Dear Members: Letters of Resignation in the A.I.R. Gallery Archives
Géza, 306 Maujer
Founded in 1972 by a group of twenty women artists, A.I.R. is the longest-running women and non-binary artists’ cooperative gallery in the United States. The organization’s inaugural by-laws, while in many ways a how-to guide for coming and working together, also incorporated an essential process: separation from the cooperative.
More than one hundred artists have joined and separated from A.I.R. in its fifty years of existence. Each member’s story is different: some have left because their work with the organization felt complete; others felt no longer able to contribute to the extent expected of them; still others resigned feeling unheard by the group or disenchanted with cooperative work altogether. As dictated in the by-laws, each separation requires the submission of a letter of resignation.
Letters of Resignation is developed by A.I.R.’s current Executive Director, Christian Camacho-Light and its former Executive Director, Roxana Fabius, who will lead a discussion on individual resignation letters from the gallery’s early years, such as Sylvia Sleigh, Ana Mendieta, and Rosemary Mayer. Each letter will be paired with ancillary archival materials, responses to the letters found in the archive, and a few other short resignation letters. Together, participants will consider these letters as case studies of the inherent benefits, challenges, and dramas of cooperative work.
Letters of Resignation is held in conjunction with A.I.R. Gallery’s 50th anniversary season and is organized in the framework of Dora Garcia’s Amor Rojo at Amant, and the contradictory notions of hope and disappointment that surface in the film trilogy. This event is free and open to all, please register via Eventbrite.
Image: Scan of resignation letters from the A.I.R. Gallery Archives, Fales Library & Special Collections, New York University, New York, NY.
Roxana Fabius is a Uruguayan curator and art administrator. She currently lives and works in New York. Between 2016 and 2022 she was the Executive Director of A.I.R. Gallery, where she was instrumental to the institution’s programming direction, and together with Patricia M. Hernández curated Dialectics of Entanglement: Do we exist together? (2018), the first restaging of the germinal exhibition Dialectics of Isolation which included the work of Ana Mendieta, Kazuko, and Zarina.
Also at A.I.R she has organized programs and exhibitions with Gordon Hall, Elizabeth Povinelli, Jack Halberstam, Che Gosset, Regina José Galindo, Lex Brown, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, and many others. Other projects have been presented and exhibited at the Judd Foundation, NYC; The Park Avenue Armory, NYC; The Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY ; Caixa Forum, Barcelona; Zona Maco, Mexico D.F; Art Port, Tel Aviv; Centro Cultural de España, Montevideo; and Museo Zorrilla, Montevideo.