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Locust Projects presents SK3000, a newly commissioned interactive architectural sculptural installation by New York City-based artist duo, Dahlia Elsayed & Andrew Demirjian, opening at Locust Projects on Saturday, March 2, 2024 with a Meet the Artists Reception.

A multi-sensory ritual site to quench intellectual and physical thirst, SK 3000 reinterprets the Islamic architectural form of a sabil kuttab, which traditionally holds a community fountain at the ground level with a school built on top. The artists reimagine the sabil kuttab’s form and function for the future, in the context of privatization of water sources, democratic access to clean water, and as a learning space that resists education for productivity, profit, or politics. 

In the installation created for Locust Projects Project Room, Elsayed & Demirjian use elaborate decoration, including crafted water elements, carpets, cushions, sculptures, and original soundtrack to create a transportive installation conceived of as an ancestral gift structure for an indeterminate future, as a meeting space to collectively imagine new ways of being.

Elsayed and Demirjian, whose work was recently featured in the group exhibition What Models Make Worlds: Critical Imaginaries of AI at The Ford Foundation Gallery in NY from September 7-December 9, 2023, were selected as part of Locust Projects 2022 open call for proposals from more than 350 applications by a review panel consisting of Miami-based independent curator Tam Gryn; and past exhibiting artists, Marcus Kiser 2017 (Charlotte, NC); Jeff Thompson 2020 (Hoboken, NJ; and Raul Romero 2020 (Philadelphia, PA) and coordinated by LP Co-founding artist, Elizabeth Withstandley. 

SK3000 is presented, in part, with support from Odabashian Rugs.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Dahlia Elsayed is an artist and writer who makes text and image based work that synthesizes an internal and external experience of place, connecting the ephemeral to the concrete. She writes short fictions for created landscapes that take the form of narrative paintings, print and installation. Her work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions throughout the United States and internationally, including the 12th Cairo Biennale, Robert Miller Gallery, BravinLee Programs, The New Jersey State Museum and Aljira Center for Contemporary Art. Her work is in the public collections of the Newark Museum, the Zimmerli Museum, Johnson & Johnson Corporation, the US Department of State, amongst others. Dahlia has received awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Edward Albee Foundation, Visual Studies Workshop, the MacDowell Colony, Women’s Studio Workshop, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the NJ State Council on the Arts. She received her MFA from Columbia University, and lives and works in New Jersey. Ms. Elsayed is  Professor of Humanities at CUNY LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, NY.

Andrew Demirjian builds linguistic, sonic and visual environments that disrupt habituated ways of reading, hearing and seeing. His interdisciplinary artistic practice examines structures that shape consciousness and perception, questioning frameworks that support the status quo and limit thought. The works are often presented in non-traditional spaces and take the form of multi-channel audiovisual installations, generative artworks, video poems, augmented reality apps and live performances. 

Andrew’s work has been exhibited at The Museum of the Moving Image, The New Museum – First Look: New Art Online, Fridman Gallery, Transformer Gallery, Eyebeam, Rush Arts, the White Box gallery, the Center for Book Arts, The Arab American National Museum, The Newark Museum and many other galleries, festivals and museums. Andrew was awarded a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in 2023 and his work has been supported by The MacDowell Colony, Nokia Bell Labs, Puffin Foundation, Artslink, Harvestworks, Rhizozme, Diapason, The Experimental Television Center, The Bemis Center, LMCC Swing Space, the MIT Open Documentary Lab and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He teaches theory and production courses in emerging media in the Film and Media Department and the Integrated Media Arts MFA program at Hunter College.

Together, they use contemporary and historical interdisciplinary research to create tactile objects and visual and sonic experiences that pull from the past to anticipate alternative futures. They are known for bright and thought provoking immersive mixed media installations which are influenced by their South West Asian and North African backgrounds. 

Their work has been exhibited widely in the US and internationally, including The Ford Foundation, Transformer Gallery and The Arab American National Museum.