Homes for People, Not for Profit: Discussion and Workshop

Alex Strada’s Public Address exists in dialogue with our 1985–86 project Homeless at Home, in which Mojdeh Baratloo, Clifton Balch, Carla Davis, Rebecca Martin, Shirin Neshat, Glenn Weiss, Kyong Park, and Barbara Yoshida invited other artists, architects, and New Yorkers to create and deploy stencils addressing homelessness in the city, recognizing that “HOME is an essential foundation of human existence.” Although they take place decades apart, both projects contend with the perpetual erasure of the complexities of homelessness and use creative tactics to intervene in, and act upon, public space.

During this program, Strada and Storefront will reflect on the intersections between Public Address and Homeless at Home, inviting Art Against Displacement (AAD) to discuss their ongoing advocacy against gentrification, predatory development, and carceral infrastructure. These presentations will be activated by a workshop in which participants will create handmade prints using replicas of the original stencils from Homeless at Home, alongside contemporary adaptations. Participants will be invited to install these posters in public, as well as to paint the stencils on a collaborative banner that AAD will continue to use in their organizing.

Alex Strada is an artist and educator based in New York City whose work spans installation, film/video, sound and orality, printed media, participatory workshops, and public practice. Through a research-based approach grounded in transdisciplinary collaboration and public engagement, her projects reimagine systems of power and create platforms for collectivity, civic agency, and political transformation. Since 2022, she has served as the Public Artist in Residence with the NYC Department of Homeless Services and the Department of Cultural Affairs. Recent solo exhibitions include the Queens Museum, NYC; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Aldrich Contemporary Museum of Art, CT; Times Square Arts, NYC; and Project Row Houses, Houston. Strada is the Fine Arts Civic Engagement Fellow and faculty at the Pratt Institute.

Art Against Displacement (AAD) is a collective of artists and cultural workers based in Manhattan’s Chinatown and Lower East Side on unceded Lenape land. They seek to amplify the demands of those whose livelihoods are threatened by predatory development, and to work in solidarity with grassroots organizations toward community-led rezoning. Gentrification is not predetermined by urban development; AAD rejects the instrumentalization of cultural workers towards the displacement of long-term tenants and merchants.