Thinkers in Residence spend time on 14th Street over the festival weekend reflecting on 14th Street, patterns of movement, artists, pedestrians, publics, personal reflections, and participation. Their responses take the form of writing, walking, image-making, poetry, or on-the-spot conversations with the public.

And now the observations of Alicia Grullon:

No Longer Invisible by Alicia Grullon

On Sunday night, I texted Ed Woodham, founding director of Art in Odd Places (AIOP),
to ask him about the performance schedule of artists lined up for this year’s festival. INVISIBLE
curated by New York City based performer and artist, Lulu Lolo, focuses on the work of artists
over the age of 60. As an annual public and free performance festival taking place on 14th
Street, AIOP has unleashed some of the quirkiest, most dynamic, poignant, and some of the
oddest performances in New York CIty for some time. At the heart of its mission is the practice
and call for people to take back the commons with imagination and art. Being one of this year’s
Thinkers in Residence, I was tasked with writing a short essay reflecting on the performances
and theme for this year’s AIOP website. Since its start in New York in 2005, AIOP has run on
next to or zero funds. While receiving great reviews in Hyperallergic, Time Out, and New York
Times one would think that monetary resources would just flood in due to publicity and the
caliber of artists and curators participating each year. Moments like these unmask the harsh
reality of arts funding and the survival of grassroots art projects by artists in New York City. Not
only is funding limited for a people’s run art projects, but often stigmatized by not falling into the
non-profit category. In the case of AIOP, it is a choice according to Woodham for AIOP to
remain liberated.
Me: ‘Hi!!!’
‘I have to go see an aiop event and this weekend has been packed.’
Ed: ‘But my <3. This weekend is over. AIOP has concluded.’
Me: ‘What?!’
‘I thought it lasted a week and it started this weekend.’
‘Omg.’
‘I need to do a think piece.’
‘Omg. This is terrible. I am so sorry.’
I was mortified.
Having participated in AIOP in the past, I was accustomed to a week long, even month
long festival that invaded 14th Street’s corporate take over and class warfare by local
government, real estate, private universities, and the affluent populations the latter two attract
like flies to honey. That it only lasted one weekend is yet another testament on how restrictive
art funding affects the ability for the people’s art to fully develop. Moreso, I have held a special
place for AIOP in addition to its mission and spirit. As a participant in the 2008 festival
PEDESTRIAN, I received my very first review by Hrag Vartanian who then was with Brooklyn
Rail. I did a durational performance on displacement and gentrification titled Revealing New
York: the Disappearance of Other where on four Sundays, I sat between Avenue A and First
Avenue in front of the post office (which is no longer there) masking my face with real estate
articles until I no longer could. Having just had my first child only a few months earlier and with a
broken arm after a failed skateboarding lesson, this was my first art project since becoming a
parent. It was a source of intellectual stability for me. Often women artists get shaken up if not

shattered for becoming parents. Not only do they/we face the need to cope through a change in
life, schedule and body, but they/we have to deal with obnoxious attitudes from within the art
world on having children. From the most famous (see Tracey Emin) to just your regular Joe
artist/art admin/curator/etc. the often unsolicited advice is, “Say nothing about being parent.
Hide the child and oh, your career will and has ended.” Having the support of AIOP staff, family
(because the child that most definitely exists needed childcare) and the art review was quite
frankly the best care I needed as a human being undergoing a life altering change. To have
missed the opportunity to write an essay and give back was tragic.
Ed: ‘Talk about ur weekend and why you couldn’t make it. That’s totally legit and
gives this time we’re in- context. Don’t fret. We do what we do and we’re
connected. Right?’
‘Honesty and vulnerability=’

Below is my breakdown on why I could not attend any of the performances.
Friday October 18th. I picked up my children after teaching at Queens College from a dear
friend who is currently out of work and was doing me the favor as my Dad was out of town. We
went to the protest at the Museum of Modern Art organized by New Sanctuary Coalition and
Code Pink to force MOMA and its board member Larry Fink to divest from private prisons.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, “The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3
million people in 1,719 state prisons, 109 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities,
3,163 local jails, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention
facilities, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S.
territories.” How are people like Fink making money off of private prisons? Public prisons act as
non-profits. They are run by the government via taxpayer funds. Private prisons are run by
corporations and like any other corporation their goal is to make a profit. They charge the US
government per day for each person held in private prisons and since they are charging the
government, the government is paying for it with our tax dollars. More so, people like Fink make
even more money due to jail churn where “every year, over 600,000 people enter prison gates,
but people go to jail 10.6 million times each year. Jail churn is particularly high because most
people in jails have not been convicted.” For example, a private prison may charge the
government $200 a day for each prisoner. If a prison holds 1,500 people that equals $300,000 a
day. That is a tremendous amount of money in one year. My children (because now I have two)
were not overly excited to attend. It was cold and they were aware of the possibility that we
might stay a long time like we had done on Monday when we attended the beautiful and brilliant
Indigenous People’s Day Tour organized by Decolonize This Place, No New Jails and more
than 10 other Indigenous and anti-displacement groups in the city. We were at the MOMA from
6:30 to 7:30pm and saw many people both behind and across the picket line. It was not clear to
me whether many of the guests that were invited to attend the reception for the museum’s grand
opening saw or heard the protesters. I noticed many staring, but was not sure if they were just
looking through the protests.

Saturday October 20th My friends Sheryll Durrant from the Kelly Street Gardens a
community garden that distributes more than a ton of organic vegetables for free to residents in
the South Bronx, Ron Kavannaugh Executive Director of the Mosaic Literary Magazine and
Literary Freedom Project devoted to leveraging power in communities through the literature of
black writers and Stephanie Alvarado, Literary Freedom Project instructor, artist and archivist
came over for dinner. We had planned this for over a month after a litany of back and forths. It
was an evening of care. I made them a home cooked meal as we listened to WBLS 80’s all
night mix. We leaned in as we each talked about our dreams in the midst of one of the most
urgent moments in our lifetimes. We discussed climate change and the need for a complete
economic and political change to break the systemic oppression of the poor and working class
by the very wealthy. We stressed the importance of community garden resistance in New York
City and Indegnious land rights as the answers to our survival. We imagined a time when the
Black Panthers and Octavia Butler are the focus of education in all our city schools among other
topics dealing with activism and black futurism. We laughed at the disaster of the current
administration both locally and federally while held a brief moment of unplanned silence for the
uncertainty the next year holds with upcoming elections. We promised to see each other again
soon because it felt good to be each other’s company.
Sunday October 20th I had to be at Performance Space by noon. I was one of 42
readers for the marathon reading of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria
Anzaldúa organized by Sarah Schulman. When I arrived, I noticed the writer Cherrie Moraga in
the elevator with me. Seeing Moraga was like seeing a saint. There are very few times I get star
struck and as I stood there immobilized by being in the same elevator with Moraga, I planned a
strategy. We both got out and went to the sign-in table where Sarah was handing out copies of
the pieces we would be reading. After greeting Sarah and getting my piece, I muscled up the
courage and took my friend and artist Shellyne Rodriguez over to her to say something to one of
the writers whose work had gotten me through graduate school. In particular was This Bridge
Called My Back which when speaking to other Latinx woman who have attended institutes of
higher education in the US found solace within the essays by some of the most prominent
Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Latinx women in the history of social movement and literature to
date. The solace came from being seen as holding a multiplicity of identities, each complicated
and long as well as rendered invisible by colonial and patriarchal discourse for more than 500
years. Reading it was like reading a history book which I could relate to because it mirrored my
community’s experiences and I needed that within my art making process. As I got my selfie
with her, I was able to thank her and she was graceful with my fumbled nervous mixup of her
work and Anzaldúa’s. The rest of the day was like going to church in its most colloquial sense
for spiritual healing. Listening to Borderlands/La Frontera being read out loud was
experiencing myth making, spiritual practice, oral history, and recorded documentation in one
sitting. Had it been written 2000 years ago, it would have held the equivalence today of being a
holy scripture- which it quiet frankly is in my opinion. When it was my turn to read, I decided to
start chapter four La Herencia de Coatlicue/ The Coatlicue State with a water offering as I
kneeled in all four directions. On the handout Sarah had given me, was a reminder to,
“introduce yourself” and I did in the spirit of Anzaldúa: ‘Soy Alicia Grullon taina y negra desde
Quisqueya./ My name is Alicia Grullon. I am a New Yorker from the Bronx.’ From that moment

on, was being inside her words which felt like mine and everyone else’s in the room. We were
speaking out loud our most hidden secrets.
Her soft belly exposed to the sharp eyes of everyone; they see, they see. Their
eyes penetrate her; they slit her from head to belly. Rajada. She is at their mercy,
she can do nothing to defend herself. And she is ashamed that they see her so
exposed, so vulnerable. She has to learn to push their eyes away. She has to still
her eyes from looking at their feelings- feelings that can catch her in their gaze,
bind her to them (Anzaldúa, 1987, pp. 65).

For more of Alicia Grullon’s work visit: https://aliciagrullon.com/home.html