Juanli Carrion

For each garden, the local community serves as an active participant in the planters’ designs. This provides a way for the community to visualize its needs for the project. In a sense, the shape of the planters delimits the formal and symbolic boundaries of the depicted community. -Juanli Carríon, Bomb Magazine, October 22, 2018

Juanli Carrión collaborates with CALL on its ongoing Rescuing Tibbetts Brook program, among other efforts. His site-specific artistic practice carries the concept of vernacular human ecologies into community-development strategies. In spring 2015, Carríon and sociologist Gianpaolo Baiocchi led a CALL/WALK to explore the different "identities" of water. In 2014, Carríon started the ongoing Outer Seed Shadow (OSS Project, Inc.), which is a series of site-specific public projects to connect artists with communities and to create gardens to empower, celebrate, and reclaim identity. In 2017, in association with CALL and local community organizations, including the Marble Hill Tenants Association and Riverdale Neighborhood House, OSS launched the Outer Seed Shadow Marble Hill, which is a garden comprising 11 raised beds — one for each of Marble Hill’s 11 towers. It will serve as the centerpiece for a series of public gardening and food education programs.

Carrión’s work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the former Art in General in the US; ARTIUM, La Casa Encendida, and MUSAC in Spain; Ex-Teresa Museum and MUPO in Mexico; Museum of Contemporary Art in Peru and National Gallery of Modern Art in India, among others. Carrión has lectured and participated in various forums at Columbia University, Open Engagement at Carnegie Mellon University, SVA, Pratt Institute, SUNY, NYU, AIA New York, National Academy of Science, Fordham Graduate School for Social Service, Wavehill, and Apexart.

Outer Seed Shadow Marble Hill — Ongiong

OSS#MH is an interactive public art project and community garden made in collaboration with residents of the Marble Hill Houses and NYC public housing development. The garden welcomes residents and community leaders to get down in the dirt and place hundreds of new plantings in 11 new raised garden beds—one reflecting each of the Marble Hill complex’s 11 towers—which will serve as centerpieces for a series of public gardening and food education programming that will activate the site throughout the summer.

This is one of three Outer Seed Shadow projects, and part of the larger project Rescuing Tibbetts Brook a constellation of artist and designer- led initiatives in the Bronx, calling attention to the need to daylight Tibbetts Brook.

Broadway: 1000 Steps: The Identity of Water - Spring 2015

Artist Juanli Carrión and Sociologist Gianpaolo Baiocchi led a cultural journey through different flavors of water. Participants learned a perspective of the different "identities" water can have and how susceptible these identities are to change. The participants also learned about the past and the future of the neighborhood and its people.

This is a part of CALL/WALKS, an ongoing series of artist and scientist led public walks diving deep into urgent, local environmental concerns and innovative ideas to overcome them. This particular walk connects to CALL’s larger initiative in the Broadway: 1000 Steps.