Transformative Impact by Bronx Council on the Arts

TRANSFORMATIVE IMPACT

MAY 28 - JULY 2, 2025

ARTISTS

Maya Ciarrocchi | Ghislaine Sabiti | dan keith williams | Natalie C. Wood

CURATOR

Lucia Warck-Meister

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

Transformative Impact is an exhibition that showcases the powerful ways in which four contemporary Bronx artists engage with their communities through socially and environmentally conscious art making. Confronting urgent issues, such as environmental migration, gender equality, and systemic injustice, these artists transform creative practice into a catalyst for awareness, dialogue, and meaningful change.

Working across a wide range of mediums—from glassblowing, painting, and video to performance and terrarium-based work— the artists present alternative narratives that highlight art’s ability to transcend boundaries and foster unity in the face of social and political divides.

In her latest work, Ghislaine Sabiti weaves glass, print, and found wooden boards into a meditation on motherhood and the evolving spirit of womanhood. Pregnancy emerges as metamorphosis—its beauty and vulnerability captured in molten glass, a material as delicate and unpredictable as the maternal body itself. Some forms remain unfinished, others deliberately broken, echoing the shifting nature of care and identity. Sabiti asks: can one mother nurse through presence, through soul, through love alone? What shape does nurturing take when it transcends biology?

The Headpiece series celebrates the poetry of hair—sculptural crowns

inspired by cornrows and ancestral styles. Black women’s textures are exalted. Hair is language, protest, beauty—woven memory and defiant joy. Sabiti honors it as sacred, a visible hymn of selfhood reclaimed.

In dan keith williams’ works, the construct of the Black male selfundertakes a quiet excavation—tracing what is often overlooked, misread, or confined by inherited meaning. Through image, form, and presence, the work becomes an exploration of perception and the fragile architectures of identity. While the pieces center on the Black male figure, the inquiry is expansive, probing the layered contradictions embedded in collective narratives. Darkness becomes not absence, but a mirror; endurance is questioned, not celebrated; and visibility is examined as both a gift and a trap. And in a final shift, the gaze moves outward: toward nature, toward common ground. Beneath the surface of social division, the artist reveals a deeper truth—that we are bound by more than what separates us.

Maya Ciarrocchi’s LoopCurrent meditates on humanity’s impact on the Earth and the irreversible transformation of our shared future, reflecting on dramatic environmental shifts and the ways our bodies— and our perceptions—might adapt.

Through responsive fabrics, embodied gestures, resonant soundscapes, and the tremors of the Earth itself, the project conjures a world unearthed in some distant era—its remnants discovered long after our presence has faded. These future fragments arrive like signals from another time, echoing forward as spectral testimonies of a forgotten catastrophe.

By framing the future as both uncertain and fertile, Maya invites us to imagine how creativity, resilience, and collective memory might grow from ruin.

The resilience and adaptability of nature are at the core of Natalie C. Wood’s hybrid creatures composed of flora, fauna, and decorative elements. Her pieces explore how nature persists and adapts, even as human-made environments fall into decline. By blending elements of the natural world with fragments of the urban landscape, Natalie creates scenes that feel both familiar and slightly unreal. Through this visual merging, she encourages viewers to think about their connection to nature and how it continues to shape and be shaped by, the places we live in.

Transformative Impact not only examines the role of art in shaping public discourse but also underscores its potential to inspire collective action toward a more just and inclusive world.

CURATOR BIO

Lucia Warck-Meister, Gallery Director at BCA, Curator of Transformative Impact

Lucia Warck-Meister is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Fellowship; Ibermuseum Prize; First Prize, Biennial of Sculpture in Public Spaces, Palm Beach, Florida; MTA Arts For Transit, Finalist, 231st Station, Bronx, NY; Public Art Program/Summit, City Hall, NJ; Creative Climate Awards, Human Impacts Institute; Artist’s Fellowship, Inc. New York, NY; National Endowment for the Arts Grant Buenos Aires; and was an artist in residency at School of Visual Arts, NY; TransborderArt Governors Island Residency; The Bakehouse, Miami, FL; Oolite Artist Residency, Miami; SACO6 Award Antofagasta, Chile; NYFA Immigrant Mentoring Program; CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France; American Academy in Rome, Italy; Sculpture Space, Utica, NY. Her work is included in The Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL; Marvin and Ruth Collection, Miami, FL; The Taplin Collection, The Sagamore Hotel Video Lounge, Miami, FL; Royal Caribbean Art Foundation, Miami, FL; Stanley Museum of Art, Iowa City, Iowa; MEIAC –Museo Extremadura e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporaneo-, Badajoz, Spain; Diego Rivera Mural Museum, DF, Mexico; Deutsche Bank Art Foundation; Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, Buenos Aires.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Opening Reception

Wednesday, May 28, 2025, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Public Program

Wednesday, June 18, 2025, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Closing Reception

Wednesday, July 2, 2025, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA)

Longwood Art Gallery

2700 East Tremont Avenue Bronx, NY, 10461 (718) 931-9500 Ext. 22 longwood@bronxarts.org

Longwood Arts Project

The Longwood Arts Project is the contemporary visual arts program of the Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA), with the mission to support artists and their work, especially emerging artists from underrepresented groups, such as people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and women. The Longwood Art Gallery presents solo and group exhibitions of works of art produced in various media, through interdisciplinary practices that connect emerging artists, communities, and ideas within and beyond The Bronx.

The Bronx Council on the Arts

Founded by visionary community leaders in 1962, the Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) is a pioneer in advancing cultural equity in The Bronx. From our early beginnings as a presenter of affordable arts programming in select Bronx neighborhoods, we have grown into a cultural hub that serves the entire creative ecosystem of the borough. Our programs serve artists, the public, and the field at large by building connections, providing resources, and advocating for equitable practices. Then as of now, we focus on supporting the work of underrepresented groups – especially artists of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Through this lens, we offer affordable programs for seniors and youth and provide direct services to over 1,500 artists and 250 community-based arts groups each year.

www.bronxarts.org

LONGWOOD ART GALLERY

YOUTH ARTS ENGAGEMENT PROGRAM

Longwood’s Youth Arts Engagement Program, launched in 2018, is designed to engage Bronx youth with the rich visual arts scene that surrounds them. By providing gallery experiences they can relate to – and interactions with artists who reside in the same neighborhoods, share similar cultural identities, and even nations of origin – young people gain formative experiences of cultural engagement that last a lifetime.

Activities are free, age-appropriate, and created by professional teaching artists to foster critical thinking, interviewing, and public speaking skills. If your organization, school, or group works with youth and would like to arrange a gallery tour, email us at longwood@bronxarts.org or call (718) 931-9500 Ext. 22.

Illustration by Ruben Ramirez

Transformative Impact – Now on view at Bronx Council on the Arts’ Longwood Art Gallery, 2700 Tremont Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461 until July 2, 2025

By: BCA Youth Journalist Samantha Diaz

An artist’s impact on social and environmental norms can be transformative. Their work may be a reflection of context that takes place in the past, present, and future.

Ghislaine Sabiti’s Motherhood series and Head series, show glass pieces buried in dirt on the gallery floor. The installation connects the idea of living, nature, and maternity all into one.

Youth Journalist Entry Coming Soon

The Motherhood pieces have shapes and designs that are significant to the installation. “They’re all pregnant at different stages of the trimesters. Everybody has a different experi-ence of motherhood, so it’s a storytelling.” Sabiti said.

Sabiti learned how to do printmaking for the first time during an artist residency, using the same glasses and vases from her series, Tête-à-tête 1, Têteà-tête 2, Authenticity, Ceux Que L’oeil n’a Pas Vue, and COMMUNITY, into printmaking on wood.

Natalie Collete Wood similarly made a site-specific installation called Futuristic Flora, which is crafted along the stairs of the art gallery. The piece features items from her backyard and her art studio.

Natalie describes the items in her piece as “leftovers,” from nature, human contact, and as-pects of the work she’s done in the past. When nature and urban environments have been left alone, nature’s kind of reclaimed these spaces.”

This “reclaiming of space” is reflected in the way the grass falls along the steps in the gallery. The length of the grass represents nature’s growth over time in a space previously inhabited by humans.

dan keith williams’s experience as a graphic designer led him to experiment

with lithography. All his featured works, RebelSoulPower, OutOfTheDark_ Paul, BA Untitled, The Pattern of Man, and b. perseverance use this technique.

williams doesn’t feel the need to make his work flashy or have some deeper meaning. He calls himself a communicator, and he aims to provide representation for Black men and Black art-ists.

His main motivation as an artist, along with his works, shines through strength. He says,“This is about, you don’t destroy us...You can take an image and convey a message that says it’s strength even though it looks like it’s falling apart.”

Maya Ciarrocchi’s LoopCurrent consists of artifacts that will be rediscovered in the future. For her video piece, she designed wearable “survival suits,” envisioned as present-day relics viewed from a future perspective.

Her three large-scale tapestries are explorations of chaotic and collapsing cities, connecting with her other works. Maya says, “They’re all about cities of the future collapsing infrastructure and remnants of the extractive industry... They tie in with this video where I’m shooting in plac-es with high instances of human migration.”

Her video piece was filmed in the Baltic Sea due to her connection to Poland, where her family is from. The video serves as the first installment of a series to be filmed in New York City, Palm Bay, and at the U.S. border.

These pieces speak to real-world issues that may be “taboo” in the art world but are deeply personal to the artists in this exhibition. By using their platform to confront such topics, their work resonates on a much larger scale.

MAYA CIARROCCHI

Maya Ciarrocchi is a Canadian American interdisciplinary artist. Her work has been exhibited in New York City, as well as nationally and internationally at galleries, museums and performing arts venues such as Abrons Arts Center, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Collar Works, Center for New Music (CA), Equity Gallery, Field Projects, Gibney, Jack, La Bodega Gallery, Longwood Gallery, Main Window Dumbo, Old Stone House, Smack Mellon, Wave Hill, and ZAZ10TS. She has been awarded residencies from the Baryshnikov Arts, Bronx Museum of the Arts, LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture, Loghaven, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MacDowell, Millay Arts, UCross, Visual Studies Workshop, and Wave Hill. She has received grants and awards from the Bronx Council on the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Franklin Furnace Fund, Jerome Foundation, Map Fund, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Puffin Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. In addition to her studio practice, Ciarrocchi has created Bessie, Jeff and TONY-winning projection scenography and design for dance and theater artists such as, Wally Cardona, Ping Chong, David Cromer, Merce Cunningham, Bebe Miller, Donna Uchizono, and Talvin Wilks. Ciarrocchi earned an MFA in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, and a BFA in Dance from Purchase College, Purchase, NY. Her work is in the Brookfield Properties collection. She lives and works in the Bronx.

Maya Ciarrocchi, LoopCurrent, 2024, 4K video/stereo sound, dimensions variable

GHISLAINE SABITI

Ghislaine Sabiti is a French American artist born in Congo, known for her work in painting, glass art, ceramic sculpture, costume design, and education. Based in New York, she serves as a career adviser for immigrant artists through the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). Ghislaine studied fine art at Atelier Chantier du Coq and L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière, graduating with honors in fashion design from Atelier Chardon Savard in Paris. She further honed her skills in glass lampworking and ceramics at Urban Glass and the Ceramic Arts Foundation. She has developed curricula and taught at prestigious institutions, including the Harlem School of the Arts and Brooklyn College. Her work focuses on form and color while blending techniques like weaving, braiding, painting, and sculpture. Ghislaine has completed notable fellowships with the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute and the NYFA Immigrant Artist Program and leadership. Columbia Clay, Peter’s Valley School of Craft, ArtYard with CoLabArt, Pilchuck Better Together, Urban Glass, Glass Roots, Calabar Gallery, coLABArts, the Jamaica Center, and the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning. Chashama has nominated Ghislaine for an artist residency at the Marcel Breuer House at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Pocantico Center.

She has been a resident artist at various esteemed organizations and has received nominations for artist residencies and commissions. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at venues such as the Zimmerli Art Museum, El Teatro del Museo Del Barrio, and the Occupy Museum DebtFair Whitney Biennial.

Ghislaine Sabiti, Entre Deux, 2024, Glass blowing, 18 X 7 X 8 inches

DAN KEITH WILLIAMS

dan keith williams is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice bridges traditional printmaking and digital innovation to interrogate power, inequity, and identity. Born in South Carolina’s Lowcountry and rooted in the Bronx for over 30 years, dan’s work channels the textures of Southern memory and urban resistance.

Through lithography, artist books, photocompositions, and generative art, he constructs visual narratives that challenge systems of oppression and amplify voices often pushed to the margins.

A long-time member of The Art Students League of New York, dan has studied lithography under Sylvie G. Covey since 2004, developing a body of work that confronts racial injustice and economic disparity. His current series of lithographs critiques the persistent structures of inequity in American society, reflecting the urgency of our moment.

His work has appeared in the International Print Center NYC, Art on the Avenue, and internationally in Italy and Japan. dan was featured in the Washington Post Magazine and Modern Printmaking and served as technical editor for Photoshop for Artists.

dan keith williams transforms art into an acts of awareness and resistance—an evolving archive of struggle, survival, and collective truth.

dan keith williams, RebelSoulPower, 2020, Lithographic Pigment Transfer, 19 X 13 inches

NATALIE COLLETTE WOOD

Natalie Collette Wood is a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in The Bronx, NY. She holds an MFA from THe City University of New York and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include Nesting at Sugar Hill Children’s Museum (2025), Buttermilk at Governors Island (2023), Splendour at Freight + Volume Gallery (2019), Natural Phenomenon at the Andrew Freedman Home, Bronx, NY (2018), and Nothing Lasts Forever at the Andrew Freedman Home (2016). Wood’s work has been featured in major group exhibitions, including The AIM Biennial at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Ornamenting Crime at Zürcher Gallery, and The Hot House at Kathryn Markel Fine Art in Chelsea. Her work has also been highlighted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue Italia, and FLAUNT Magazine.

Natalie Collette Wood, Futuristic Flora, 2025 Site-specific Installation

Pillow Moss, Succulents, Live plants, Glass Containers, Found Objects, Digitally Printed Chiffon, Tree Branches, Vines, Dried Flowers, Synthetic Fabric, Coconut Fiber, Oyster Shells, Galvanized Steel, Feathers, Crystals, Beads, and Soil

TRANSFORMATIVE IMPACT

All works courtesy of the artists unless otherwise noted.

Maya Ciarrocchi

LoopCurrent, 2024

Installation Dimensions variable

4K video/stereo sound

2 garments

3 tapestries

Sound score created in collaboration with Joanna Duda. Includes sounds recorded with specialized mi-crophones in and around the Baltic Sea.

Movers: Natalia Chylińska and Katarzyna Pastuszak

Garments created in collaboration with Sarah Laux

Ghislaine Sabiti

Head Series, 2024

7 pieces

Glass blowing

3.5” X 8” X 3”

Ghislaine Sabiti

Motherhood series, 2024

7 pieces

Glass blowing

Variable sizes

Ghislaine Sabiti

COMMUNITY, 2023

Printmaking on wood

15” X 16”

Ghislaine Sabiti

Ceux Que L’oeil n’a Pas Vue, 2023

Printmaking on wood

20” X 9”

Ghislaine Sabiti

Authenticity, 2023

Printmaking on wood

14” X 15”

Ghislaine Sabiti

Tête-à-tête 2, 2023

Printmaking on wood

16.5” X 9”

Ghislaine Sabiti

Tête-à-tête 1, 2023

Printmaking on wood

16.5” X 9”

dan keith williams

The Pattern of Man, 2022 Hahnemühle Giclee, Lithographic Print

35.5” X 55”

dan keith williams b. perseverance, 2021 Hahnemühle Giclee, Lithographic Print

24” X 18”

dan keith williams OutOfTheDark_Paul, 2021 Hahnemühle Giclee, Lithographic Print

18” X 24”

dan keith williams

BA Untitled, 2021 Photolithographic Print

34” X 18”

dan keith williams

RebelSoulPower, 2020

Lithographic Pigment Transfer

19” X 13”

Natalie Collette Wood

Futuristic Flora, 2025

Site-specific Installation

The Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; Arts Midwest and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Coalition of Theaters of Color; the Cultural Immigrant Initiative; City Council Member Eric Dinowitz; and NYS Assemblymember Michael Benedetto. Also supported in part by the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Booth Ferris Foundation, the Altman Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Amazon, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Tiger Baron Foundation, the Claire and Theodore Morse Foundation, the New Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund, the Northwestern Mutual Foundation, Con Edison, Webster Bank, and BronxCare Health System.

Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) 2700 E Tremont Ave Bronx, New York 10461

www.bronxarts.org

@BronxArtsOrg