Nicky Enright: Sense Us 2020
Hunter East Harlem Gallery
(Viewable from 119th Street Windows)
2180 3rd Avenue at 119th Street
New York, NY
August 15, 2020 – January 31, 2021
Sense Us 2020 is a mixed-media installation of images and text on flattened shipping boxes by artist Nicky Enright. It is a public response to the questions around race on the current 2020 U.S. Census. Created to mimic the aesthetic of protest signs on cardboard and with a symbolically limited palette of black, white, and brown, the installation points to America’s pervasive fixation on race/ethnicity criteria and status checkboxes.
Through the dynamic installation of Sense Us 2020, Enright strives to understand the connections among the race/ethnicity boxes on the census and other boxes of this historical moment: from the casket boxes of recurrent racist violence, to election-year ballot boxes and quarantine and intubation boxes; from mass incarceration, to town “squares” and monument pedestal boxes; from Zoom/Skype boxes, Amazon boxes, and cash vaults to riot-police kettling, a state-of-the-art form of containment.
Hunter East Harlem Gallery is currently closed due to the COVID-19 Pandemic but the Hallway Gallery can be seen through the windows on 119th Street.
