The New York Times’ “Best Albums of 2017.” Her third solo production and album “Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses” (commissioned by John Zorn) has received wide critical acclaim, with “When I Have Power” NPR’s “Best Songs of 2021.” She is a Paul Simon Music Fellows Guest Artist, a Steinway Artist and co-founder with Sara Serpa of M³ (Mutual Mentorship for Musicians). @jenshyu, https://www.jenshyu.com
Sumi Tonooka photo by Karen Sterling
2023 Pew Fellowship Awardee Sumi Tonooka has been called a “fierce, fascinating composer pianist” Jazz Times “provocative and compelling” New York Times. With 15 recordings to her name and a vast catalogue of compositions and award winning works in genres symphonic, chamber, dance and film, she continues to be a creative force. Recently, Tonooka was a winning finalist for the Emerging Black Composers Project to compose her fourth symphony, Only The Midnight Sky and Silent Stars premiered by the San Francisco Conservatory in February 2023. She is also a 2021 recipient of the Doris Duke, Creative Inflections Grant, with vocalist/composer Jen Shyu, for In The Green Room, inspired by the stories of Asian and African American women in Jazz. She was awarded the Chamber Music America New Jazz Works grant in 2019, premiering later this year for her trio plus Alchemy Sound Project, a composers collective that she started in 2015. @sumitonooka, http://sumitonooka.com

VAL Jeanty photo by Richard Louissaint
Val Jeanty is a Grammy-winning Afro-Electronica composer, turntablist, and SoundChemist whose work bridges ancestral Haitian Vodou traditions with experimental electronic soundscapes. A professor at Berklee College of Music, Jeanty has performed at the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and internationally at the Venice Biennale in Italy and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. A recipient of the 2024 United States Artists Fellowship, the 2019 NYSCA/Roulette Residency, and the 2022 NYC/CBA Toulmin Fellowship, Jeanty continues to expand the frontiers of sonic expression while honoring her Haitian heritage. @valjeanty, https://val-inc.bandcamp.com/

ABOUT THE PRESENTER
CRS (CENTER FOR REMEMBERING & SHARING) is a Manhattan- and Tokyo-based arts and spiritual center founded in 2004 by Yasuko Kasaki and Christopher Pelham. Rooted in the non-dualistic teachings of A Course in Miracles (ACIM), CRS offers spiritual counseling, healing, and mind-training courses to practitioners around the world. The Center uses the arts as a vehicle for achieving awakening, unity, and peace. By producing exhibitions, performances, and an online arts magazine (onlylove.ART), and providing support for individual artists and partner organizations like Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M³) and Kotohogi, CRS empowers a diverse, international community of artists to experiment, collaborate, and share their visions. https://crsny.org

New Year’s Eve Guided Meditation with Yasuko Kasaki (in person and online)
2025-12-31 18:30 - 19:00 | CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing), 41 E 11th St 11th Fl, New York, NY, 10003, United States
Please join us on Dec 31 at 6:30 pm for our annual year-end, in-person guided meditation with CRS Founder Yasuko Kasaki at CRS.
You can also attend online via Zoom at:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89313347701
Let’s join our minds in stillness to remember who we are and prepare to begin the new year with a clear mind and renewed intention to see and share only love.
What would love have me do?
Where would love have me go?
What would love have me say, and to whom?
Location:
41 E 11th St, 11th FL
just east of University PL above Ootoya
Space is limited, so advanced registration is required. Please RSVP by email to etsuko@crsny.org.

Turning Your Story Into Movement: An Autobiographical Workshop with Megumi Eda
2026-02-18 05:00 - 11:00 | CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing), 41 E 11th St 11th Fl, New York, NY, 10003, United States
This is the second edition of Turning Your Story Into Movement. Following the successful workshop in September, I’m happy to open this next chapter and continue developing this space together.
Of course, first-timers are very welcome, and those who participated last time will likely want to revise it, so you can go deeper into what you did last time, or take a new approach and go on a journey to create a treasure that is unique to you!
In this workshop titled “Turning Your Story Into Movement: An Autobiographical Workshop”, each participant will use their own story to create a piece.
You don’t need to be a dancer to join — though dancers are of course are welcome! This workshop is for anyone who wants to reflect on their life, face their own story, or expand their creative approach to performance.
My latest autobiographical solo piece, Fish áɪ lens (2025) at Dock 11, Berlin—created in collaboration with choreographer Shintaro Oue—is a multidisciplinary performance filled with humor, heart, and a touch of whimsy. It explores memory, migration, womanhood, motherhood, and the layered experience of being a body in motion across borders.
The process—intensely creative, vulnerable, and healing—is still fresh in my body.This workshop grows directly out of that journey and my many years of experience as a dancer.​
After more than 30 years on stages around the world, this is the kind of work I care most about now: raw, honest, playful, and intimate.
I hope you’ll join me. — Megumi Eda

For artists, movers, and anyone interested in exploring autobiography through the body.No dance experience necessary.
Feb 18–20, 2026 | EDEN Studio 190, Berlin11:00–17:00 (includes lunch break)
Presentation: Feb 20 at 18:00
Sliding scale: €160–240 (recommended €200)Info & Registration: megumiedart@gmail.com

What participants said about the first workshop:
“You have a calming, but at the same time pushing energy, funny, serious, and very clear. You took time for everyone, and it felt like you were researching together with us.” — Clara
“I have participated in many workshops across the city, but this was the first time one truly resonated with me so deeply.” — Kaimé
“People from very different backgrounds — even non-dancers — could all take part without feeling lost or bored.That balance is rare and beautiful.” — Giorgia
More info:
https://www.megumieda.com/copy-of-workshop-info

Fertile Land, Fertile Body by Jen Shyu
2026-02-28 20:00 - 21:30 | Open Arts Studio, 68 Jay Street, Studio 605A, 6th floor, Brooklyn, 11201, United States
CRS invites you to a work-in-progress showing of an excerpt of Jen Shyu’s latest work, Fertile Land, Fertile Body, a multilingual ritual opera comprising ancient and original music, dance, and projection, explores the loss of mother, loss of motherhood, and genocide’s effects on climate change and fertility while sharing stories of struggle and hope from women grappling with infertility. The work will be performed by vocalist/multi-instrumentalist/dancer Shyu, plus vocalist-instrumentalists who double as choir, and will use sound and choreographed movements to express how overcoming barrenness in both land and bodies is intertwined.
The performance will take place at Open Arts Studio in D.U.M.B.O. on February 28, 2026 at 8pm, and is part of a new performance series at Open Arts Studio curated by Soomi Kim.
Jen Shyu (voice, gayageum, Taiwanese moon lute, piano, movement)
Layale Chaker (violin, voice, movement)
Alexandria DeWalt (flute, voice, movement)
Melanie Dyer (viola, voice, movement)
Elizabeth Kate (cello, voice, movement)
Lesley Mok (drums, voice, movement)
TICKETS:
https://events.ticketleap.com/events/open-arts-studio-inc/live-music-jen-shyu
LOCATION:
Open Arts Studio
68 Jay Street, Studio 605A, 6th floor
Brooklyn, NY 11201
The development of Fertile Land, Fertile Body has been made possible, in part, by funds provided by CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) crsny.org; Shifting Foundation; and American Academy in Rome.
ABOUT JEN SHYU
Rome Prize, Guggenheim, and USA Fellow, Doris Duke Artist, multilingual multidisciplinary artist Jen Shyu was born in Peoria, Illinois to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrants. She has produced eight albums and a single available on her record label Autumn Geese Records. She’s performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Theater of Korea, Rubin Museum, was named Downbeat’s 2017 Rising Star Female Vocalist, and is a Fulbright scholar speaking 10 languages. She’s worked with such musical innovators as Sumi Tonooka, Terri Lyne Carrington, Nicole Mitchell, Val Jeanty, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Linda May Han Oh, Kris Davis, Wadada Leo Smith, Mark Dresser, Francis Wong, Jon Jang, Vijay Iyer, Kenny Barron, Reggie Workman, Bill Frisell, and Immanuel Wilkins. Her “Song of Silver Geese” was among The New York Times’ “Best Albums of 2017.” Her third solo production and album “Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses” (commissioned by John Zorn) has received wide critical acclaim, with “When I Have Power” NPR’s “Best Songs of 2021.” She is a Paul Simon Music Fellows Guest Artist, a Steinway Artist and co-founder with Sara Serpa of M³ (Mutual Mentorship for Musicians). @jenshyu, https://www.jenshyu.com

Dreamborne Theater Presents angels, a World Premiere
2026-03-20 20:30 - 21:30 | TheaterLab NYC, 357 W 36th St, 3rd floor, New York, NY, 10018, United States
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) is delighted to support the world premiere of angels, written by Tara P. Nyingjè and directed by Yannis Ning. In seven loops, the play presents alternate versions of a scene featuring a woman walking into a bar, thinking out loud, and interacting with the house musician to explore themes of repetition, silence, identity, erasure, and the hunger to be seen — fully, plurally, truthfully. Two casts will alternate, each with a separate rehearsal and development process, to create alternate versions. Presented by Dreamborne Theater, the production will run from March 20 – 22, 2026, as part of ATELIER @ THEATERLAB.

CAST A: Tara P. Nyingjè (寜婕) and Michael Sarian
CAST B: Hana Vo & Alan Lecheng Chao (晁乐成)

DATES:
Friday, March 20th @ 8:30pm – CAST A
Saturday, March 21st @ 3:30pm – CAST B
Saturday, March 21st @ 8:30pm – CAST A
Sunday, March 22 @ 3:30pm – CAST B
Approximate run-time: 60 mins (no intermission). Performed in English.

LOCATION:
TheaterLab NYC
357 W 36th St, 3rd floor, New York, NY 10018
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Dreamborne Theater is a New York-based nonprofit performance collective committed to developing and presenting cross-cultural performing arts rooted in dreams, myth, and memory. Through ritualistic and fantastical works, they investigate the evolving nature of identity, language, and culture — embracing the fragmented self as a space of transformation, rebirth, and fairytale. Alongside their artistic productions, they offer educational programs that empower individuals to engage with myth and ritual as creative tools for self-discovery and collective storytelling. @dreamborne_theater
Tara P. Nyingjè 寜婕 (Playwright, Performer) is an actor and theatre-maker based in New York City. She is the co-founder of SpArkling Theatre Studio (IG: @sparkling_ny), Stage Director of AAAAH!Culture (IG: @aaaah.culture), and Managing Director of Dreamborne Theater (IG: @dreamborne_theater). She is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, having majored in Drama with a focus on Experimental Theatre and Screen Acting. Her practice is rooted in physical and devised theatre, guided by a deep reverence for the body as a vessel of memory and transformation. Working at the intersection of movement and cross-cultural dialogue, her work blends forms, languages, and ritual. Her recent stage credits include Birds in the Meadow (American Theater of Actors), New Year’s Eve Dinner (Gene Frankel Theater), and Love Survives in 2095? (Secret Theatre). As a playwright and director, Tara has developed works including Trapped in the Flash and Bond, both staged at off-off-Broadway venues in New York City. Her most recent original work, QINGBAI: INNOCENCE, completed a three-city tour along the U.S. East Coast. Know more about her work at taranyingje.com and know more about her life on Instagram at taranje_
Yannis Ning (Director) is a theatre director, playwright, and actor based in New York City. Their work centers on devised and movement-driven performance, with an emphasis on transnational storytelling, embodied dramaturgy, and intimate audience relationships. Yannis serves as Artistic Director of Dreamborne Theater, where they build rehearsal processes that are trauma-informed and consent-based: prioritizing clear boundaries, actionable choices, and performer agency while developing precise physical scores and dramaturgical structures. They are currently completing an M.A. in Educational Theatre and English Education (Grades 7–12) at NYU Steinhardt, following a B.F.A. in Theatre Education from Emerson College, and bring an academic foundation in psychology to their approach to character, behavior, and relational dynamics onstage. Recent directing and writing includes Nine Shadows in Bloom, an original work that uses physical theatre and tableau to examine identity, displacement, and power. Yannis’s directing practice foregrounds structural clarity, rules of seeing, staying, and exchange, and the bodily consequences that emerge when those rules are enforced or broken.@nyeong_yannis

Hana Vo (Performer) is an actor, writer and director from Vietnam. Starting as a playwright at high school, Hana followed their calling and dived deeper into the storytelling arts with multiple short films made in both their home country, and in Canada—where they studied at Toronto Film School. Currently training in Acting for the stage with NYU Tisch and Atlantic Theater Company, they are set on expanding their artistic and creative limits, experimenting and playing with the conventions of theater. Currently, Hana is starring in NYU Shakespeare in the Square’s production of Julius Caesar and Bridge Playfest’s A Race Against Time. They are also assistant directing Instant Noodle at Playwright Horizon Theater School. Follow their recent and upcoming projects on Instagram @hana_inagallery.

Trumpeter and composer Michael Sarian (Sound Keeper), praised for his “endlessly renewable strain of lyric improvisation regardless of context or material” (Downbeat Magazine), was born in Toronto and raised in Buenos Aires. Based in New York since 2012, he has performed at iconic venues and festivals, including the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Kennedy Center, Yankee Stadium, The O2 Arena, and the Blue Note Jazz Club.
Sarian’s work spans jazz, contemporary, and electronic avant-garde music. He has toured with artists ranging from the Jonas Brothers to Bette Smith and The NYChillharmonic, in addition to leading his own projects. As a bandleader, he has released more than half a dozen albums and has appeared on numerous recordings as a collaborator and sideman. His artistic pursuits have led to residencies and fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2026), Millay Arts (2025), Art Omi (2024), and Culture Lab LIC (2022). In 2026, he continues his creative work as a National Arts Club Fellow.
Learn more at michaelsarian.com and follow @michaelsarian on Instagram.

Alan Lecheng Chao 晁乐成 (Sound Keeper) is a music producer, multi-instrumentalist, and audio engineer. Working under the title Sovietaxi and as part of the duo 羽片 Slice Feathers, his speciality is working with singer-songwriters to express their emotions. His solo projects are more emphasized on electronic ambient music that reflects tranquility and emotional tensions in East Asian culture.

LIFE IS ART IS MOTHERHOOD IS ART — KYOTO
2026-04-13 23:00 - 2026-05-10 06:00 | Gallery Maronie, 中京区河原町通四条上る塩屋町332, Kyoto City, Kyoto, 604-8027, Japan
Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art features photographs by five artists who are mothers: Daniela Kostova (Bulgaria), Aline Müller (Brazil), Katie Heller Saltoun (USA), Satomi Shirai 白井里実 (Japan), and Zoe Marieh Urness (Alaskan Tlingit and Cherokee). Across diverse geographies and experiences, their works explore motherhood as a potent generative force connecting family life to culture, environment, memory, and collective responsibility.
The exhibition, a version of which debuted at Tenri Cultural Center of New York in July 2025, will be on view at Gallery Maronie in Kyoto, Japan, as a featured exhibition of Kyotographie KG+ from April 14 to May 10, 2026, before moving to Le Déco Gallery in Tokyo from May 19 to May 24, 2026. Opening hours at Gallery Maronie are Tu – Sa from 12 – 7 pm and Su 12 – 6 pm.
A Closing Reception and Artist Talk will be held on May 10 from 3 – 5 pm in the 4th FL gallery of Gallerie Maronie. Exhibition artists Daniela Kostova and Satomi Shirai and curator Christopher Pelham will discuss the exhibition’s core themes with moderator Sae Shimai-Cardonnel, director of MOMENT Contemporary Art Center and former co-director of KG+. The talk will be conducted in English with consecutive interpretation into Japanese by Miho Tsujii.
日本語でのお知らせをお読みください。
“KG＋” is a public art festival founded in 2013 with the aim of discovering and supporting upcoming photographers and curators. In cooperation with “KYOTOGRAPHIE Kyoto International Photography Festival,” KG+ gives upcoming photographers and curators participating in KG＋ opportunities to talk and collaborate with world-renowned curators and gallerists from Japan and around the world.
X @kgplus_kyotoInstagram @kgplusFacebook @KGplusevent

Exhibition Preview

Pregnancy © by Satomi Shirai

Scrap Opera 3 © by Daniela Kostova

Mariana (Yakama Nation) © by Zoe Urness

Untitled © by Aline Müller

Cramped © by Katie Heller Saltoun

In dialogue with Kyotographie 2026’s theme, EDGE, the exhibition approaches motherhood as a lived threshold: a condition situated between self and other, private and public, care and survival, inheritance and change. The works center care as both subject and methodology. Like photography — poised between documentation and interpretation — motherhood demands attention, responsiveness to change, and openness to uncertainty. These qualities shape how the artists frame images, work with time, and attend to what is fragile, unfinished, or overlooked. Domestic interiors, caregiving, Indigenous communities, bodies in transformation, and rituals become sites of critical knowledge, where social systems, ecological precarity, and cultural memory are engaged with urgency.
Several works extend practices of nurturing beyond the family unit. Zoe Urness honors Indigenous traditions, documenting Native American life, cultural continuity, and resistance, showing care — for land, community, and history — as inseparable from justice. Daniela Kostova stages family life amid decay, disaster, and improvisation, using domestic roles as rehearsals for survival within unstable ecological and social systems.
Other photographs explore the edges of identity, home, and becoming. Satomi Shirai works between cultures and generations, examining home as an intangible, shifting space where identity remains unresolved. Katie Heller Saltoun inhabits the domestic interior as a charged threshold between confinement and creation, honoring the labor, repetition, and emotional charge of everyday care through raw, layered processes. Aline Müller mines the liminal space of motherhood as a state of transformation — psychic, bodily, and ancestral — embracing fragmentation, tenderness, and the unresolved “in-between.”
Life Is Art Is Motherhood Is Art proposes motherhood as a creative frontier — where art, ethics, and responsibility intersect. At this edge, attentiveness and interdependence emerge not as obstacles to creativity but as vital tools for imagining new ways of living, creating, and coexisting in an uncertain world.

Address
Gallery Maronie中京区河原町通四条上る塩屋町332Kyoto City, Kyoto 604-8027Japan + Google MapPhone 075-221-0117

Open Hours
Monday: ClosedTuesday – Saturday: 12 – 7 pmSunday: 12 – 6 pm

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Artist Profiles

ABOUT EXHIBITION CURATOR CHRISTOPHER PELHAM
Christopher Pelham is Director of CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing), a healing and art organization based in New York City that he co-founded in 2004 with the writer and lecturer Yasuko Kasaki. His many curatorial projects have spanned visual art, film/video, music, dance, and theater. He has organized exhibitions and events with a diverse range of international artists, including photographers Mao Ishikawa, Tomoko Iki, Clouds Architecture Office, Annie Ling, Miori Inata, and Nobuyuki Kobayashi; painters/sculptors Lex Braes, Keiko Nelson, Christian De Boschnek, Mariko Mori, Yasuka.M, and Eric Holzman; dance by Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks, Jennifer Nugent, Alexandra Beller, Megumi Eda, Guido Tuveri, Rana Gorgani, and Yuko Kaseki; and music by Morio Agata, Jen Shyu, Scott Robinson, Elsa Nilsson, Val Jeanty, Yoon-ji Lee, Kaoru Watanabe, and gamin, among many others. His own photographs have appeared in publications such Downbeat, The Wire, and I Care If You Listen. His photography and recent writing on the arts can also be found on https://onlylove.art.
ABOUT DANIELA KOSTOVA
Daniela Kostova is an interdisciplinary artist whose work spans photography, installation, video, and performance. She explores themes of geography, cultural identity, and the complexities of translation and communication across borders. Her projects have been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Queens Museum of Art, Kunsthalle Wien, Centre d’Art Contemporain (Geneva), and Kunsthalle Fridericianum (Kassel), among others. In 2019, she created one of Europe’s largest public art installations, Future Dreaming, covering Vienna’s Ringturm building.
Kostova has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Unlimited Award for Contemporary Bulgarian Art and residencies at A.I.R. Gallery (NYC), ZK/U Berlin, and ArtsLink at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She has also contributed as a curator, notably leading the BioArt Initiative at RPI, where she taught digital imaging. Her work has been featured in major publications such as The New York Times, Brooklyn Rail, and Art in America. Now based in New York City, she has served as Director of Curatorial Projects at Radiator Gallery, Artist Mentor at NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Program and Board Member of CEC Artslink.
http://danielakostova.com
DANIELA KOSTOVA ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice often begins within my immediate environment, using my family as both collaborators and protagonists to explore broader social, political, and ecological conditions.
In Scrap Opera (2011), a series of photographs staged in a ruined Victorian mansion, domestic life becomes an operatic performance set against decay. A pregnant woman with horns, a masked man in a stained robe, and a table laid with chicken bones evoke a pagan, pre-apocalyptic atmosphere. The work blends fantasy and necessity, asking whether these figures are freely inhabiting an alternative way of life or merely surviving within the remnants of another. Pregnancy here marks both creation and exposure, positioning the family unit as a fragile yet defiant structure within a collapsing environment.
This focus on care and role-making continues in New Role Models (2015), a photograph featuring my daughter and her babysitter, Rain Dove. Moving between the domestic sphere and the glamorous world of fashion, the androgynous caregiver embodies a fluid negotiation of gender, labor, and visibility. The work examines childcare as a socially coded space and frames role-shifting as a strategy for navigating normative systems, with parenthood becoming a lens through which social tolerance, economic survival, and identity performance are reconsidered.In Stuck (2017), my daughter reappears, this time enclosed within a cage atop an inflatable mattress – a reference drawn from online images documenting natural disasters in the United States. These images of improvised escape vehicles, loaded with children, pets, and household objects, collapse the distinction between leisure and survival. Sourcing the materials from my own home, I translate distant catastrophe into an intimate scenario. The work reflects on climate precocity and the unsettling realization that domestic safety can abruptly transform into confinement, turning play into a condition of emergency.
Together, these works trace a trajectory in which family life becomes a site for rehearsing survival, care, and adaptation – revealing how personal roles are entangled with larger systems of collapse, resilience, and change.
ABOUT ALINE MÜLLER
Photographer Aline Müller, born in the Brazilian Amazon and now working between Rio and New York, brings an elemental understanding of nature’s power to her intimate portraits of women. In her series curated for Life is Art Motherhood is Art, she captures mothers at different stages of their journey through evocative, almost surreal photographs that reveal the mystical within the everyday of motherhood.
Müller’s mothers emerge water-soaked from rivers, beaches, and showers with goddess-like splendor. They inhabit moments of joyous presence captured in delicate close-ups that refuse to hide or pose, but rather document dreamlike moments of maternal reality. With her generous and almost metaphysical gaze, Aline has the uncanny ability to depict what photography often editorializes out of women’s lives: fluids, curves, small gestures, and all that seems small and menial in life, yet speaks volumes to the internal world of women.
http://alinemuller.com
ALINE MÜLLER ARTIST STATEMENT
In Circle, Aline Müller composes a non-linear narrative of motherhood, using photography as a space for emotional, symbolic, and somatic inquiry. The circle present in the physical arrangement of the works and in the metaphors that run through them is not just a shape, but a way of thinking — a cycle of birth and disappearance, inheritance and rupture, love and disorientation.
Her images reject sentimental or glorified representations of maternity. Instead, they open space for what is raw, fragmented, and complex. Mirrors, bodies, water, shadows — elements that repeat and echo throughout the series — speak of reflection, but also of the difficulty of self-recognition in the wake of becoming a mother. The transformation is not only physical; it is psychic, ancestral, and at times, destabilizing.
Some of the photographs are intimate and tactile — close enough to feel skin, milk, or breath. Others are more distant, invoking a kind of absence: the mother as a trace, a silhouette, a blurred presence. Through these gestures, Müller touches on a deep tension, the near-invisibility of the mother as subject in her own story.
Made over time, between personal commissions and private moments, these images emerge from cycles of anxiety, reinvention, and deep emotional exposure. Müller doesn’t seek resolution; she invites us into the in-between. Her visual language, elliptical and tender, mirrors the state of living between worlds: between who we were and whom we become, between what we inherit and what we choose to break.
Circle is not a document. It is a gesture — one of return, of witnessing, of drawing a line around the ineffable, and holding it with care.
ABOUT KATIE HELLER SALTOUN
Katie Heller Saltoun is a visual artist based in DUMBO, Brooklyn, New York. Her work primarily utilizes oil paint, ink, photographic collages, and woodcut printing to explore the multifaceted experiences of motherhood and caregiving. Saltoun captures the humor, frustration, monotony, and profound love inherent in caregiving, drawing inspiration from her own life and the diverse narratives of mothers and caretakers she encounters. Her compositions often depict dynamic scenes of energy and chaos, as well as repetitive imagery such as refrigerator shelves, spice racks, and rows of snacks, reflecting the repetitive yet vital tasks of domestic life.
Saltoun holds a BFA from the University of Michigan, an MA from Columbia University, and an MFA from Pratt Institute. Her recent exhibition, “Bifocal: Motherhood and Creativity,” was held at the Elza Kayal Gallery in Tribeca, New York. This multidisciplinary show explored the intricate interplay between creativity and motherhood, highlighting the often-overlooked experiences of artists who navigate both roles. Additionally, her work was featured in The American Scholar magazine in an article titled “Tenderness and Grit.”
Saltoun continues to create and exhibit work that resonates with audiences, oﬀering a profound and authentic portrayal of the complexities inherent in caregiving and domestic life.
http://katiehellersaltoun.com
KATIE HELLER SALTOUN ARTIST STATEMENT
My work explores the daily rituals, chaos, humor, repetition, and frustrations that come with being a mother inside the home. As a mother, I am constantly flooded with a tidal wave of emotion: frustration, anger, exhaustion, empathy, and deep love. The domestic space, for me, is a site of both confinement and creativity. It’s where the demands of caregiving collide with moments of deep reflection, observation, and making. Within this space, I find a strange intimacy and tension that fuels my work. By exploring the familiar, I aim to honor the labor embedded in daily domestic life. I draw inspiration from other artist-mothers who courageously share their personal narratives, stories that validate and strengthen all who perform this often invisible labor. In my practice, I work with a range of materials, including photographic collages, ink, printmaking, and oil paint. I often tear and staple large sheets of paper to the wall, embracing a raw physicality in my process. The range of media allows me to control the intensity through layers of color, texture, wash, and line, channeling the weight and frenetic energy of caregiving. My hope is that viewers recognize fragments of their own domestic experience within these altered scenes and connect through the shared nuances of daily life.
ABOUT SATOMI SHIRAI
Satomi Shirai playfully explores themes of cultural identity, feminism, motherhood, and the evolving meaning of home, both in the context of migration and as a universal psycho-spiritual experience. Her photographs, often set in domestic spaces, reveal the quiet tensions between order and chaos, belonging and estrangement, the visible and the unseen. Shirai’s work has been exhibited widely, including at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Her photographs are held in the collections of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (K’MoPA).
After earning a Full-Time Certificate from the International Center of Photography in 2007 and an MFA from Hunter College (CUNY) in 2010, Shirai lived and worked in New York City for over a decade. In 2015, she returned to Japan to raise her daughter and now lives and works in Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture. Though she has exhibited less frequently since her return, she continues to create new work, often in collaboration with her daughter.
http://satomishirai.com
SATOMI SHIRAI ARTIST STATEMENT
I make photographs that explore themes of cultural identity, feminism, physical expression in everyday life, and the special connection between mother and child. Since becoming a mother, I’ve focused more on documenting lives in their natural surroundings—drawing inspiration from the intense energy of my child’s small, growing body, the beauty of her spontaneous movements, and the surprising and often funny ways she engages with the world.
“Walls with windows and doors form the house,but the empty space within it is the essence of the house.”—Lao Tzu, from “The Uses of Not” from Tao Te Ching
My work also reflects on what constitutes “home” — first as an immigrant in New York, and now, for the past decade, back in Japan. The tension between tangibility and intangibility continues to shape this inquiry: how do we define or recognize home?
In this exhibition, I am mixing elaborately staged earlier works from when I was pregnant and new to motherhood with more recent photos created in collaboration with my daughter. Images of the miniature dream houses my mother made, and my daughter often played with, are projected onto my daughter and onto the actual interior of our home. In the shifting environments and connections to the world, she appears in a state of yet-to-be-formed identity.
Through the process of making these works, I try to capture our evolving relationship and her evolving relationship to her home and the world. Rather than trying to convey fixed feelings or messages, I try to express the shifting, complicated, sometimes conflicting nature of intimacy, identity, and belonging, leaving the works open to multiple interpretations.
ABOUT ZOE MARIEH URNESS
Zoe Urness is a Tlingit photographer raised in the Pacific Northwest. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Commercial Photography from the Brooks Institute of Photography in 2008. Urness lives and works between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Seattle area in Washington State.
Urness’s practice engages Indigenous representation, contemporary Native identity, and documentary storytelling. Early bodies of work confronted the legacy of Edward Curtis through staged, sepia-toned compositions that merge historical references with present-day Native sitters. In 2015, Urness documented the Standing Rock resistance on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota, producing a significant body of documentary work from the movement.
Her photograph No Spiritual Surrender was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography by World Literature Today and featured on the cover of its May 2017 issue. Urness is also the recipient of the 2022 Sony Alpha Female+ Grant in support of her project Indigenous Motherhood.
Urness’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Zimmerli Art Museum (2025), the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2019), the Autry Museum of the American West (2017–2018), and the Booth Western Art Museum (solo exhibition). Her work will be exhibited in the United Kingdom, Paris, and Tokyo in 2026.
https://zoeurnessphoto.com
ZOE MARIEH URNESS ARTIST STATEMENT
My art is a way for people to view modern Indigenous people photographed in traditional clothing and on land that is special to them. This imagery honors the past and shows how we are still here, living by traditions and values passed down from one generation to the next. Without honoring our traditional way of life and practices, we would not be here in this modern world. Art can serve as a platform to elevate Indigenous voices and perspectives, promote understanding, and celebrate Indigenous ways of life, both traditionally and contemporarily. It can also serve as a tool for cultural revitalization and preservation, highlighting the beauty and richness of Indigenous cultures and traditions.
This project has significant meaning to me because I am a mother. I gave birth to a baby girl, and the transformation I have experienced has been both physical and spiritual. This metamorphosis has spawned the inspiration for this photography project. The honor I have now for being female is felt deep in my soul and within my whole existence. I anticipate these images to be cinematic and to have a deep connection to Mother Earth, represented through varied landscapes.
I typically receive the ideas for my work through a series of vivid visions that come to me, sometimes through dreams, other times through sacred landscapes speaking to me. Once I recognize the vision, it’s as if all the pieces appear synchronistically, adding to the original vision, making it complete. As I evolve as an artist, I feel as if my entire body of work is braided together as one story being told through my lens.
Storytelling has been the way Native American cultures have been preserved for thousands of years, and they are used to teach and pass down values, history, and beliefs. Traditional storytelling has been shared through the spoken word, dance, song, and other art forms such as carvings, weaving, silversmithing, and drawings such as form line. I choose to use my camera as a tool to link the past and present through visual stories. As I was growing up, I learned the stories of my ancestors through my Tlingit elders, and through learning traditional clan songs and dance. Today, as a professional photographer and as an Indigenous woman and mother, I believe I have a unique perspective that has been formed by who I am and where I come from.
