Through Art, ‘Imagining De-Gentrified Futures’ Proposes Socially-Just Alternatives to Gentrification
Artists aim to reimagine the future of urban landscapes in the first exhibition curated by multimedia artist, activist and educator Betty Yu.
By Alix Publie
Betty Yu grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. There, where she still lives, she has seen small businesses driven out and working class families like hers chased away by higher rents.
Through her first exhibition, “Imagining De-Gentrified Futures,” Yu encourages a rethinking of gentrification, first by showing the impacts of displacement on communities and then by proposing solutions.
“Imagining De-Gentrified Futures” is currently showing at the Apexart Gallery in Tribeca. The interactive exhibition features works from five artists and collectives across the United States, including Black Quantum Futurism, Robin Holder, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Sandra de La Loza, and the Chinatown Art Brigade.
The word gentrification comes from the French “genterise,” which refers to aristocracy and means “of noble birth.” For Yu, gentrification is far from noble. It is, she said, “the displacement of people for profit.”
She isn’t against new and improved housing, which often comes with gentrification, but she wants visitors to reflect on what that process does to communities. “It’s like beautifying, making something better, right? People think about it that way. And of course, we’re all about beautification, as long as it doesn’t displace people,” she added.
In one of her works, entitled “De-Gentrifying My Parents’ Block,” Yu shows her parents’ neighborhood undergoing an evolution in a quadriptych of digital photos. What used to be a commercial building in the first image eventually transforms to housing units in the fourth image. On top of the newly erected residential building, a sign reads “Housing is a Human Right.”
In the exhibition, the artists explore gentrification and displacement in several cities across the U.S., from New York to Los Angeles. Through their installations, they propose socially and racially-just alternatives to the ultra-gentrified landscapes often shaped by private developers. They place communities, and the people that make those communities, at the center of these projects of modernization and imagine a future where they are involved in the decision-making process of their neighborhoods. In “Imagining a Future Chinatown,” one of the art pieces by the Chinatown Art Brigade collective, participants were asked to draw their ideal neighborhood and the process through which they would achieve it.
New York City has experienced rapid gentrification over the past decade. And while rents in many neighborhoods have fallen due to the pandemic, rents have in fact risen in neighborhoods hardest hit by the virus. According to a report done by StreetEasy, since the start of the pandemic, average rents in those neighborhoods least touched by the virus have fallen by 1.9% while those impacted the most have experienced a 0.3% increase in rent prices.
Now, amid the pandemic, even more New Yorkers are unable to afford rent and face eviction. “The main harm that gentrification does takes form as displacement,” said Lucy Block, a research and policy associate at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development. People who cannot afford increasing rents in their neighborhoods are forced to move out and sometimes find themselves either homeless or in more remote neighborhoods, including out of the cities. “So much of real estate value in New York is based on transit accessibility. When people are pushed out, they are almost always going to be pushed to places that make it harder to access the things that they need to access, including their jobs,” explained Block.
Moratoriums that prevent evictions will be lifted by January 1, 2021, if they are not extended. “There needs to be anti-displacement protections and policies to prevent speculation, because there are going to be investors who want to buy undervalued buildings for cheap and make profit over time. That’s what happened after the 2008 crisis,” said Block, referring to the Great Recession.
The last installation of the exhibition is a housing manifesto that is plastered on the wall at the back of the gallery. The Radical Housing Manifestos, as it is called, is a collection of essays, poems, and images about the effects of gentrification, put together by the artists and other activists.
“I really want the people to land on that and to see where these activists and planners and folks who are in the community, how they envision this question of radical housing future. Some of them took it really far and some people grounded it in what our conditions are now. It’s about opening up the conversations,” said Yu.
The exhibition is on until Dec. 19. A virtual walkthrough is also available on the Apexart website.
Bio: Alix Publie is an MS student at Columbia Journalism School. She is covering housing, with a particular focus on NYCHA and public housing issues. She grew up between France and the United States but will never understand how cheese can come in a spray can here.
