Smack Mellon

10/02/2026

Now open! Emerging artists are invited to submit work for the 2027 Summer Group Exhibition curated by Alma Chaouachi. Submissions are due by Dec 1.

The open call takes as its departure point a public installation by artist and engineer Vishal Rawlley, who was commissioned to develop Hauz-i-Shamsi, or “Say Hello to the Hauz,” in a historic reservoir in Mehrauli, Delhi in 2010. Commissioned to make a case for ‘Internet art’ at a time where technology-based artistic practices were still being defined, Rawlley used networked technology to draw attention to the increasingly polluted reservoir, creating a way for the surrounding community to interact with it.

Inspired by this case-study—including its failures—the exhibition invites artists to consider site-specificity, infrastructures, systems, and conditions that prompt an artwork to become a site for collectivity. How does a work organize a site, a context, an audience, a set of actions, or a technology into a gathering? What happens when audiences use, interpret, or transform a work beyond the artist’s intent? And what responsibility does an artist have for what the work makes possible?

Learn more and submit at the link in our profile by December 1, 2026.

Image 2: Screenshot from a film by Vishal Rawlley showing interaction with his installation Say Hello to the Hauz, 2010. (Source: YouTube)

Image 3: Curator Alma Chaouachi. Headshot by Pejota

09/25/2026

Our galleries will be closed tomorrow, Sat. Sept 26 for the incoming storm. Stay safe!

08/12/2026

Final days! Due this Saturday Aug 15, emerging NYC-based curators are invited to submit a proposal for our annual Emerging Artists Summer Group Exhibition across Smack Mellon’s two galleries, slated to open in summer 2027.

We advise applicants to be familiar with our mission and programs—we are interested in engaging with projects that consider relevant political, social, or environmental issues.

In addition to providing a curatorial framework, the curator will work in collaboration with Smack Mellon’s staff to develop an open call for artists that will be announced during fall 2026.

The deadline for applications is August 15, 2026 at midnight EST.

More info at the link in our profile.

Image: Installation view of Remains to be seen, curated by Pallavi Surana pallavisuranaa (2025). Image courtesy of Smack Mellon. Photo: Etienne Frossard Etienne Frossard

07/05/2026

Over the past few days, Smack Mellon was transformed into the JAŸ-Z30 Brooklyn pop-up in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the artist’s debut album.

The final day of the pop-up is tomorrow, Sunday, July 5.

Fun fact: Smack Mellon’s exterior was featured in the 1996 music video for “Dead Presidents” on the album, acknowledged with the original 1993 white Lexus GS 300 that appeared in the video.

06/19/2026

ANNOUNCING THE 2026/27 ARTIST STUDIO

We are thrilled to announce the six artists in the 2026–27 Artist Studio cohort! (from top, left to right):

Amy Bravo
Aparna Sarkar
Asia Stewart
Enrique Garcia
Judy Chung
Soeun Bae

These NYC-based emerging artists, representing a diverse array of practices, will move into their studios at Smack Mellon this September. For an eleven-month period, residents are granted a private studio, a stipend, and access to equipment with which to create work, establish relationships with arts professionals, and grow in community with their peers—all with the financial, technical, and administrative support of Smack Mellon.

A panel of arts professionals selected this year’s cohort, including Nova Benway, Executive Director at Triangle Arts Association; Ian Cofre, Independent Curator; and Pallavi Surana, Independent Curator. Preliminary panelists were former Smack Mellon Studio or Exhibition artists: Christian Amaya Garcia, mujero, Juan José Cielo, Utsa Hazarika, Angélica Maria Millán Lozano, and Armando Guadalupe Cortés.

Amy Bravo combines icons from Latin American popular culture and hyper-personal family stories, to invent her own vision, intimate and fantastic, of an afterlife in the rough shape of the island of Cuba. Rather than classic stretched canvases, Bravo prefers to draw on loose canvas—cut and stitched to create irregular shapes that expand into painting and assemblage sculpture.

Born in 1997 in Park Ridge, New Jersey, Amy Bravo currently lives and works in Queens, New York. After completing a BFA in Illustration at Pratt Institute, New York, she obtained an MFA in Painting at Hunter College, New York in 2022. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Swivel Gallery, New York, Semiose Gallery in Paris, as well as group shows with Buffalo AKG Art Museum and The FLAG Foundation. Her work is featured in the permanent collection of the Perez Art Museum in Miami. She was a 2024 New York Community Trust Fellow at ISCP and a resident at the Fountainhead in Miami in 2022.

Amy Bravo, Automaton 4.0 (Bull-Remastered), 2024. Found Cabinet, Foam, Acrylic, Wood, Epoxy, Plaster, Thread, Boxing Gloves, Christmas Lights, Synthetic Hair, Co

05/12/2026

05/04/2026

Get your tickets for our Spring Benefit this Wed, May 6 and catch Pat Oleszko’s performance activating our 30-year archive!

“A timed performantz creating sartorial splendor from the capacious archives of Smack Mellon publicity excess, Oleszko will transform the past into a wearable Version of the Future that she will don in relative discomfort the rest of the evening. A Fool’s errand not to be missed.”

You won’t get these looks at the Met gala 👀

05/01/2026

Next week on Wed. May 6th, join us for our Spring Benefit!

As part of the evening’s festivities,
catch a performance by Pat Oleszko 💃
win prizes in the “pearl-diving the archive” game 🦪 bring your best song for a karaoke after party 🎤
enjoy food by 🫓🥗🧀

Celebrate our enduring community and sustain Smack Mellon’s future by buying your ticket today! Tickets start at $175.

More information at the link in our profile. 🎟️

Thanks to our generous event sponsors:

04/23/2026

This , meet Kamari Carter, a New York-based artist working primarily with sound, video, installation, and performance. His practice circumvents materiality and familiarity through a variety of recording and amplification techniques to investigate notions such as space, systems of identity, oppression, control, and surveillance.

His work has been exhibited at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, Providence, RI, among others, and has been featured in publications including Artnet, Flash Art, Hyperallergic, and Whitewall, among others. Carter holds a BFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and an MFA from Columbia University. Kamari Carter is represented by Microscope Gallery in New York City.

Image: Kamari Carter, The Horrorscope is back and letting you know that someone is giving you an awful lot of attention recently, and you are not comfortable with it. Your best tactic is to try to ignore them. You can’t try to fake it, but there is also no need